Ancient Greek law consists of the laws and
legal institutions of Ancient Greece.
The existence of certain general principles
of law is implied by the custom of settling
a difference between two Greek states, or
between members of a single state, by resorting
to external arbitration. The general unity
of Greek law shows mainly in the laws of inheritance
and adoption, in laws of commerce and contract,
and in the publicity uniformly given to legal
agreements.While its older forms can be studied
by the laws of Gortyn, its influence can be
traced in legal documents preserved in Egyptian
papyri and it may be recognized as a consistent
whole in its ultimate relations to Roman law
in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire,
with scholars in the discipline of comparative
law comparing Greek law with both Roman law
and the primitive institutions of the Germanic
nations.
== Historical Sources ==
There is no systematic collection of Greek
laws, thus the knowledge the earliest notions
of the subject is derived from the Homeric
poems. The works of Theophrastus 'On the Laws',
included a recapitulation of the laws of various
barbaric as well as of the Grecian states,
yet only a few fragments of it remain.
=== Athens ===
Incidental illustrations of the Athenian law
are found in the Laws of Plato, who describes
it without exercising influence on its actual
practice. Aristotle criticized Plato's Laws
in his Politics, in which he reviews the work
of certain early Greek lawgivers. The treatise
on the Constitution of Athens includes an
account of the jurisdiction of the various
public officials and of the mechanics of the
law courts, and thus enables historians to
dispense with the second-hand testimony of
grammarians and scholiasts who derived their
information from that treatise.Other evidence
for ancient Athenian law comes from statements
made in the extant speeches of the Attic orators,
and from surviving inscriptions.
== Procedural laws ==
=== Athens ===
Historians consider the Ancient Athenian law
broadly procedural and concerned with the
administration of justice rather than substantive.
Athenian laws are typically written in the
form where if an offense is made, then the
offender will be punished according to said
law, thus they are more concerned with the
legal actions which should be undertaken by
the prosecutor, rather than strictly defining
which acts are prosecutable. Often, this would
have resulted in juries having to decide whether
the offense said to have been committed was
in fact a violation of the law in question.
== Development of Ancient Greek law ==
=== Athens ===
One of the earliest dateable events in Athenian
history is the creation of the Draconian law
code, c.620 BC. We know little about Draco
and the code, with the homicide law being
the only one known due to it surviving the
Solonian reforms. The law seems to have distinguished
between premeditated and involuntary homicide,
and provided for the reconciliation of the
killer with the family of the dead man. The
homicide law of Draco was still in force in
the fourth century. Though the rest of the
code is unknown, it was by Athenian tradition
known to have been very harsh.The Athenian
law codes set forth by Draco were completely
reformed by Solon, who was the archon of Athens
c.593 BC. Solon's reforms included the cancellation
of debts and reforms to land ownership, as
well as the abolition of slavery for those
who were born Athenian. However, attributing
specific legal innovations and reforms to
Solon and his successors is notoriously difficult
because there was a tendency in ancient Athens
to ascribe laws to Solon irrespective of the
date of enactment.
== Courts and judicial system ==
Along with the official enforcement of the
law in the courts in the Grecian states, justice
and social cohesion were collectively enforced
by society at large. with informal collective
justice often being targeted at elite offenders.
=== Athens ===
Ancient Greek courts were cheap and run by
laypeople. Court officials were paid little,
if anything, and most trials were completed
within a day, with private cases done even
quicker. There were no court officials, no
lawyers, and no official judges. A normal
case consisted of two litigants, arguing if
an unlawful act had been committed. The jury
would decide whether the accused was guilty,
and should he be guilty, what the punishment
will be. In Athenian courts, the jury tended
to be made of the common people, whereas litigants
were mostly from the elites of society.In
the Athenian legal system, the courts have
been seen as a system for settling disputes
and resolving arguments, rather than enforcing
a coherent system of rules, rights and obligations.
