From household gossip to public beatings, this social history explores the many channels through which Athenians maintained public order. Virginia Hunter draws mostly on Attic court proceedings, which allowed for a wide range of evidence, including common rumors about a defendant's character & ...
From household gossip to public beatings, this social history explores the many channels through which Athenians maintained public order. Virginia Hunter draws mostly on Attic court proceedings, which allowed for a wide range of evidence, including common rumors about a defendant's character & testimony, obtained under torture, of slaves against their masters. She describes Athenian "policing" as a form of social control that took place across a range of private & public levels. Not only does policing appear to have been a collective enterprise, but its methods were embedded in a variety of social institutions, resulting in the blurring of the line between state & society. Hunter's inquiry into topics such as household authority, disputes among kin, the presence of slaves in the house, gossip in the home & neighborhood, & forms of public punishment reveals a continuum extending from self-regulation among kin to punitive actions enforced by the state. Recognizing the bias of legal documents toward the wealthy, Hunter concentrates on exposing the voices of the less powerful & less privileged members of society, including women & slaves. In so doing she is among the first to address systematically such important issues as the authority of women, self-help, & corporal punishment.