CHAPTER 3
Classical C ri mes
Law and order in classical societies
The period of the classical civilisations of Greece and Rome is the era in
which the evidence for laws and lawbreakers starts to become more available.
More sophisticated societies increasingly needed complex and formal judicial
structures, and also started to think about how those structures needed to be
organised in daily life. In the Mediterranean in particular, with its citybased
societies, governments began to find it essential to find ways to maintain law
and order, and they started to think about how to police their communities.
Athens produced a famous lawmaker in the seventh centuryBC. He was
called Draco, and his laws were very harsh. From his time on, very strict laws
are calleddraconianafter him. He was striving to put an end to the feuds that
had become common in Athens as a result of a lack of written statutes, and he
had his version of the laws carved on to wooden tablets and onto stone stelae,
so that everyone would know what they were.
Punishments were very severe, and the death sentence was enacted for
many offences–arson, murder, and even petty theft. A debtor of lower social
status than his creditor could be forced into slavery. Eventually these laws
proved too harsh for the Athenians, and most were repealed in the early years
of the next century. Only the law of homicide survived; inscriptions that have
been found suggest that it was the responsibility of the victim’s relatives to
bring a prosecution, and that whilst the penalty for premeditated or deliberate
murder was death, if the killer could prove that he had not intended to kill the
victim, he was just exiled.
The Greek god associated with law was Hermes. He was the messenger of
the gods, and led the souls of the dead into the afterlife. He was the god of
thieves, as well as of travellers, poets, sportsmen and inventors. He was a
trickster god, who was known for his quickness, stealth and cunning. Zeus
sent Hermes to serve mankind by teaching them the value of justice.
About 120 years ago on Crete, at a site called Gortyn, an inscription on
stone blocks was discovered; originally, the blocks had been part of a circular