Athens' Democratic Witnesses

Abstract

W HILE DISCUSSING THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS DISPUTE, a speaker in the Athenian popular courts will pause from time to time to direct that testimony be given, or read, that he is speaking the truth.l The witness testimony (marturia) then confirms what the speaker has already said himself-and probably for this reason is usually not recorded or even interpolated into the surviving text of the speech. But just what role did these witnesses play? There should be no doubt about the importance of testimony and witnesses for the procedure of the Athenian courts and for the functioning of the Athenian democracy. The passage above is not alone in making clear that testimony was a matter of life and death for the viability of a judicial presentation. The popular courts policed Athens, regulating its citizens' private affairs as well as providing a check on civic government. Witnesses served a vital role for those courts by affirming the information upon which they based their judgments. Not everyone could be a witness, however. Those eligible to give testimony, free adult males, represented only part of Athenian society. Not only children but women and slaves were excluded. Unlike the procedures of a private arbitration, which had the freedom of any private and domestic affairs in Athens and so employed whatever evidence the private arbitrator wished, the civic ideology of the democracy greatly restricted its popular courts' (as well as its public arbitrators') sources of information.