The role(s) of witnesses in fourth-century Athens has been the object of considerable scholarly debate. As S. reminds us (pp. 15–16), the standard studies on the topic (R.J. Bonner, Evidence in Athenian Courts [1905], E. Leisi, Der Zeuge im Attischen Recht [1907]) focused on strictly procedural aspects of evidence and testimony. Since S. Humphreys's ‘Social Relations on Stage: Witnesses in Classical Athens’ (History and Anthropology 1 [1985], 313–69) scholars have instead adopted anthropological and sociological approaches to assess the purpose of witnesses within the wider features of Athenian society. Discussion has therefore shifted to the question of whether witnesses were considered an instrument for judicial truth-finding or whether their role was rather to act as supporters for the litigants for whom they appeared.
S.'s monograph partially moves away from this debate and focuses instead on the place of witnesses within what he calls ‘le dispositif de vérité’. He defines this as the ‘système cognitif sur lequel s'appuient les orateurs pour valoriser leurs déclarations ou au contraire dévaloriser celles de leur adversaire’ (p. 30). By this S. means the range of evidence, arguments and rhetorical strategies that litigants can resort to in order to claim the veracity of their declarations (pp. 15, 34). Following Foucault, ‘vérité’ is not something that exists before or beyond the speeches, but something that can emerge from, and be constructed by, them (pp. 29–30). From this perspective, S. concludes that witnesses are the main tool that litigants employ to situate their arguments within ‘le domaine de la vérité’ (p. 87).
The book is divided into three parts. In the first part, ‘Les témoignages comme moyens de persuasion’, S. lays the foundations of his study. Linguistic and statistical analysis corroborates the importance of witness-based evidence. The second part, ‘Les fondements de la persuasion’, investigates the reasons behind the credibility of witness statements. In the third part, ‘La transparence des tribunaux’, S. explores the strategies that litigants can adopt to turn the jurors into viewers of the facts that witnesses are used to confirm. The introduction sets out the methodology of the book. For his purposes, S. adopts a cultural (p. 16) and synchronic (p. 28) approach to the texts, and so focuses on speakers’ recurrent statements as evidence for, and manifestations of, shared attitudes. The question, for S., is ultimately not whether the contents of a speech are accurate, but whether an audience can find them credible (p. 27).
In Chapter 1, ‘L’ère des témoins’, S. assesses witness-terminology within and beyond forensic oratory. S. is, of course, aware that litigants’ statements about witnesses should not be taken at face value. Speakers can endorse either witnesses or logical arguments as superior forms of proof. S. therefore chooses to combine this assessment of speakers’ declarations with other pieces of evidence they cite and specific strategies they pursue. In Chapter 2, ‘La fabrique de la preuve’, S. introduces a distinction between the ‘informative’ (also called ‘énonciative’, p. 90) and the ‘probante’ character of evidence. By adducing witness testimony, speakers confer probative value onto their written proof (such as wills, contracts and challenges). If documents report information that corroborates speakers’ arguments, S. explains, witness depositions certify that those documents are authentic. Another way to ensure the validity of written proof, one that complements the use of witnesses, is by mentioning their seals. In this way, S. argues, speakers show that the documents have not been altered a posteriori.
Chapter 3, ‘Le sacrement du témoignage’, explores witnesses’ accountability, which can be evoked both by reminding the jurors of the witnesses’ oaths (if they swear one) and by recalling the procedure for false testimony (δίκη ψευδομαρτυρίων). Appeals to the responsibility of witnesses demonstrate, for S., that jurors are well aware that witnesses can lie, but that they accept this possibility because they are also reminded that witnesses can be punished for this by either the gods or the laws. Chapter 4, ‘Le savoir du témoin oculaire’, develops the theme of witness reliability. In addition to their accountability, witnesses can be believed because they (are said to) have direct knowledge of the facts they corroborate. In this chapter S. takes issue with the controversial matter of eyewitnesses. While sight is undoubtedly an important source of knowledge, he demonstrates convincingly that speakers exploit the notion of presence much more than that of direct vision. The most stimulating argument of this chapter is, perhaps, S.'s identification of what he calls the ‘paradoxe du témoin oculaire’ (pp. 205–10). Witnesses, whose testimonies are designed to conceal the distance between events and the words that speakers use to describe them, are inevitably intermediaries between those events and the jurors who decide upon them. This paradox becomes all the more evident, we might add, when we consider that – from sometime after the 380s bc – witnesses did not actually speak their words, but merely confirmed or rejected depositions that litigants had probably drafted for them.
Chapters 5 and 6, in which S. illustrates various strategies that speakers can resort to in order to reframe this impasse, are in my opinion the book's most significant contribution. In Chapter 5, ‘L'appel au témoignage des juges’, S. shows that litigants often evoke jurors’ memories and direct knowledge of the evidence and facts they cite in court. These remarks on jurors’ knowledge, traditionally understood as a formula that speakers exploit in order to avoid the impression of being more knowledgeable than their audience (the ‘as you all know’ topos), are, in S.'s view, a way of eliminating the mediating role that witnesses play; the jurors themselves turn into witnesses. But this rhetorical concealment of witnesses does not elide the gap between facts and jurors completely. In Chapter 6, ‘L’ évidence des faits’, S. assesses a set of techniques that speakers use in an attempt to blur their own role in the transmission of information. S. aligns himself with recent studies on the role of ἐνάργεια and language of demonstration in Attic oratory (the latest is P.A. O’ Connell, The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory [2017]), and shows how speakers try to put forward the ‘evidence of the facts’. They also often equate the brevity of their exposition with its truthfulness, whilst condemning their adversaries’ digressions (e.g. Aeschin. 3.100–1). While S. draws out the rhetorical function of speakers’ promise of brevity (p. 280), this point could be made more forcibly by adding that sometimes litigants introduce accounts in this way even when they are, in fact, not so brief (e.g. Dem. 18.95, 21.77, 23.21). Finally, S. links the need for transparency to the speakers’ frequent remarks on their (alleged) inability to speak publicly and their inexperience. As with the appeals to the knowledge of the jurors, arguments of this kind, S. argues convincingly, should not be considered mere commonplaces (pp. 285–7).
The book is well presented, with many detailed tables and useful appendices. The quality of its colour pictures is also worthy of commendation. Typos include some slips in the accentuation of Greek words (e.g. grave for acute, pp. 158, 161; double accent due to absent enclitic, p. 60; μαρτύρες for μάρτυρες, p. 170; παραγενομένος for παραγενόμενος, pp. 190–3, 196); ‘storiographia’ for ‘storiografia’ (p. 178 n. 16); and one small organisational slip in the bibliography (‘Foxhall’ before ‘Foucault’). S.'s affirmation (p. 283) that Socrates’ εἰ μέλλω σοι ἕπεσθαι (Pl. Prt. 334d5–6) can be ‘rendue littéralement par “si je dois être persuadé par toi”’ is a little more problematic. This translation does not seem ‘literal’ to me but rather metaphorical (S. does, however, also provide a more accurate Budé translation).
These minor objections do not detract from the quality of the volume as a whole. By shifting the focus from the legal and social roles of witnesses to what we could call the ‘rhetoric of evidence’, S.'s monograph advances our understanding of Athenian judicial practices and their rhetorical exploitation.
