Popular Attitudes to Judicial Activity in the Age of Aristophanes
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Popular Attitudes to Judicial Activity in the Age of Aristophanes Angus Julian Dewar Crichton PhD Thesis University College London ProQuest Number: 10017252 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10017252 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract The aim of the thesis is to understand popular attitudes in Athens to judicial activity in the late fifth and early fourth centuries, the period in which Aristophanes wrote and performed his plays. Within the Aristophanic world, characters are frequently portrayed as engaging in litigation and jury service. Moreover, this portrayal of judicial activity is decidedly ambivalent, with the comic hero often fleeing from judicial activity into a fantastical paradise within which judicial activity is consciously banished. And yet as the play continues, judicial activity often resurfaces within the fantastical paradise. These on-stage images of judicial activity are compared with portraits which litigants paint of themselves and their opponents in the Attic Orators. Litigants characteristically present themselves as inexperienced and reluctant to engage in judicial activity, while portraying their opponents as experienced to the point of sycophancy. Yet the same litigant who professes judicial reticence may in reality be a seasoned veteran of the jury courts. On the basis of evidence from the theatre and the court room, I argue that the pursuit of judicial activity is governed by an ideology of judicial reticence. On the other hand, most Athenians were in reality engaged in judicial activity on account of the democratic judicial system, which required citizens to serve as jurors and act as voluntary prosecutors. A hypothesis is advanced to explain this tension between the ideology of judicial reticence and the reality of judicial practice and its implications for our understanding of Athenian law. This tension is exacerbated by four factors specific to the late fifth century. Firstly, the central role given to the democratic judicial system in the administration of the democracy and the Athenian empire was a relative novelty in the late fifth century. Secondly it was perceived that those with access to rhetorical resources could utilise rhetoric to manipulate justice in the jury courts. Thirdly, it is possible to identify a debate on the democratic judicial system both on-stage and beyond the theatre. Fourthly, in the period 415-403, the jury courts were utilised by parties on both sides of the ideological divide to destroy their opponents. These concerns about judicial activity finally overflowed into specific programmes of judicial reform in the last decade of the fifth century. These four factors fuelled and intensified concerns about judicial activity in the age of Aristophanes. Table of Contents Abstract 2 Table of Contents 3 Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 6 Chapter 1: Judicial Activity and Civic Ideology 12 Chapter 2: Interpreting Aristophanes 21 Chapter 3: Judicial Activity in the Plays of Aristophanes 37 Chapter 4: Judicial Activity in the Attic Orators 58 4.1 The Perceived Prevalence of Judicial Activity in Athenian Society 58 4.2 Approaches to Judicial Activity in the Attic Orators 61 4.3 Interpreting the Attic Orators 64 4.4.1 Judicial Activity in Lysias 25: Defence on a Charge of 66 Subverting the Democracy 4.4.ii Judicial Activity in Isocrates 18: Against Callimachus 70 4.4.iii Judicial Activity in Isaeus 5: On the Estate of Dicaeogenes 79 4.5 Conclusion: On-stage and Off-stage Images of Judicial Activity 86 Chapter 5: The Clouds, Rhetoric and Judicial Practice 90 5.1 The Practice: The Impact of Rhetorical Education on Democratic 91 Judicial Activity 5.2 The Problem: Rhetoric, Democratic Judicial Practice and Justice 101 5.3 The Practitioners: The Inequality of Access to Rhetorical Resources 116 5.4 Conclusion 122 Chapter 6: The Wasps and the Debate on the Democratic Judicial System 124 6.1 The Debate on the Democratic Judicial System within the 125 Aristophanic World 6.2 The Debate on the Democratic Judicial System and Dramatic Context 133 6.3 The Debate on the Democratic Judicial System Beyond the Theatre 138 6.4 Conclusion 146 Chapter 7: Intensifying, Responding to and Resolving Judicial Concerns 148 7.1 Intensifying Concerns: The Judicial System and Political 148 Purges (415-403) 7.2 Responding to Concerns (I): The Oligarchic Reforms to the Judicial 154 System (404/3) 7.3 Responding to Concerns (II): The Democratic Reforms to the Judicial 157 System (403-399) 7.4 Resolving Concerns: The Democratic Judicial System at the Beginning 162 of the Fourth Century 7.5 Conclusion 165 Chapter 8: The Ideology of Judicial Reticence and the Reality of 167 