The use of the religious argument in the political and private trials in Athens in the fourth century B.C.

Abstract

In the political assemblies and before the popular law courts, the litigants use some oratory strategies for their defence. These oratory strategies encompass the use of the legal and extra legal arguments in which one finds the religious arguments or in relation with the sacred. One notices in one hand the religious transgressions committed by their opponents or by their entourage or other people, and the arguments against a decree’s proposal. In the other hand, the religious’ facts or the objects in relation with the sacred which concerned the orators themselves. In using the religious arguments against their opponents, the litigants targeted a heavy condemnation or the cancellation of a decree’s proposal. Nevertheless the religious ‘arguments which concerned the litigious themselves tended to prove their citizen status.