P. 122-133 [John O'Neill, Ben Reilly, Ben Johnson, Brooks, Crowley, Jonah Safris]

Geoff Jones, Frank Tate, Nick Cuppins

        Punishments in Classical Athens

                             Executions

                             Exile

                            Refusing a Burial

                            Amnesty

                            Executions

                          Different types of Executions

                             -A type of crucifixion was employed in very early Athens, pre 5th century.

                                                      -Hemlock was used in the later democracy

                                                                                                                        The one problem with these dates is that
                                                                                                                        they appear to be somewhat arbitrary.
                                                                                                                        So at best these dates can be considered
                                                                                                                        scholarly estimations.

                                        General Feelings towards executions by the Demos:

                                                                                -The citizens of Athens were not overly concerned with the
                                                                                morality of executions (only the philosophers were) so
                                                                                long as they were bloodless (apparently excessive violence
                                                                                toward a citizen was frowned upon even while
                                                                                administering a death sentence).

                                                                                -Also the topic of execution and the people involved in it
                                                                                were considered taboo and at the very least in poor taste
                                                                                by the people of society.

                                  People executed

                                                                                -Varied greatly in general crimes against the state were
                                                                                judged far more harshly than personal crimes. Murderers
                                                                                might not get executed.

               Amnesty

                                    Origin

                                                                                -Generally believed to have started after the expulsion of
                                                                                the thirty tyrants. But supposedly that legislation was
                                                                                modeled after an amnesty passed at the conclusion of the
                                                                                wars versus Persia.

                                                                                -It was used after the reinstatement of democracy in 403/2
                                                                                BCE to protect and reintegrate the supporters of the
                                                                                oligarchs. The Athenians wanted to recapture the sense of
                                                                                community and "wholeness" that the oligarch had
                                                                                destroyed. Allen claims that it was not applicable to the
                                                                                actual tyrants themselves but as some of the tyrants who
                                                                                were sued for their actions while in power were let off due
                                                                                to the amnesty this is contestable.

                                             Other cases

                                                           Murders:

                                                                                                                        In murders amnesty was more like a court
                                                                                                                        sanctioned formalized form of forgetting
                                                                                                                        that the crime had ever really
                                                                                                                        happened. (First the defendant had to
                                                                                                                        prove that he had been "unclean" and he
                                                                                                                        had to be cleansed and forgiven by the
                                                                                                                        prosecutor.)

                                           General Info:

                                                                                General Amnesties, such as the one passed after the
                                                                                Persian Wars were effectively popularly and legally
                                                                                legitimized methods of censorship. In essence the
                                                                                Athenians codified human nature by legalizing the
                                                                                forgetting of bad events.

I.  Male roles in Public persecution

a. Valurization of anger- transition of vendetta to rule of law,
revenge to punishment
b. Must act in accordance of roles of anger or else there is a
socially destructive society
c. male citizen was the legitimate punisher- he was supposed to
pursue honor and participate in angry defense

II. Female Roles

a. Anger in a woman was considered irrational and poisonous to
democracy
b. Womens desire to punish negates her familial oras, marriage
bonds and relationship of family
c. Tragedies are a metaphor of females being poisonous to
democracy through poison
d. Must submit to the city's ethics of anger; maintain integrity
of family, should not act upon anger

III. Public and private spheres

a. Stabalixe the rules, established for interaction between
genders, and the nature and social role of each gender
b. Public- reserved for males, places where anger, honor, and
competition governed behavior
c. private- Reserved for women, place where anger is nonexistent,
doesn't have to be a geographical location

IV. Form of punishment

a. Social memory and knowledge- through rumors and reputation
people were hurt
b. Officials in the demos- maintained communal spaces
c. Collective citizenry- Vote a that some specific citizen
prosecute a known wrongdoer

I. Negotiation of desert.

 A. Pity and anger
    1. Speaker centers his oration around facts that will stimulate
feelings of pity and anger in the jury.

    2. This is in contrast to the modern style of oration which is based
on a persons “rights”  (the Greeks didn’t really have a word for
“Right”)

B. There are three strands of argument to construct a formulation of
desert.
    1. Orator had to prove that he deserved to prosecute by showing
understanding for nomos according to which his private anger could be
used.
        a. The speaker needed to display some sort of personal grievance
with the defendant even if it was irrelevant to the case (i.e. Against
Androtion)

    2. Orator had to display a judicious use of nomos
        a. The orator doesn’t want to appear as a sycophant and wants to
show that he is acting with “Hot Blood” and not rousing up old charges
just because he feels like it.
 

