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Witnessing in Athenian courts was one of the issues to which a comparative anthropological approach was applied relatively early. The differences between the modern Western judicial systems and ancient or non-European societies have provoked detailed analysis, for example regarding the kinds of people a litigant would summon to give testimony or the purpose and function of witnesses in the courts. 2 Witnesses have been shown to be primarily supporters of one litigant and therefore partisan. Establishment of the facts is thus not the only, perhaps not even the main, purpose they serve. In addition, their personal authority or authority of office was supposed to support the speaker's credibility. Friends, moreover, acted as witnesses to demonstrate the social status of the litigant. However, despite progress in this branch of scholarship, complete clarification regarding the details of the procedure does not seem to have been achieved. The present paper deals with the , the oath of ignorance, by which unwilling witnesses were able to refuse to give evidence. It has been assumed that witnesses could not only state their ignorance of the matter at issue, but could thereby also indicate that the litigant's pre-formulated testimony was untrue. In contrast to this view, I aim to show that in the it was not only impossible to indicate that the statement in the deposition was incorrect, but also that we should refrain from assuming that the oath implied such a contention. Secondly, I will attempt to show that we have no reason to think that the could be taken on a part of the testimony only. The views I am opposing derive, in my opinion, from an inadequate understanding of the role of witnesses: that they serve only to help find the truth. Instead, depositions should be regarded as nothing more than a means in the process of persuasion, an element in the speaker's legitimate aim to present his side of the case without interruption. I thus return to a view that has been rejected because it seemed awkward and alien to our concept of witnessing. However, I aim to show that it can be reconciled with modern studies and matches their results better.
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