The relevance of liturgies in the courts of classical Athens

What was the function of classical Athenian courts? Did they intend to enforce the rule of law? The greatest obstacle to accepting an affirmative answer is the wide use of, at first sight and from a modern (sometimes anachronistic) perspective, remotely relevant argumentation by litigants. In this paper, by reference to Greek ideas of personality, I analyse and demonstrate the legal relevance of extra-legal argumentation in classical Athenian courts, using as a case study the widely criticised invocation of liturgies (public services) by litigants. In particular, by applying a model of human action and ethical motivation which is more appropriate to the Greeks (rather that the unsuitable for the ancient context Cartesian / Kantian), a better understanding of forensic rhetoric and argumentation is achieved. Therefore, in accordance with Greek psychology, the admittedly liberal approach to legal relevance of the Athenian courts was a calculated step towards the attainment of legal justice and the rule of law as the Athenians perceived it

Solon the lawgiver: inequality of resources and equality before the law

The focus of this paper is on Solon's attitude towards wealth as can be extracted by his legislation and poems. The argument is that part of the rationale of Solon's legislation aimed at the regulation and check of the influence of wealth in the Athenian administration of justice and the emerging legal system of the polis. In this era of spreading monetisation, there was a conscious effort on the part of the Athenian lawgiver to place limits on the use of wealth and to make economic resources a positive feature, at the service of law and community, rather than the opposite. In the Solonian reforms we find traces of subsequent dominant characteristics of the Athenian legal system (such as amateurism and egalitarianism) which might offer new insights on the modern manifestations of inequality before the law

The theory and practice of torture in ancient Athenian courts

There has been much debate in scholarship over the actual existence of torture (basanos) of innocent slaves for evidentiary purposes in the courts of classical Athens in the age of the orators. In the absence of direct evidence in the forensic speeches, scholars have pointed to a putative inconsistency between theory and practice regarding this institution. On the one hand, belief in the reliability of torture is evident in the works of the Attic orators, as well as challenges to evidentiary torture. Furthermore, rhetorical theory (in Aristotle's Rhetoric and Anaximenes' Rhetorica ad Alexandrum) supposedly provides guidance to orators as if recourse to basanos was a real possibility and classifies torture under the category of artless or supplementary proofs. On the other hand, not even one of such challenges has evidently been accepted and actually carried out and the sources are silent as to the actuality of evidentiary torture. This study closely examines the evidence of the primary sources and seeks to provide a solution to the aforementioned putative inconsistency. It demonstrates that it is far from certain that Aristotle and Anaximenes referred to the particular type of evidentiary basanos, since closer analysis shows that the shape of this institution is complex and much nuanced. Moreover, the presence in the courts of testimonies elicited by other than evidentiary types of torture, points to the root of the Athenian belief in the reliability of torture. Consequently, it is plausible to suggest that by the time of the Attic orators, evidentiary basanos had become obsolete and its remnant was primarily of rhetorical value

Populism and the rule of recognition: challenging the foundations of democratic legal systems

By reference to the impact of populism on the foundational rules of democratic legal systems, the paper explores the interconnectedness of two “essentially contested concepts”,1 democracy2 and populism,3 and their relationship with another ambiguous concept, the rule of law. 4 The main argument is that populism aims to amend the democratic rule of recognition, the most important ‘rule about rules’ upon which a legal system is founded. This has not been rigorously studied so far, despite its significance for a holistic conceptualisation of populism and for the analysis of its relationship with democracy. For, the rule of recognition provides a relatively stable point of reference for measuring the effect of populism on democracy

Populist rhetorical strategies in the courts of classical Athens

The elusive populist phenomenon has been the focus of numerous studies in recent years, with the reliance of populism on divisive and aggressive rhetoric being acknowledged. The paper aims to apply these findings to the Athenian forensic rhetoric and identify manifestations of populist rhetoric in the antagonistic arena of Athenian courts. By reference to the most 'political' of public trials, namely the indictments against inexpedient laws and illegal decrees, it is argued that the rhetorical strategies employed by the Athenian litigants who sought to persuade mass audiences in a zero-sum process, have much in common with modern populist discourse. Aiming to secure the good will of the dicasts, speakers competed over their level of adherence to the shared traditional values and norms of Athenian society, making the audience the nodal point of their rhetoric. Artfully interpellating the audience into a fictitiously pure and homogeneous group, litigants sought to establish concord with the dicasts while alienating the opponent. The division between the pure demos and the corrupt establishment, allowed the speakers to use a divisive and aggressive rhetoric, through which the adversary was presented as an outsider, representative of the out-group of corrupt political elite who undermined the political and moral principles upon which the Athenian identity was based

