Judging the Body: Disability, Class and Citizen Identity—A Case Study from an Ancient Greek Lawcourt

This paper aims to showcase how one person\u27s disabled identity—that of the unnamed defendant of the legal speech Lysias 24, who was accused of faking his disability to obtain social security payments—interacted with wider conceptions of citizen identity and citizenship in 5th century BCE Athens. This paper brings a much-needed intersectional approach to the speech: by viewing the speaker\u27s disabled identity as shaped by his economical status (and vice-versa), this in turn shapes the way we can interpret his experience of citizen identity, as well as his sense of belonging to a citizen body. Recent approaches in critical theory have laid bare the ways in which class and disability can shape a person\u27s identity and relationship to citizen status. In viewing an ancient text through an intersectional lens, I aim to emphasise the complexities of ancient lived experiences of disability, in turn highlighting and questioning lines of thought that are still prevalent today