I read this for a bit of local colour. I certainly got that. In the first piece a young man is taking his stepmother to court for the murder of his father. The young man relates how the slave who unwittingly delivered the poison has already been tortured and killed. He explains how he has tried to convince his stepmother to allow him to torture more of her slaves. The main plank of his case against her is that she will not agree to the torture. If I said that in open court today they'd lock me away!

There's lot's here that is of interest historically and culturally. Things like Against Alcibiades are of interest if you've read Thucidides and a bit of Plato. But I did think some of it might be a bit boring. Let's be honest, it does look like the most boring book ever published. One of the pieces I had down for being boring were the Tetralogies. I could not have been more wrong.

Apparently, the Greeks considered murder as a crime not so much against a person/family as an act of impiety, a crime against God. Not only that, but that sin was a thing that could be passed from one person to another or even to a community. So the death penalty was the spilling of blood to cancel out the bad blood of the crime.

By coincidence I have just read Leviticus where there is a similar idea. Check out chapter four where the priest, having sinned, slaughters a bullock to make up for it, having placed his hand on its head, thus transferring the sin to the animal. Also at 16:20-22 where the same is done for the group sins of the community though a scapegoat. If a sacrifice wasn't made the sin could transfer from the individual to the community.

Rather than sacrifice an animal the Greeks sacrificed the sinner. In place of the touching the Greeks had a trial to transfer the sin. The trail was held in the open air so the sin couldn't transfer accidentally to the jury.

Frankly, I find the idea of the transference of sin quite bizarre and I was just congratulating myself on living in a society that doesn't practice it when I realised that of course we do. In the UK when parent/s kill their child, after the trial, sometimes a social worker will be publicly named. She (usually a she) will be condemned in the press and then fired or forced to resign. The abuse in the press is our equivalent of the trial/touching.

By happy chance the ritual was played out while I was reading the Tetralogies. For those of you not in the UK or Haiti, Oxfam is a charity that delivers overseas aid for the government. A few years ago they were contracted to do so in Haiti. Several members of staff were sacked for hiring Haitian prostitutes. Oxfam announced this in the press at the time but the nature of the transgression was not completely clear. When it became public knowledge there was an outcry against Oxfam, despite them having done everything correctly. The sins of the individuals had been transferred to the organisation. They were also criticised for not having made a full confession, which I thought was a particularly Christian idea grafted on. One of their directors (a she) accepted the blame and resigned. But the ritual had not been followed. She had not been publicly named in the press and the sacrifice wasn't accepted. The CEO then made a statement about atonement and one of her other directors made comments designed to draw press attention to him. He must have intended to be the victim, but at this point the government stepped in.

No doubt the texts in this book have survived because they have resonated similarly with readers down the centuries. ( )

I appreciate this book, but then I'm an Ancient Greek Freak. We think our speakers are the epitome of the oratorical art. Ha! These orators put ours to shame. And they aren't the best of the Ancients!
If you don't like Ancient Greece, don't bother.
If you want to improve your speaking or writing ability, by all means read this book. ( )