Manifestations of populism in late 5th century Athens

In this chapter, by reference to modern research on populism, the manifestations of this phenomenon in fifth century Athens are analysed, while pointing to some legal responses to counter it. Despite the rigorous and comprehensive study of Athenian democracy, surprisingly enough no systematic application of the concept of populism (as defined by modern political theory) to classical Athens has taken place; this chapter aims to fill this gap. My conclusion is that modern political theory on populism can be legitimately applied to contexts other than Western liberal democracies, being particularly suitable for a closer analysis of ancient Athens, while in return, Athenian legal and extralegal responses to populism could provide valuable guidance on how to tame this phenomenon

The rhetorical use of torture in Attic forensic oratory

Come 'regola', la tortura di schiavi innocenti che è stata concordata dai querelantia fini probatori (βάσανος probatori) fu ritenuto dagli oratori lo strumento più efficace per giungere alla verità. Questo paper, con riferimento alla psicologia dell'antica Grecia, spiega perché la menzionata regola fu di cruciale importanza per la retorica. Gli oratori, sulla base della presunta attendibilità dell'istituzione dei βάσανος, furono in grado di sviluppare argomenti basati sulle sfide (πρόκλησις), che possono essere comprese al meglio alla luce della concezione greca, piuttosto che moderna, di razionalità ed azione umana. Di conseguenza, a dispetto dell'incertezza che circonda l'attualità della tortura a fini probatori nell'età degli oratori, l'importanza retorica dei πρόκλησις εἰς βάσανον è innegabile e va esaminata attentamente [Italian abstract]

The ICON-A model for direct QBO simulations on GPUs (version icon-cscs:baf28a514)

Classical numerical models for the global atmosphere, as used for numerical weather forecasting or climate research, have been developed for conventional central processing unit (CPU) architectures. This hinders the employment of such models on current top-performing supercomputers, which achieve their computing power with hybrid architectures, mostly using graphics processing units (GPUs). Thus also scientific applications of such models are restricted to the lesser computer power of CPUs. Here we present the development of a GPU-enabled version of the ICON atmosphere model (ICON-A), motivated by a research project on the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), a global-scale wind oscillation in the equatorial stratosphere that depends on a broad spectrum of atmospheric waves, which originates from tropical deep convection. Resolving the relevant scales, from a few kilometers to the size of the globe, is a formidable computational problem, which can only be realized now on top-performing supercomputers. This motivated porting ICON-A, in the specific configuration needed for the research project, in a first step to the GPU architecture of the Piz Daint computer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre and in a second step to the JUWELS Booster computer at the Forschungszentrum Jülich. On Piz Daint, the ported code achieves a single-node GPU vs. CPU speedup factor of 6.4 and allows for global experiments at a horizontal resolution of 5 km on 1024 computing nodes with 1 GPU per node with a turnover of 48 simulated days per day. On JUWELS Booster, the more modern hardware in combination with an upgraded code base allows for simulations at the same resolution on 128 computing nodes with 4 GPUs per node and a turnover of 133 simulated days per day. Additionally, the code still remains functional on CPUs, as is demonstrated by additional experiments on the Levante compute system at the German Climate Computing Center. While the application shows good weak scaling over the tested 16-fold increase in grid size and node count, making also higher resolved global simulations possible, the strong scaling on GPUs is relatively poor, which limits the options to increase turnover with more nodes. Initial experiments demonstrate that the ICON-A model can simulate downward-propagating QBO jets, which are driven by wave–mean flow interaction

High Performance Multicell Series Inverter-Fed Induction Motor Drive

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: M. Khodja, D. Rahiel, M. B. Benabdallah, H. Merabet Boulouiha, A. Allali, A. Chaker, and M. Denai, ‘High-performance multicell series inverter-fed induction motor drive’, Electrical Engineering, Vol. 99 (3): 1121-1137, September 2017. The final publication is available at Springer via DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00202-016-0472-4.The multilevel voltage-source inverter (VSI) topology of the series multicell converter developed in recent years has led to improved converter performance in terms of power density and efficiency. This converter reduces the voltage constraints between all cells, which results in a lower transmission losses, high switching frequencies and the improvement of the output voltage waveforms. This paper proposes an improved topology of the series multicell inverter which minimizes harmonics, reduces torque ripples and losses in a variable-speed induction motor drive. The flying capacitor multilevel inverter topology based on the classical and modified phase shift pulse width modulation (PSPWM, MPSPWM) techniques are applied in this paper to minimize harmonic distortion at the inverter output. Simulation results are presented for a 2-kW induction motor drive and the results obtained demonstrate reduced harmonics, improved transient responses and reference tracking performance of the voltage in the induction motor and consequently reduced torque ripplesPeer reviewe