Characters in New Comedy often engage in conduct that appears to be a prelude to a courtroom trial or that is a substitute for its formal apparatus: they warn friends of potentially indictable behavior and recommend legal action when their interests are infringed; they threaten their enemies with lawsuits and self-help remedies; they issue summonses and make arrests. Yet for all this pre-trial activity, only one character appears on stage who has clearly undergone a prosecution during the course of the play, and only one character actually suffers a self-help punishment endorsed by law. What, then, are we to make of all the summonses, arrests, and threats of legal action that do not end up in court? Or of the threats of self-help remedies that are not carried out?

It is the specific argument of this chapter that such activities are often strategies – pervasive in fourth-century Athens and so reflected in New Comedy – designed to coerce opponents to accept out-of court settlements. In the last chapter, we noted how frequently the orators give reports of plaintiffs who try to induce their opponents to enter into private arbitration after a suit has been lodged. The pattern harmonized well with the Athenian system of justice: a plaintiff who dropped a dike would not be penalized. Threatening court action while intending to settle in private also provides, as we shall see, ready-made scripts: it ensures that certain roles will be played – plaintiff and defendant, accuser and accused – and it delineates, even as it attempts to control, the avenues of settlement.