Romans. Even aft er the fall of Rome, Roman law continued to
apply to disputes with only Roman parties.
GREECE
BY JEFFREY S. CARNES
Th e earliest views of Greek legal systems come from the po-
ems of Homer (ninth or eighth century b.c.e.) and Hesiod (ca.
800 b.c.e.). In Homer’s Iliad a relief on the shield of Achilles
displays vignettes from daily life, including a legal case in-
volving a dispute over a homicide. Two men argue about the
payment of a blood price to atone for the murder, and the case
is settled by elders and arbitrators, with a prize going to the
one who “speaks the straightest opinion.” Similarly, Hesiod’s
Th eogony praises kings primarily for their role in administer-
ing justice. Both poems refl ect a world in which justice was
administered on a somewhat improvised basis by social elites
and in which law was a matter of custom rather than some-
thing created by a legislative body or an individual lawgiver.
More important, they show the origins of legal practice in
private matters: in the settling of disputes between individu-
als, presenting a socially agreed-upon alternative to retribu-
tion and vengeance.
By the seventh century b.c.e. the various city-states be-
gan to develop legal codes and permanent legislative bod-
ies. Th ese early developments were typically assigned to
individual lawgivers, such as Lycurgus (ninth century b.c.e.)
in Sparta or Draco (seventh century b.c.e.) and Solon (ca.
630–ca. 560 b.c.e.) in Athens; many cities held that their old-
est laws had been established by their lawgivers and handed
down unchanged, though this was rarely historically accu-
rate. In fact, lawgiver traditions refl ect the social realities of
the Age of Tyrants (sixth century b.c.e.), in which strong in-
dividuals brought about changes to break the monopoly on
legal power held by the aristocracies of their cities.
Writing is typically associated with these reforms as a
way to ensure the fairness and transparency of the judicial
system. Lawgivers such as Draco and Zaleucus of Locri Epiz-
ephyrii (ca. 660 b.c.e.) are said to have ensured that the laws
would be written down and publicly accessible so that all
citizens could read them and see that they were being applied
fairly. Th is development implies a certain degree of literacy
throughout the Greek world; there must have been enough
literate citizens to make public postings of laws worthwhile.
In Athens the laws were originally written down on
wooden blocks called axones, which seem to have been at-
tached to wooden pillars and mounted in such a way that
readers could turn them, thus allowing more laws to be dis-
played in a limited amount of space. By the late fi ft h century
b.c.e. the Athenian laws were written in stone, as was the case
in numerous other Greek cities. Much of the current infor-
mation about Greek law codes, especially during the Archaic
Era (600–480 b.c.e.), comes from inscriptions. Of particular
value is the inscription from Gortyn in Crete, dating to about
450 b.c.e. but thought to refl ect the laws of a somewhat ear-
lier era. Th e inscription, one of the longest to survive from
antiquity, deals with a wide variety of matters both civil and
criminal, including rape, inheritance, gift s, mortgages, and
the status of slaves.
With the exception of Gortyn, however, Athens is the
only city for which we have a detailed picture of the legal sys-
tem, with sources including inscriptions, speeches from law
courts, theoretical treatises such as the Constitution of the
Athenians by Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e.), and even the com-
edies of Aristophanes (ca. 450–ca. 388 b.c.e.), in which the
Athenians’ litigious nature is frequently parodied. Th e Athe-
nians held that their fi rst code of laws was given to them by
Draco in 621 b.c.e.; these laws were famous for their severity
(thus the English word draconian, meaning “cruel” or “se-
vere”), with the death penalty prescribed for even minor of-
fenses. Th e laws ascribed to Draco, with the exception of the
one concerning homicide, were replaced by those of Solon in
594 b.c.e. Publicly displayed on the axones, the law code of
Solon formed the basis of Athenian law for more than 250
years, supplemented by the numerous laws passed by other
legislative bodies during Athens’ era of democratic rule
(508–322 b.c.e.). Th e laws were of two sorts: nomoi, laws that
established a permanent rule, and psephismata, decrees that
were designed to apply to a particular instance. Legal reforms
in the late fi ft h century ensured that psephismata could not
override nomoi and that diff erent legislative bodies were re-
sponsible for the two types of law.
Th e Athenian legal system (and probably other Greek
systems) retained strong vestiges of the Greek law’s origins in
the settling of private disputes. Until the time of Solon, all ac-
tions at law were essentially private; only the injured parties
or their families could bring a case to court, even in criminal
matters. Aft er Solon, Athenian law permitted dikai demosiai
(public actions) for off enses that were regarded as aff ecting
the community as a whole. Categories of off ense subject to
dikai demosiai included matters related to public administra-
tion (such as bribery or misconduct while in offi ce) and to
civic life generally (including accusations of impiety, as re-
ligion was considered a state matter). Th ere were, however,
no public prosecutors: actions could be brought by magis-
trates holding other offi ces or by ho boulomenos (“the one
who wishes”); that is, by any free adult male, usually includ-
ing noncitizens. Th e line between public and private matters
was drawn diff erently from the way it is in most modern legal
systems: Most crimes, including murder, remained a matter
for private actions, and it was up to the victim or the victim’s
relatives to prosecute.
Participation in the legal system was encouraged by pop-
ular sentiment. Th e Athenian statesman Pericles (ca. 495–429
b.c.e.), in his Funeral Oration, expressed disdain for those
who take no part in government. It also was encouraged by
fi nancial incentives. Monetary fi nes were the most common
punishments for guilty defendants, and in a private suit the
money went to the prosecutor, who was either the injured
party or a member of his family. In some public suits there628 laws and legal codes: Greece