THE ORGANIZATION OF EVIDENCE IN ATHENIAN COURTS: CONTAINERS, SEALS AND THE MANAGEMENT OF DOCUMENTS

Abstract This article reconstructs the system of storage, organization and presentation of written evidence in Athenian courts of the Classical period, with wider implications for the discussion about oral and written culture in Classical Greece and legal professionalism in Athenian democracy. It explores court speakers’ references to an assumed order of documents, their storage in containers called echinoi, and verbal presentation by the court secretary. It is the first systematic analysis of all remarks on storing, organizing and reading documents in the corpus of Athenian oratory, supplemented by other literary and epigraphic sources. Based on the surviving evidence, this article argues for the existence of a developed legal culture that made attempts to facilitate the handling of documents in courtrooms through practical organizational measures, including the speakers’ interactions with court aids, notably the grammateis and hypogrammateis .