    3. Orator had to show that he had used public institutions and was
trying to rouse public anger.
        a. The city drives to put constraints on desire therefore it was
a  requirement of the prosecutors to show that they had an honest
interest in quelling there anger. They were not acting for some more
savage motive. (i.e. not a sycophant)
 
 

Def. Second Norm- "public agency" required orators to cast their arguments about anger in
terms of the city’s authoritative definitions of desert and justice.
 
 

I.  Anger being a basis of Judgment for the second norm.
 

A.     Social Memory of the second norm.
 

1.      Litigants’ ability to refer to past court-cases which affect his chance of victory

2.      Thorubus: rumors, gossip, evidence and collective emotions

3.      The Power of Memory—also triggers/arouses jury’s anger
 

i.      Athenian idea of rationalism to invoke anger by
using fact and ethics, i.e., Lysias’ speech (during the 30 Tyrants) whereby he used
emotion to incorporate facts

4.      "Does the defendant deserve to feel our anger?"

i.      Anger as a good or commodity/can be stored

5.      Orators developed criteria for establishing equivalencies between wrongdoing
and levels of anger—Judging Paradigm of past examples

i.      Punishment depending on level of anger
ii.      Gradation and consistency

 

 
B.     Nomos—Athenian Law
 

1.      Technical proofs (rhetoric of speaker) or artificial testimony of witnesses, laws,
and oaths

2.      Law as a form of proof
 

i.      The reasonableness of the law (good vs. bad
opinions)

ii.      Orators were willing to argue—prosecution was
valid even if no specific law criminalized the act of prosecution

3.      Laws were subordinate to courts, jurors can vote contrary to laws

i.      Pleas of pity were legal

ii.      Jurors heavily learned the laws or Nomos

iii.      Social memory/laws were written by the people

I.  The Rule of Judgment versus the Rule of Law

A.  Laws define the structure of cities/society.
B.  Laws are the tools of judgment and punishment
C.  In Athenian society, although judgment is valued over law, the rule of law is still valued for self understanding
D.  4 speeches used to illustrate (pg. 180)

1.  All speeches state that laws and constitution provide the structure and guidelines for democratic cities
2.  Debate over ownership of laws - who is the master: the people or the laws themselves?
3.  "The laws were powerful only to extent that judgment of jurors were powerful" (Allen 183).

II.  Rule of Law - Plato and Aristotle

A.  Both Plato and Aristotle rejected the Athenian approach to law

1.  They supported the rule of law over rule of judgment
2.  Ideal: perfect, unchanging laws.  This would not require judgment because no room in the laws (perfectly constructed)
3.  Enforce rather than interpret laws
4.  Reliance on facts

B.  Recognized laws may need change

1.  Changes should be based on natural law, not community opinion

C.  Unsuccessful vs. Successful Political Regimes

1.  Successful ones ruled by the law

D.  Allen’s point:  rule of judgment still possible with laws.

1.  Athens had laws, they just did not guard them
2.  Can rule using the laws to validate judgment

Ideas of laws and punishment

Public vs. Private suits:

Private suits-
-individual looking for personal reperations
-the individual had to be personally wronged to prosecute
-was not generally required to be part of social memory
Public suits-
-prosecuter called on social memory and was a part of reshaping it
-were used to benefit city rather than specific individuals

Punishment- as used in enforcement of public laws

Two categories of punishment

"Disruption of peace time" - restore peace and reintigrate person who wronged
"All our struggle of war" - sought to make a new peace and expell the cause

Ways of punishing:

Non-capital offenses: fines, confiscations of property
Capital offenses: atimia, hemlock, stoning, impaling
Punishment sought to "cure" disease of disorder
Apostumanismos - cross like board that could kill someone through strangling or
serve as a public humiliation.  Neck piece that could likely be tightened so as
to suffocate of just hold helpless
Enforcement-
magistrates had some power to enforce punishments but private citizens carried
burden of enforcing punishments

The Athenians used punishment to create memory of social knowledge
conforming to desired norms of polis

Social memory created by both processes of remembering and forgetting

-Athenians remembered wrongdoing through public description, the presence
of those punished, and memories of places of punishment
-When choosing to forget wrongdoing, Athenians used atimia and exile.
Atimia removed the wrongdoer from social and political life, creating an
invisible man.
-Exile removed a person from polis physically, which was had clearly
defined borders.  This was the ultimate form of forgetting removing the
person from existence, or using scapegoats to remove wrongdoing of unknown
persons.

