Eyes wide shut. Witnesses of an orgy: participants or spectators?

Arethusa, 2005

2008

Witnessing in Athenian courts was one of the issues to which a comparative anthropological approach was applied relatively early. The differences between the modern Western judicial systems and ancient or non-European societies have provoked detailed analysis, for example regarding the kinds of people a litigant would summon to give testimony or the purpose and function of witnesses in the courts. 2 Witnesses have been shown to be primarily supporters of one litigant and therefore partisan. Establishment of the facts is thus not the only, perhaps not even the main, purpose they serve. In addition, their personal authority or authority of office was supposed to support the speaker's credibility. Friends, moreover, acted as witnesses to demonstrate the social status of the litigant. However, despite progress in this branch of scholarship, complete clarification regarding the details of the procedure does not seem to have been achieved. The present paper deals with the , the oath of ignorance, by which unwilling witnesses were able to refuse to give evidence. It has been assumed that witnesses could not only state their ignorance of the matter at issue, but could thereby also indicate that the litigant's pre-formulated testimony was untrue. In contrast to this view, I aim to show that in the it was not only impossible to indicate that the statement in the deposition was incorrect, but also that we should refrain from assuming that the oath implied such a contention. Secondly, I will attempt to show that we have no reason to think that the could be taken on a part of the testimony only. The views I am opposing derive, in my opinion, from an inadequate understanding of the role of witnesses: that they serve only to help find the truth. Instead, depositions should be regarded as nothing more than a means in the process of persuasion, an element in the speaker's legitimate aim to present his side of the case without interruption. I thus return to a view that has been rejected because it seemed awkward and alien to our concept of witnessing. However, I aim to show that it can be reconciled with modern studies and matches their results better.

Sapiens ubique civis, 2021

The paper below focuses on the shadowy figure of the hypothetical witness found in two mock-forensic works of the late 5th century: Gorgias’ Defence of Palamedes and Antiphon’s First Tetralogy. I argue that these witnesses, who only exist within the εἰκός arguments found in these speeches, are consistently characterized in impersonal ways, as individuals with knowledge pertinent to the resolution of the case. The issue of their will is also broached, particularly in last rebuttal speech of the First Tetralogy. Though such witnesses, being logical figments, could never appear in court, their characterization sheds important light on the ancient Greek notion of ‘witnessing’. Indeed, the very ability of Gorgias and Antiphon to deploy such arguments shows that witnessing was, at least in this cases, not thought to be tied to the witness’s prestige or character which remain entirely undefined. Rather, their characterization of a ‘witness’ as an individual who knows and who is motivated t...

Hellenistica Groningana 23, 2018

Συνοίκιά γε ταῦτα ῥυπαρά. ἀνάγκη γὰρ τὴν σύνοδον γίνεσθαι παμμίγους ὄχλου. This is a filthy public celebration. For it is inevitable that the crowd will consist of people of all sorts. Athenaeus Deipn. 7.276c = FGrH 241 F

2014

As Creusa finds the courage to reveal her long-concealed union with Apollo, Euripides aligns the powerful narrative at the heart of his Ion with the disclosure of a sexual secret. Such disclosures make good stories, interesting in part for their sexual content, but even more, I suggest, for the circumstances that lead to their telling. As Peter Brooks argues in Reading for the Plot, narratives engage us in the desires of their characters, which we follow through a trajectory of frustration and fulfillment, propelled by a corresponding passion for knowledge. Among the strongest of those desires, more powerful even than erotic longing or material ambition, is the wish to tell one’s own story, “the more nearly absolute desire to be heard, recognized, listened to” (Brooks 1984: 53), so that narratives often include an account of their own origin in a character’s quest for recognition. But a story like Creusa’s can only be told after a difficult struggle with fear and shame, which have t...

2002

The uncouth old protagonist of Aristophanes' Acharnians marks his achievement of a personal peace with the Spartans, and hence his return to his countryside deme, by celebrating a private, miniaturized version of the Rural Dionysia. The only part of the festival he is able to enact before being interrupted by the hostile chorus of Acharnian charcoal burners is a phallic procession and song-the very thing Aristotle designates in the Poetics (4.1449a10-15) as the cultural forerunner of comic drama itself. Dicaeopolis treats himself and his family as a surrogate deme, just as he will later become, in fulfillment of his name, a surrogate or symbolic city. Assuming the organizing role of a demarch or local magistrate, he enlists the services of his daughter as a basket carrier, of Xanthias and another slave as carriers of the phallic pole, and of his wife as a spectator. He completes the procession himself as the solo singer (probably in lieu of a chorus) of the phallic song (to phallikon, 261) in buoyant iambic rhythm. 1 The song is addressed to Phales, the personified phallus. He is invoked with a cascade of vocatives-a kind of comic aretalogy, conveying Dicaeopolis's exuberant acclamation of the god's attributes: Falh`, eJ taire Bakciv ou, xuv gkwme, nuktoperiplav nhte, moicev , paiderastav , . . . (263-65) 120 Chapter Four Aristophanic Sex: The Erotics of Shamelessness º Stephen Halliwell Phales, companion of Bacchus, Fellow-komast, nocturnal wanderer, Marriage defiler, lover of boys, . . .

