Mirko Canevaro

My work concerns with the documents inserted into the texts of the Attic orators. These documents appear to contain much valuable information about Athenian law and legal procedure, but their authenticity has been questioned, and many are recognized to be forgeries. Although several of these documents have recently received analysis (for instance by H. Wankel (1976) for De Corona and D.M. MacDowell (1990) for Against Meidias), they have not been studied as a whole since the end of the 19th century. The most extensive studies are those of Westermann (1850) and Drerup (1898), but these works are outdated because many new inscriptions have been discovered in the past century. A fresh study of all the documents is urgently needed with careful attention paid to their language and legal terminology to determine if they are reliable sources. If any of the documents can be conclusively proved to be authentic, they can serve as reliable sources for Athenian law. On the other hand, if documents containing information which clashes with contemporary sources can be shown to be forgeries, this will enable us to resolve several scholarly controversies.
The first part of the study will present a thorough analysis of the documents. For each there will be a Greek text with apparatus criticus, English translation, and commentary on linguistic and legal issues.
A second part will examine the textual history of the Attic Orators to try to locate the period and intellectual milieu in which the forged documents were most likely composed. This will involve a study of the ancient scholarship on Athenian Oratory (for instance, Didymus, Harpocration, Pollux, scholia) and the sources of knowledge about Athenian law and legal procedure available in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The results of this part will add another chapter in the history of ancient forgeries.