Punishment had symbolic and religious significance for social memory

-In myth, three forms of punishment exist.  Consumption, containment, and
exile.  Consumption and containment used power of polis to recreate
conformity.
-Gender roles were often exerted as added leverage.
-Exile used when force would not bring about conformity.  In such cases,
the reminder of unresolved wrongdoing must be resolved.
-Religiously, punishment cleansed society of wrongdoing.  It did this by
removing oxuthumia or anger.  At the moment of punishment, society was
cleansed and met social expectations.

Overall effect of punishment enforced conformity or removed social
deviants, creating the desired social norms of the polis.
 
 
 

Outline:

*The body and Silence*
 

-Execution
 

Peace Time-> no blood,
War Time -> bloody executions
military executions bring vocab. of sacrifice
no executions on feast days
Peace time executions were supposed to be bloodless so apotampanismos and
hemlock
Citizenship coincided with punishment
Toture was was related to some offenses ( radish and fish treatment)
Most times, citizens faced fines, slaves faced bodily abuse
After punishment (on the body) the citizen maintained silence
the greatest silence wasa the refusal of burial
You could dishonor your enemies by ataphia (throwing away the body
unburied)
   three methods of body disposal 1)ataphia, exposure of the corpse to the
elements, 2) burial in non-memorialized place and 3) burial in a
memorialized place. there were two types of chasms (pits) for disposal of
corpses: man-made and natural.  Corpses had to be thrown outside the city
walls.  Forced silence was a way of reintegrating offenders into the
peaceful harmony of the polis.

-Punishment of Reintegration
 

Fines were symbolic, they affected one's honor.  They also reinforced
reciprocity (through blood money for murder). Physical punishment was
reserved for cases where financial punishments didn't suffice.  The
wealthy usually avoided prison by paying fines.  There was a sharp
distinction between imprisonment for not paying fines and for punishment.
penal imprisonment  was not used frequently.  The use of prisons during
the oligarchy made prion a tool.  Ataphia was also used to seperate
citizens from slaves and men from women, In the face of punishment men
were expected to acquiesce (like women) and admit a loss of honor.
Monetary fines did not demand  silence, and when silence was ultimately
achieved, the punishment was complete.

Punishments in Classical Athens

 
Executions
Exile
Refusing a Burial
Amnesty

Executions
 

Different types of Executions
 

A type of crucifixion was employed in very early Athens, pre 5th century.
-Hemlock was used in the later democracy
The one problem with these dates is that they appear to be somewhat arbitrary. So at best these dates can be considered scholarly estimations.

General Feelings towards executions by the Demos:
 

-The citizens of Athens were not overly concerned with the morality of executions (only the philosophers were) so long as they were bloodless (apparently excessive violence toward a citizen was frowned upon even while administering a death sentence).

-Also the topic of execution and the people involved in it were considered taboo and at the very least in poor taste by the people of society.

People executed
 

-Varied greatly in general crimes against the state were judged far more harshly than personal crimes. Murderers might not get executed.

Amnesty
 

Origin
 

-Generally believed to have started after the expulsion of the thirty tyrants. But supposedly that legislation was modeled after an amnesty passed at the conclusion of the wars versus Persia.

 -It was used after the reinstatement of democracy in 403/2 BCE to protect and reintegrate the supporters of the oligarchs. The Athenians wanted to recapture the sense of community and "wholeness" that the oligarch had destroyed. Allen claims that it was not applicable to the actual tyrants themselves but as some of the tyrants who were sued for their actions while in power were let off due to the amnesty this is contestable.

Other cases

 
Murders:
 

In murders amnesty was more like a court sanctioned formalized form of forgetting that the crime had ever really happened. (First the defendant had to prove that he had been "unclean" and he had to be cleansed and forgiven by the prosecutor.)

General Info:

 
General Amnesties, such as the one passed after the Persian Wars were effectively popularly and legally legitimized methods of censorship. In essence the Athenians codified human nature by legalizing the forgetting of bad events.