Classical quarterly, 2021

In this short note I explore the possibility that Lysistrata's use of the military term ἡμεροσκόπος 'day watch' in the introduction to the (in)famous seduction scene between Cinesias and Myrrhine (829-953) is in fact a pun based on a well-documented feature of female speech in 5th-century Attic which must have been easily recognizable as such by the male audience: iotacism. I argue that ἡμεροσκόπος will have been pronounced as ἱμεροσκόπος 'lust watch', with a long close front unrounded [i:] instead of a long mid-open front unrounded [ε:]. By doing so, the military term, befitting the context of the occupation-plot, is perverted to a sexually charged word befitting the context of the strike-plot. 1 The remainder of this note is structured as follows: in §1 I sketch in more detail the military vocabulary associated with the occupation-plot which occasions the use of ἡμεροσκόπος; in §2 I describe the sexual vocabulary associated with the strike-plot which invites the perversion of ἡμεροσκόπος to ἱμεροσκόπος; in §3 I discuss the evidence for iotacism as a feature of female speech and the likelihood that it applies to ἡμεροσκόπος; in §4 I present some conclusions. 1. MILITARY TERMINOLOGY ASSOCIATED WITH THE OCCUPATION-PLOT The first half of the play is centered on Lysistrata's first scheme: the seizure of the Acropolis. The vocabulary associated with the occupation-plot is unmistakably military. Lysistrata addresses the old women deployed to occupy the Acropolis as ξύμμαχοι 'allies' (456) and uses the military term λόχος 'company' to refer to them: καὶ παρ' ἡμῖν εἰσι τέτταρες λόχοι μαχίμων γυναικῶν ἔνδον ἐξοπλισμένων 'we also have four companies of fully armed combat women inside' (453-4). 2 The verb (κατα)λαμβάνω 'occupy' is used five times in this context: καταληψόμεθα γὰρ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν τήμερον 'we will seize the citadel today' (176), ταῖς πρεσβυτάταις γὰρ προστέτακται … θυεῖν δοκούσαις καταλαβεῖν τὴν ἀκρόπολιν 'the elderly women have been ordered … to seize the citadel while pretending to sacrifice' (177-9), αἱ γὰρ γυναῖκες τὴν ἀκρόπολιν τῆς θεοῦ ἤδη κατειλήφασιν 'the women have already seized the citadel of the Goddess' (241-2), γυναῖκας … κατὰ μὲν ἅγιον ἔχειν βρέτας, κατά τ' ἀκρόπολιν ἐμὴν λαβεῖν, κλῃθροισί τ' αὖ καὶ μοχλοῖσι τὰ Προπύλαια πακτοῦν 'women … hold the sacred image, and seized my citadel, and shut if off with bars and bolts' (260-5), τὴν Κραναὰν κατέλαβον, ἐφ' ὅ τι τε μεγαλόπετρον ἄβατον ἀκρόπολιν, ἱερὸν τέμενος 'they have seized the citadel of Cranaus, on the mighty rock, the restricted citadel, a holy precinct' (480-3). When Cinesias approaches the Acropolis, Lysistrata asks who is standing ἐντὸς τῶν φυλακῶν 'within the perimeter' (847), "as if the Akropolis were an armed garrison with sentries at its periphery". 3 When Cinesias inquires: σὺ δ' εἶ τίς ἡκβάλλουσά μ'; 'who are you to throw me out?' (849a), Lysistrata replies: ἡμεροσκόπος 'daytime sentry' (849b). From the perspective of the occupation-plot, the use of the military term ἡμεροσκόπος, prepared by the preceding phrase ἐντὸς τῶν φυλακῶν, seems therefore entirely appropriate.

Eranos, 2019

This paper examines Philostratus' use of festivals as markers of Greek cultural identity in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana. Throughout the Life, Apollonius' interlocutors misunderstand how and why Greek festivals are celebrated, displaying a fragmentary knowledge of festivals and their cultural products, particularly Greek drama. In India, Apollonius finds that the Indians know Greek drama through text, not festival performance. The Athenians seem to have forgotten their own traditions, and celebrate the Dionysia incorrectly. The Ethiopians know something of Greek festivals, accurately describing the program at Delphi, but betray a misunderstanding of their meaning when they argue that the music is unnecessary. The reputation of Greek festivals has reached Iberia, but the inhabitants confuse festival victory with military victory, and run in fear from a tragic actor. In each case, Apollonius is the only one to display complete knowledge of Greek festival culture. Lying behind all of these moments of intercultural misunderstanding is the emperor Nero, whose disruptive behavior at the Greek festivals was an enduring symbol of Roman interference with Greek culture.

The Classical World, 1986