ABSTRACT
Introduction An Athenian court case from the late 5th century bce illustrates several points about the concept of people with physical disabilities in ancient Greek society. Lysias 24, On the Refusal of a Pension to the Invalid, as it is conventionally titled, highlights the differences between ‘disability’ in ancient society and modern, developed society. In order to summarize my findings on physical disability in Greece, I argued in The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece that one must be aware of the dangers of misinterpreting the critical Greek term, ‘unable’ (adunatos) (Rose 2003). Here, I revisit my thoughts on the vocabulary of ability and disability in Lysias’ defence speech, this time with a deeper consideration of Lysias’ other speeches and those of his contemporaries, specifically orators of 5th-and 4th-century Athens. In order to provide a summary of Lysias 24 and of the conclusions I reached in Staff of Oedipus, I have recapitulated the book’s concluding chapter here. I am very glad to have the opportunity to expand the investigation beyond physical disability in an attempt to gather clues about intellectual disability, elusive though it might be (cf. Kellenberger in this volume).1
