This article explores the role and modes of operation of metaphorical framing in ancient Greek and modern European and American political discourse. It looks at how concepts such as citizenship, ownership, family, morality, finance, sport, war, domination, human life, and animals are used to reframe political issues in ways promoted by the speaker, and how they may continue to be reshaped in the ongoing political discourse. The analysis of examples of ancient Athenian public rhetoric and of modern European and American (...) political debates reveals the differences and some striking similarities in the ways political and civic values were expressed and reframed in antiquity and how they are used today. This essay also discusses the potential effects of such framing in antiquity and in more recent times. (shrink)

This article discusses Lysias’ Against Eratosthenes as an ancient Athenian instance of the superior orders plea, a line of defence made notorious during the Nuremberg trials, which in turn became the cornerstone of modern war crime legislation. Whereas the pre-Nuremberg jurisdiction largely embraced the principle of superior responsibility, whereby a subordinate executing criminal orders was not to be held liable for them, the trials of the Nazi war criminals brought about a complete reversal of this doctrine. While remaining faithful to (...) the spirit of the Nuremberg jurisdiction, the subsequent legislative acts sought to further elaborate its underlying principle of absolute liability, in order to precisely determine the question of guilt and innocence. I argue that despite the close relationship between modern legal systems and Roman law, which fully embraced the doctrine of superior responsibility, it is in the juridical thought of ancient Athens that one finds the archetype of contemporary war crime legislation. (shrink)

Taking its cue from modern debates on the expressive function of punishment, this paper discusses the stigmatizing effect of penalties in classical Athens. It focuses on corporal punishment, which was discursively associated in the Athenian public discourse with slaves and other fringe groups of the citizen community, despite the fact that in reality, with only certain restrictions, it was meted out to all social tiers making up the polis-community. Unlike other penalties, those affecting the body were not only public, but (...) not infrequently spectacular. This turned them into versatile devices of stigmatization whereby the punishment itself was no longer considered a one-off event, but a permanent mark branding the person who suffered it as a social outcast. (shrink)