Kinky Stories from the Rostrum: Storytelling in Apollodorus' Against Neaira‪.‬

I. Forensic storytelling Modern citizens of Western societies are entangled in a paradox: while their rationalisations concerning the dispensation of justice lead them to assume that courts investigate the truth exclusively on the basis of solid evidence, at the same time they realise, or TV programmes suggest to them, that far from restricting themselves to evidentiary material concerning 'factual' reality, lawyers make abundant use of storytelling, which, in some cases, is designed to construct verisimilar approximations of truth. (1) Although there are many differences between the ancient and modern trials, both are agonistic environments in which opposing sides present jurors with competing stories about the same allegation. These stories are shaped by relevant laws, yet they usually offer diametrically opposed interpretations of the same incident. This happens because courtroom narratives, unlike other forms of stories, unavoidably orbit around either a guilty or a non-guilty verdict.