Lene Rubinstein

Adoption in IV. Century Athens

The aim of the investigation is to throw light on the adoption institution. Much attention has been devoted to the contractual nature of the adoption which was carried out inter vivos as opposed to the unilateral nature of a testamentary adoption. In the present work it is argued that the main difference between the different types of adoption was one of procedure: adoption took place in public, in the adopters phratry and deme, no matter whether prior to the death of the adopter or posthumously. It is also argued that it was the formal recognition of the adoptee by the adopters phtatry and deme which constituted the adoption itself and its validity, legal as well as social. Further, the tomb cult, aspects of Athenian family-life and the Athenian legislation, which regulated it, are treated to the extent to which they have a direct influence on the Athenian institution of adoption.

Immigration and Refugee Crises in Fourth-Century Greece: An Athenian Perspective

Abstract The fourth-century B.C. was a period during which a large number of Greek cities were affected by civil wars, military conquests, and destruction, with the displacement of large numbers of men, women and children as a result. This has implications for the modern debate on Athenian attitudes to immigration, which normally focuses on just two groups of free non-citizens: adult, able-bodied men who moved to Athens voluntarily to take advantage of the city’s economic opportunities and (more recently) on the free non-citizen population who had come to Athens as slaves and who stayed on after their manumission. This article argues that refugees were likely to have constituted a considerable component of the migration to Athens during certain troubled periods in the course of the fourth century. This means that the size of Athens’s immigrant population was likely to have fluctuated considerably, that many of the refugees would have been destitute, that women and children (sometimes unaccompanied by adult male relatives) may have made up an even greater proportion of the non-citizen population than normally assumed, and, thus, that a considerable number of these immigrants would not have been able to contribute substantially to Athens’s grain trade or military. The implications of this for our assessment of the Athenian motives for admitting groups of refugees are discussed, and it is argued that the requirement that all male and all unaccompanied female immigrants had to find an Athenian sponsor and pay a special metic tax may have constituted a certain level of control over immigrant numbers.

Profession and performance: aspects of oratory in the Greco-Roman world

This volume brings together six papers relating to oratory and orators in public fora of Classical Greece and Rome. Edwards and Bers explore aspects of oratorical delivery in the Athenian courts and Assembly, including the demands placed on orators by the physical settings. Tempest examines the conceptions of oratorical competence and incompetence, particularly in respect of performance, as they are implied in Cicero’s criticisms of the rival prosecutor in the trial of Verres. Papers by Karambelas and Powell look at evidence for the importance of advocacy in the Second Sophistic and the late Roman Empire respectively. In an introduction, the editors discuss recurrent themes connected with the orator’s competence and performance, while the final paper of the volume, by Lord Justice Laws, reflects on the continuing relevance of rhetoric in the modern, highly professionalised practice of the law in England.