Kinship

Chapter 20 focuses on kinship in Athenian social life and legal proceedings, especially as illustrated in the Demosthenic corpus. It explains why kinship was important to Athenians (civil and economic status), and how legal rules, combined with norms of age at marriage and gender roles, structured the bilateral kindred and shaped relations with kin and affines, both supportive and hostile. Because Demosthenes’ career began with his attack on Aphobus, and Apollodorus also attacked his brother’s guardian Phormion, guardianship receives special attention. The article ends with new questions about the process through which speeches on kinship issues came to be circulated, and about their readership.