The Prytaneion court was responsible for trialing
random residents, animals, and inanimate objects
for homicide, and it is assumed that it was
in order to ensure that Athens was free of
blood-guilt for the crime.The Athenian court
system was dominated by men. The jury was
all-male, and it has been argued that the
Athenian court seemed to have been remarkably
unwilling to allow any female presence in
the civic space of the lawcourt itself.
==== Public and private cases ====
In Ancient Athens, there were two types of
lawsuit. Public prosecutions, or graphai,
were heard by juries of 501 or more, increasing
in increments of 500 jurors, while private
suits, or dikai, were heard by 201 or 401
jurors, depending on the amount of money at
stake. Juries were made up of men selected
from a panel of 6,000 volunteers, who were
selected annually and were required to be
full citizens, aged over 30. Juries were paid
a small fee from the time of Pericles, which
may have led to disproportionate numbers of
poor and elderly citizens working on juries.
== Oratory ==
=== Athens ===
In the Athenian legal system, there were no
professional lawyers, though well-known speechwriters
such as Demosthenes composed speeches which
were delivered by, or on behalf of others.
These speechwriters have been described as
being as close as a function of a modern lawyer
as the Athenian legal system would permit.It
has been argued that the rhetorical and performative
features evident in surviving Classical Athenian
law court speeches are evidence that Athenian
trials were essentially rhetorical struggles
which were generally unconcerned with the
strict applicability of the law. It is also
said that orators constructing stories played
a much more significant role in Athenian court
cases than those of the modern day, due to
the lack of modern forensic and investigatory
techniques which might provide other sources
of evidence in the Athenian courtroom.
== See also ==
Byzantine law
Roman law
Celtic law
== References ==
This article incorporates text from a publication
now in the public domain: Sandys, John Edwin
(1911). "Greek Law". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia
Britannica. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University
Press. pp. 501–507. This describes the topic
in more procedural detail, and has a large
set of citations.
Carey, Christopher (1998). "The Shape of Athenian
Laws". The Classical Quarterly. 48 (1). doi:10.1093/cq/48.1.93.
Andrewes, A. "The Growth of the Athenian State".
In Boardman, John; Hammond, N.G.L. The Cambridge
Ancient History Volume III, Part 3: The Expansion
of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries
B.C. ISBN 0-521-23447-6.
Forsdyke, Sara (2008). "Street Theatre and
Popular Justice in Ancient Greece: Shaming,
Stoning, and Starving Offenders Inside and
Outside the Courts". Past and Present. 201.
doi:10.1093/pastj/gtn014.
Gagarin, Michael (2003). "Telling Stories
in Athenian Law". Transactions of the American
Philological Association (1974–). 133 (2).
doi:10.1353/apa.2003.0015.
Hamel, Debra (2003). Trying Neaira: The True
Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in
Ancient Greece. New Haven & London: Yale University
Press.
== Further reading ==
Blanshard, Alastair J. L. 2014. "The Permeable
Spaces of the Athenian Law-court." Space,
place, and landscape in ancient Greek literature
and culture. Edited by Kate Gilhuly, 240-275.
Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Buis, Emiliano. 2014. "Law and Greek Comedy."
The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy.
Edited by Michael Fontaine, 321-339. Oxford;
New York: Oxford University Press.
Finley, Moses I. 1975. "The Problem of the
Unity of Greek Law." In The Use and Abuse
of History. By Moses I. Finley, 134–152,
236–237. London: Viking.
Gagarin, Michael and David Cohen, eds. 2005.
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Gagarin, Michael. 2008. Writing Greek Law.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Harris, Edward M., and Lene Rubinstein. 2004.
The Law and the Courts in Ancient Greece.
London: Duckworth.
MacDowell, Douglas M. 1986. Spartan Law. Edinburgh:
Scottish Academic Press.
Schaps, David M. 1979. Economic Rights of
Women in Ancient Greece. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
Univ. Press.
Schwartz, Saundra. 2016. From Bedroom to Courtroom:
Law and Justice in the Greek Novel. Eelde:
Barkhuis.
Sealey, Raphael. 1994. The Justice of the
Greeks. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
