On Aristotle’s treatment of law in the Rhetoric, see D. C. Mirhady, ‘Aristotle on the Rhetoric of Law’, GRBS 31 (1990), pp. 393-410 and C. Carey, ‘Nomos in Attic Rhetoric and Oratory’, JHS 116 (1996), pp. 33-46. The relationship between law and epieikeia, ‘fairness’, in Athenian courts was the focus of H. Meyer-Laurin, Gesetz und Billigkeit im attischen Prozess (Weimar: 1965); see also A. Biscardi, ‘La ‘‘gnome dikaiotate’ et l’Interpretation des Lois dans la Grece Ancienne’, RIDA 17 (1970), pp. 219-232. Both argued that dicasts generally sought to enforce the law. E. M. Harris, ‘Law and Oratory’, in Ian Worthington (ed.), Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action (London: 1994), pp. 130-150, also emphasizes the importance of the law in Athenian courts. D. Cohen has argued vigorously in several works that Athenian litigation depended less on law and legal arguments than on assessments of character and status: see especially Law, Violence and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge: 1995). S. Todd, The Shape of Athenian Law (Oxford: 1993), pp. 49-73, especially pp. 58-60, takes a similar view, arguing that law had only a persuasive, not binding, force. Two recent books offer good discussions of Athenian law and the impact of rhetoric on the courts: M. Christ, The Litigious Athenian (Baltimore: 1998), Chapter 6 and S. Johnstone, Disputes and Democracy. The Consequences of Litigation in Classical Athens (Austin: 1999), Chapter 1. Christ, Johnstone and Harris each discuss in more detail many of the speeches mentioned in this chapter. See also E. M. Harris, ‘Open Texture in Athenian Law', DIKE 3 (2000), pp. 27-78, for discussion of how litigants handled uncertainty in the meaning of laws. Several contributions relevant to this chapter are in E. M. Harris and L. Rubinstein (eds.), The Law and the Courts in Ancient Greece (London: 2004).
World History
