Scholars agree that our nineteen core speeches were written by fourth-century orators. But do they reflect what the orators actually said in the assembly? A strong prejudice against written speeches meant that Athenian speakers did not read from a text either at a trial or in the assembly – nor did stenographers record their words as they spoke. A perfect fit between our texts and the words of a speaker is improbable. In addition, several scholars have suggested the possibility that the texts of speeches were revised after they had been delivered. These issues make the relationship of our oratorical texts and the actual words spoken a complex and disputed one. A full treatment is fortunately not necessary here. The crucial issue is not whether our texts are different from actual speeches, but whether they are systematically different in such a way that would jeopardize our use of them as evidence for popular Athenian thinking – both topics treated by a variety of scholars.

Professional speech-writers drafted law-court speeches for clients to memorize. These drafts were close to what was actually said – insofar as the client succeeded in memorizing them. Written versions of these speeches were circulated as advertisements for the speech-writer and some have survived to this day. Such texts may have contained revisions and thus not have duplicated exactly the client's pre-trial version, but the goal of such revision was not to appeal to a different audience.