building, which may have been the public law court, and have been dated to
the early fifth centuryBC. The inscription is part of the law code of the ancient
city, and is an example of the unique survival of Greek law in cities other than
Athens. The parts of the code that have been found do not deal with all the
laws, but included are provisions for family law, commercial issues, rights and
freedoms, and‘moral crimes’such as adultery, seduction and rape. Cretan
laws were, it was believed, given to mankind by Zeus, father of the gods, and
this, of course, gave them added weight.
Law was maintained on the streets and in public meeting places by public
slaves, controlled by the magistrates. They could arrest criminals and take
charge of them, and were used to control crowds, but they did not undertake
investigations–those had to be pursued by the citizens themselves if they
wanted to bring a charge to a court. Athens had a body of 300 such slaves,
from Scythia, who were provided with rods to defend themselves and to
subdue wrongdoers. Using foreigners was supposed to ensure that local
allegiances did not affect the pursuit of justice.
In Athens, the site of the highest court was at theAeropagus, a hill
northwest of the Acropolis. Legend said that when the god Ares murdered the
son of Poseidon, god of the sea, it was here that he was tried. It was also here
that the ruling council of elders met. When the laws were revised in 462 BC,
this council lost most of its power, except as a court for hearing murder trials.
That is why the playwright Aeschylus set the trial of Orestes for the murder of
Clytemnestra at this scene. In the fourth century BC, the Areopagus also had
responsibility for investigating cases of corruption.
The remains of an Athenian court were excavated on the southern side of
the Acropolis. Among the artefacts discovered was a pedestal shaped like
lions’legs, which was the support for a large marble table of the period 400
300 BC; there was also a piece of copper sheet, which the excavator believes
to be the type of material upon which legal verdicts were recorded. The find
seems to be part of a large complex and portico that has been tentatively
identified as the Palladium. This was the building in which, according to the
geographer Pausanius, writing in the second century AD, cases of
manslaughter and the killing of people who were not citizens were heard.
Killing people who were not citizens was generally regarded as a lesser
crime than murder!^1
There have been plenty of examples of archaeological finds of people who
died violently in Athens. Wells in theagora, or central plaza, of ancient
Athens have yielded many skeletons, and while some may be victims of
attacks on the city during war, some seem to have died as a result of other
CLASSICAL CRIMES