Deciding

This chapter examines legal decision making in ancient Greece. It considers how the active, judging role of the audience in Athenian courts and assemblies has been obscured by the reduction of rhetoric to persuasion and describes how elite and ordinary Athenians negotiated their class interests through ideology in rhetorical contexts. This chapter argues that a generalized trust in the system preceded and established trust in specific speakers and explains that rhetoric constituted relationships among citizens that were abstract, impersonal, and powerful.

Aesthetics · Art · Class (philosophy) · Elite · Epistemology · Ideology · Linguistics · Literature · Persuasion · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Rhetorical device · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology