Telling Stories in Athenian Law

WHEN STUDENTS FIRST ENCOUNTER ATHENIAN LAW, it seems quite different from what they know as our own law; and when they begin to read scholarship on the subject, especially Anglo-American scholarship of the last two decades, they will probably find some discussion of the so-called "otherness" of Athenian law. Scholars these days don't write books that try to make Athenian law more familiar, like Robert Bonner's fine little introduction, Lawyers and Litigants in Ancient Athens, published three-quarters of a century ago. New approaches have taken over, approaches that, although healthy and stimulating in many ways, tend to exaggerate the otherness of Athenian law. This is not so much because historians present a false picture of Athenian law, as because they misrepresent aspects of our own legal system, relying on a traditional, idealistic view of it that is increasingly being challenged by certain branches of contemporary legal studies. When we take a more realistic look at our own system, however, Athenian law may not appear so different.

One of the new approaches to understanding our own law is to look at storytelling. Storytelling has been the subject of serious academic study for almost a century now, but it has drawn the attention of legal scholars only in recent decades, as part of the broader field of "Law and Literature." Classicists too have studied storytelling, as well as newer approaches such as narratology and performance studies. But storytelling in Athenian law has not received much attention, so today I would like to take a couple of stories from Athenian legal cases and try to show how the study of storytelling in law can shed light on these cases and on Athenian law more generally.

I'll begin with a story familiar to many of you, from Lysias 1, On the Murder of Eratosthenes (this is the case of the man who kills his wife's lover). A century ago this speech was considered unsuitable for students and uninteresting for scholars, but in recent decades it has become perhaps Lysias' most popular work. The main reason for its popularity is the vivid and compelling story it tells. As you may recall, Euphiletus, a farmer, recounts how he married a young woman who seemed at first the perfect wife. But after the birth of their son, he relaxed his guard over her. Then, unbeknownst to him, she began an affair with the villainous Eratosthenes—a professional adulterer, as he is characterized. Their affair continued for some time without Euphiletus' knowledge—though he now recalls several clues that, in retrospect, he should have noticed but didn't. At last, he is told of the affair by a servant of another victim of Eratosthenes' seduction, who was angry that she had been cast aside in favor of Euphiletus' wife. Stunned and enraged by the news, he determines to exact the full punishment stipulated by the law, which allows a man to kill an adulterer who is caught in bed with his wife. So he forces their maid, who has been acting as the go-between for the affair, to admit the truth and cooperate with him by telling him when Eratosthenes next visits. When that day arrives, Euphiletus rounds up several friends and they storm into the house, catching Eratosthenes in flagrante delicto and quickly killing him. Euphiletus assures the jury that justice has now been served. Naturally, Eratosthenes' relatives saw things differently and they prosecuted Euphiletus for homicide. The speech we have was written by Lysias for Euphiletus to deliver in his defense at the trial.

At least, that's what the speech is generally thought to be, though there are skeptics, notably John Porter, who in a recent article analyzes "the subtle fashion in which the speech exploits the motifs of the stereotypical adultery tale in achieving both its charm as a narrative and its effectiveness as a rhetorical appeal" (Porter 422). As the...