Title: Poisoners, Potions, and Priestesses: Ancient Athenian Legal Cases at the Intersection of Law, Medicine, and Magic (2007 Third Year Paper)
Author(s): Sarah S. Nelson
Subject & Subject keywords: Food and Drug Law "" "athenian trials"
Abstract:There was no formal food or drug regulation in Classical Athenian law, but several surviving legal speeches provide evidence that the use or misuse of certain dangerous drugs could constitute a prosecutable offence. In particular, speeches from cases involving poisoning, abortion, and impiety provide examples of indirect ways in which harmful drugs could be regulated by the legal system, and their use discouraged or punished. These cases also elucidate the generally minor and non-definitive evidentiary roles physicians played as witnesses in trials, including trials where injury, poisoning, or some other form of homicide was involved. Physicians appear in many speeches although there was no legal action for malpractice, and physicians were not considered 'expert' witnesses in the modern sense. Omission of physician testimony from speeches is often as interesting as its inclusion, as it speaks to the credibility of the trade as well as a physician’s individual reputation and their usefulness to a litigant. Women also play a prominent role in these cases, which is unusual in a legal system designed to be utilized by citizen males. Respectable women were generally excluded from the legal system, and in the rare instances they did appear required a man to speak for them. Charges against females for creation and use of potions and abortion-inducing drugs therefore reveal methods through which the Greek male could put the mysterious world of female 'magic' on trial.