Litigation and Cooperation: Supporting Speakers in the Courts of Classical Athens by Lene Rubinstein (review)

Abstract

According to Lene Rubinstein "the synegoros has occupied a marginal position in modern scholarship on Athenian law and litigation" (14). This has now changed: through a detailed and carefully argued study of the role of supporting speakers in Athenian litigation she has successfully shown that synegorial activity was a widespread practice largely ignored by more recent scholars. Now in any reconstruction of Athenian litigation "the synegoros must be moved from the margin to the centre of Athenian legal proceedings" (233). In the first chapter Rubinstein argues that modern scholars have failed to understand the role of synegoroi. They have either regarded the synegoros as a kind of "super-witness" who shows his solidarity with the main litigant. or at the other extreme as a "vicarious voice" of the main litigant (17). What modern discussions have failed to consider is "the possibility that the rhetorical performance in court could be genuinely shared between several individuals" and that litigation was in fact a team effort where the synegoros did not see himself exclusively as a mouthpiece of the main litigant or was merely there in court to display his willingness to back the main litigant (17). As she notes, "the existence of truly joint litigation at Athens may force us to reconsider what we actually mean when stating that 'an Athenian litigant was expected to plead his own case"· (18). And here Rubinstein takes issue with the current reconstruction (advocated by Cohen, Todd, Christ, among others) that sees legal agones as trials of strength between elite individuals competing for honour and prestige. Part of the problem with this simple agonistic modeL as Rubinstein sees it, is that it downplays the real differences between public and private suits. Both types merely become intensely fought "personal agones between individual members of the elite" (19), the only difference being that a public action represents a more advanced stage in the escalating feud between two litigants. Under such a reconstruction of Athenian politics and litigation