ABSTRACT

The prosecutorial identity assumed by Lycurgus in his Against Leocrates is an idealized model of the prosecutor as a public-spirited individual, motivated solely by the interest of the polis. This resembles the modern idea of the criminal prosecutor as a disinterested public servant, but differs sharply from the identities assumed by ‘volunteer prosecutors’ (or attributed to them by their opponents) in the majority of extant speeches from Athenian public lawsuits. Among the positive identities constructed by prosecutors for themselves are the ‘concerned citizen’, the ‘quiet enemy’, and the ‘benefactor’, while negative prosecutorial identities deployed by defendants include the ‘sykophant’, the ‘criminal double’, and ‘the degenerate and the buffoon’. How (if at all) these identities were relevant to the issues on trial has proved a vexed question for modern scholars, but the problem may be resolved by recognizing that the rhetorical identity of a prosecutor served a different purpose: to establish (or undermine) his credibility and integrity in a system that left him vulnerable to attack.