Attenuante o aggravante? L'ebbrezza nei tribunali di Atene

Was drunkenness an aggravating factor in Athenian Law, as it was, for example, in Mytilene during the time of Pittacus? Aristotle seems to imply this in a passage of his Nicomachean Ethics, when he says that both common people and lawgivers do not consider subject to “pardon” (syggnome) the offence perpetrated by an intoxicated person. A careful analysis of the evidence provided by Athenian judicial speeches, however, shows that in general terms the Aristotelic stance cannot be considered absolutely true. Only when clearly linked with a hybristic behavior drunkenness was held as a cause of an intentional offence, and accordingly punished as such.