Treatments of the organization of bastardy in classical Athens
tend, reasonably enough, to be written from a legal or legalistic
perspective. Such an approach tends to obscure the important fact
that the recognition of an Athenian's legitimacy was in practice not
a simple, unitary event that occurred at a defined and definitive
legal moment, but a process that began before birth and continued
up to and even beyond the age of majority. ¹ In this section we will
review in order the key stages in this process of recognition (the
Greek term is poiēsis), ² presentation, and legitimation in a (would-
be) citizen's life that led to full phratry and deme membership. ³
Demosthenes gives a fairly full list of the agencies in which legiti-
macy was tested: ' Euxitheus was manifestly scrutinized among all
the people that each of you [the jurymen] are . . . his phratrymen,
relatives, demesmen, and genos-members (gennētai).' ⁴ Isaeus joins
to such formal indicators of legitimacy a list of more informal ones,
drawn from the daily behaviour of fathers and sons:

They are not legitimate simply because he utters the name of a mother,
but only if he demonstrates that he is speaking the truth by producing
relatives that know that she was married to (synoikousan) Euctemon, and
demesmen and phratrymen, in the hope that they have heard in the past
or know that Euctemon performed liturgies on her behalf, and also where
she is buried and in what kind of tomb, and who has seen Euctemon
performing the customary funeral rites. And they must tell where her sons
still go to make sacrifices and libations, and which of the citizens or slaves
of Euctemon has seen these things. ( Isaeus 6. 64-5)

-83-