Character portrayal, good and bad, in the speeches of Isaeus

ABSTRACT This chapter surveys the characterization of a range of figures in the eleven inheritance speeches of Isaeus. As well as characterizing the speaker, and the opponent and his associates, Isaeus regularly portrays other members of his client’s extended family in a poor light. This is set against the background of a general feeling in classical Athens that family members should not go to law against each other, but the standard inheritance cases (diadikasiai) by definition pitted kin against kin, although technically in a non-adversarial setting. Five of the speeches, moreover, were not delivered in a diadikasia, but in other forms of related process, which afforded Isaeus plenty of scope to attack the behaviour of his client’s opponents, whether family members or non-relatives.