Judicial Practice Appendix 1: Quantitative Analysis of Personal Jokes in Aristophanes 181 A l.l Some Observations on Personal Jokes in Aristophanes 181 A 1.2 Counting Personal Jokes in Aristophanes 188 Appendix 2: ‘The Codification of the Laws’ in Late Fifth-Century Athens 194 Figures 202 Bibliography 213 Statistical Appendix 231 Acknowledgements There are three groups of people I would like to thank for their help and support in writing this thesis. Academic". My greatest debt is to my two supervisors. Professors John North and Pat Easterling. As the first supervisor of this thesis. Professor North’s input has been extensive. I am particularly grateful for his assistance with the overall shape of the thesis, his sharp criticism of argument, his encouragement and his personal support. He has read many drafts and has provided innumerable helpful suggestions and corrections. I first seriously encountered Aristophanes and his plays in Professor Easterling’s Greek Drama classes some eight years ago. I am indebted to her for much of my thinking about reading and interpreting Aristophanes, as well as her input and guidance in relation to the thesis. I am also grateful to Professor Michael Crawford, Jason Davies, Dr Julian Hoppitt, Dr Keith Sidwell, Dr Rosalind Thomas, Dr Stephen Todd and Dr Riet van Bremen for their suggestions and advice. Professor Chris Carey kindly allowed me to sit in on his classes on Creek Law. Dr Michael Palmer and Dr Simon Roberts permitted me to likewise join their classes on Alternative Dispute Resolution. I am very grateful to the staff of the Library of the Institute of Classical Studies for the excellent service they have provided during the research and writing of this thesis. Amid: I would particularly like to thank Annabel Adcock and David Vavrecka, Rowan Crichton, Barry and Rosemary Jubraj and Haydn and Ruth Williams for their graciousness in being interested in the plays of Aristophanes and for their friendship and support as this thesis has progressed. African: The emphasis on relational frameworks and relational ties in the concluding chapter was inspired by the time I have spent living and working in Kenya. Friends in Kenya have taught me by their example the supreme importance of relationships between people. I would particularly like to thank Pamela and Paul Meso, Alfred and Esther Muinde, Vundi and Lillian Nason and Francis Oguya. To each of these, the swahili poet Muyaka would have been able to say: ‘huyo, ni wako mwandani’. Introduction HE. oî [ièi/ Yap ouv TeiTLYeç eua ufii/' fj 8{io km Tcov Kpa8cov aSoua', ’AOtivoTol 8' à si s m Toou 81KWV a8o\jai n ai/ia tov pioi/. Peisetaerus: For as the cicadas sing on the branches for a month or two, so the Athenians always sing at dikcU for all their lives. (Ar.Av.39-41). This research grew out of a straightforward question that occurred to me when I started to read Aristophanes’ plays about seven years ago: why was the Athenian judicial system subject to the repeated attentions of the comic poet? Within our own culture, there are at least three reasons why judicial activity is the subject of dramatic interest. Firstly, the court room contest which lies at the heart of an adversarial judicial system is a dramatic event in itself and so has given rise to any number of ‘courtroom dramas’.! Secondly judicial activity provides a backdrop for observations on and interaction of the participants in the judicial process, be they lawyers, judges, witnesses, defendants or jurors, essentially a ‘soap opera’ with a judicial flavour.^ Thirdly the spotlight may be focused on the judicial system itself, as the effectiveness or flaws of the contemporary system are examined through the dramatic medium.^ But I can think of hardly any instances where judicial activity is the sustained focus of a comic medium, outside the spate of the jokes hostile to lawyers that circulated during the 1980s.O n the other hand, even the most cursory reading of Aristophanes’ extant plays reveals a repeated focus on the Athenian judicial system. Not only is an entire play, the Wasps, devoted to the judicial system, but judicial activity features in practically every other surviving play. This judicial interest may be seen in one-line, throw-away comments and satirical jibes at contemporary individuals, but it may also form the central theme of a play, driving its dramatic momentum.^ Consequently, the chapters ! Films such as Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) or Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men (1992) possess riveting court room scenes. In the former Kevin Costner, as the attorney Jim Garrison, not only demohshes the findings of the Warren Commission, but makes an impassioned plea for democracy and open government in the face of the tyrannical machinations of the security services.