Naomi T. Campa | Freedom and Power in Classical Athens

What are the relationships between will, intention, and responsibility? This paper explores these notions in Antiphon, the fifth-century Athenian logographer and sophist. His extant work includes both real and fictional courtroom speeches, all of which deal with homicide. Looking closely at Antiphon’s treatment of the lexemes ἑκουσία, ἐπι/βουλεύω, and compounds of νοέω in forensic oratory reveals his distinction between what we might call “agency” and “autonomy” for determining responsibility.

About the Speaker

Naomi T. Campa received her BA in Classics from New College of Florida and her MA and PhD in Classics from the University of Washington. She has published on freedom in Athens and the intersection of property ownership and Athenian female citizenship. Her forthcoming book, Freedom and Power in Classical Athens, develops a historically-situated understanding of freedom in order to illuminate the effects of democratic values on the polis and the individual within it. Dr. Campa is currently working on articles regarding the vocabulary of volition in epigraphy and the question of sovereignty in Athens. Her next book will treat metics (foreign residents) and migration.