118 EDwARD M. HARRIS
economic transactions so that people are more willing to move their assets in
ways that enhance production.
Before we study the methods adopted by the Greek city-states to protect
ownership and to provide documentation for property, it is necessary to dis-
cuss briefly the concept of ownership in the Greek city-states. Some scholars
have claimed that the Greeks had a more flexible concept of ownership than
the Romans;^4 others have claimed that the Greeks had a concept of relative
ownership, which differed from the Roman concept of absolute ownership;^5
still other scholars claim that in Athens and other Greek cities property was
not owned by individuals but by households and that the head of the house-
hold did not exercise the rights of ownership but held the family property
in trust for future generations.^6 All these ideas rest on a misunderstanding of
the concept of ownership. In a seminal essay Honoré studied the definitions
of ownership found in the laws of several modern states with very different
legal traditions: those of the United Kingdom and the United States, which
draw on the Common Law tradition; those of France, Italy, and Germany,
which draw on the Civil Law tradition; and that of the former Soviet Union,
which was built on Marxist views about property. In each case there was broad
agreement that ownership is ‘the greatest possible interest in a thing which a
mature system of law recognizes.’^7 Honoré did not limit his study to mod-
ern European and American legal systems; he also took into account work
by anthropologists like B. Malinowski, whose field work demonstrated that
communities with low levels of structural differentiation share the same basic
conception of ownership. In all societies, owners enjoy the same basic rights
over property. They can be divided into ten basic incidents: 1) the right to pos-
sess, 2) the right to use, 3) the right to manage, 4) the right to income, 5) the
right to capital, 6) the right to security, 7) transmissibility, 8) absence of term,
9) prohibition of harmful use and 10) liability to execution.
Owners in ancient Greece certainly enjoyed all these rights over objects
that belonged to them.^8 Those who owned property in Greece had the right
to exercise exclusive physical control over their property and to remain in
control (right to possess).^9 In Athenian law there was an action for ejectment,
which an owner could use against those who occupied his property illegally.^10
Athenian law also granted owners the right to arrest thieves caught in posses-
sion of stolen goods whose guilt was obvious (ep’autophoro).^11 Finally, owners
were permitted to kill those who were caught breaking into their houses at
night or attempting to carry away their goods provided the retaliation took
place immediately.^12 In the law of Athens and other Greek communities, own-
ers enjoyed the right to use and to manage objects belonging to them in any
way they wished. For instance, an owner could live on his land and plant crops
on it, or he could lease it to anyone he chose. When he chose to lease it, he
could impose conditions about how it was to be used.^13