Some Recent Developments in The Study of Ancient Greek Law

SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE STUDY OF
ANCIENT GREEK LAW
Edward M. Harris
University of Durham / University of Edinburgh
The laws of the Greek city-states and the Hellenistic Kingdoms dealt with
all aspects of life in the community.1 The laws regulated the main political
institutions of the community and gave rules to its officials about how to conduct
public business. Meetings of the Council and Assembly were run according
to public statutes, and decrees submitted for approval had to conform to legal
norms. All public officials were subject to a legal review of their conduct and
could be prosecuted in court or punished by special magistrates. The laws dealt
with many types of offenses against the public interest such as treason, military
duty, penalties for those who owed money to the state, and the bribery of public
officials. The law also defined who could be citizens and their duties. All aspects
of private life were regulated by the laws: marriage and inheritance, adoption,
private property, business transactions and trade in the marketplace, the rights
of women and foreigners, the treatment of slaves, slander and violence against
private individuals. As well as prescribing substantive norms, the laws also
contained numerous rules about legal procedure and legislation. The religious
life of the Greeks was not a realm beyond the reach of the law: the community
enacted many laws about public priests, the conduct of festivals, and the
performance of state rituals. In short, there was not one aspect of life in the Greek
city-states and the Hellenistic kingdoms left untouched by the law.
It would be impossible in the space of an article to cover even in outline the
main trends in the study of the laws of the Greek world in the period after 1945,
much less to provide an exhaustive bibliographical survey of the field. For
this essay, I have selected some areas that have received attention in the past
several decades. For an extensive bibliography of work on Greek law, see A New
Working Bibliography of Ancient Greek Law (7th to 4th Centuries BC) compiled
by I. Arnaoutoglou, D. Mirhady and M. Sundahl (2011). The list of publications
1
I would like to thank Alberto Esu and David Lewis for reading over earlier drafts of this essay,
for catching many errors and for making constructive suggestions for improvement. I apologize to
readers in advance for referring to myself in the third person. I have not been able to cover several
aspects of Greek Law such as constitutional law, citizenship and women, the family and sexuality, but
several of the works mentioned in this essay deal with those topics.
187 JAC 33/2 (2018)

188 HARRIS, EDWARD M.
is constantly updated at the website Nomoi. This essay will not discuss the laws
of Ptolemaic Egypt. On this topic, see the recent work of J. G. Keenan, J. G.
Manning and U. Yiftach-Firanko.2
The Unity of Greek Law

Normally when discussing a topic in scholarship, one does not have to argue that
it is a legitimate field of study. If one were writing a general survey about Greek
religion, Greek warfare, the economy of Ancient Greece, Greek architecture,
Greek sculpture, Greek philosophy, or the genres of Greek literature (tragedy,
comedy, epic, lyric, etc.), no one would deny that these are legitimate fields
of study. In a well known essay, however, M. I. Finley argued that one cannot
speak of Ancient Greek Law in any meaningful sense.3 Finley observed that
the Greek world was divided into hundreds of different city-states, each with
its own political institutions, laws, and legal procedures. According to Finley,
there was just too much diversity in the laws of the Greek city-states to justify
any discussion of Ancient Greek Law as a unified body of statutes and legal
concepts. As a result, Finley claimed that one could not study Greek law as
a whole or draw general conclusions about the subject. Finley was reacting
against a tendency of certain German scholars to assume that there was a great
deal of uniformity among the laws of the Greek city-states. In particular, he
was criticizing the book of F. Pringsheim entitled The Greek Law of Sale,4 but
the idea that the laws of the Greek poleis were broadly similar went back to
the work Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den östlichen Provinzen des römischen
Kaiserreichs of L. Mitteis, 5 and was reflected in the titles of works like
Griechisches Bürgschaftsrecht by J. Partsch6 and Griechisches Privatrecht auf
rechtsvergleichender Grundlage by E. Weiss.7
The Greeks themselves did not see it this way. In a famous passage from
Herodotus (8.144), the Athenians, who have been invited to side with the Persian
king, reply that they cannot become traitors to their common Greek identity (to
Hellenikon), which consists of their common ancestry, their common language,
their shared religious practices, and their similar customs. These common
customs often took the form of similar laws enforced by many different city-
states. For instance, in 367/366 BC the Athenian Assembly sent a herald to the
Achaians to protest against the arrest by the Trichonians of the spondophoroi
2
Keenan, Manning and Yiftach-Firanko 2014.
3
Finley 1975, 134–152.
4
Pringsheim 1950.
5
Mitteis 1891.
6
Partsch 1909.
7
Weiss 1923.
SURVEY: ANCIENT LAW – GREECE 189
sent to announce the truce for the Eleusinian Mysteries, an act that violated the
laws of the Greeks (Agora 16.48, ll. 13–14: para tous nomous tous koinous tôn
Ellênôn). The decree of the Assembly assumes the existence of a rule recognized
by all the Greeks that it is wrong to hold those sent to announce a truce for a
Panhellenic festival. This is similar to the Greek rule that one does not harm
heralds sent from one city to another.8
Several speakers in Thucydides’ history refer to the laws of the Greeks.
When the Athenians invaded Boeotia and fortified the sanctuary at Delium, the
Boeotians claimed that they had violated the laws of the Greeks that required
those invading a country not to damage sanctuaries (Thuc. 4.97.2; cf. Pol. 4.67.4).
The Athenians replied that the laws of the Greeks provided that sanctuaries
belonged to whoever was in control of the territory as long as they observed
the traditional rites of the sanctuary (Thuc. 4.98.2). They also insisted that the
Boeotians follow the rule of the Greeks that the bodies of soldiers killed in battle
be returned for burial.9 When the Plataeans were put on trial by the Spartans after
their surrender in 427 BC, the former pointed out that they have surrendered
as suppliants to the Spartans who have accepted them, and that it is wrong
according to the laws of the Greeks to put suppliants to death (Thuc. 3.58.1).
As F. S. Naiden (2006) has shown, the norms of supplication were a quasi-legal
procedure recognized throughout the Greek world (see the section on Law and
Religion). The Boeotians retort that it is the Plataeans who have violated the laws
of the Greeks by not honoring the rights of suppliants (Thuc. 4.68.4; cf. 66.2–3).
In a debate at Athens, the Corinthians appealed to the laws of the Greeks about
the right to discipline members of an alliance (Thuc. 1.41.1; cf. 3.9).
Some of these rules relate to international law, but there were also broad
similarities in the area of family law. In the speech On the Murder of Eratos-
thenes written by Lysias (1.1–2), the defendant Euphiletus tells the court that the
laws against seduction (moicheia) do not differ in oligarchies and democracies;
all Greek city-states condemn this crime and enact harsh penalties against those
who seduce wives (cf. Xen. Hiero 3.3). It was also a universal rule among the
Greeks that the property and inhabitants of a city conquered in war belonged to
the victors (Plat. Rep. 5 468a–b; Aristot. Pol. 1.6 1255a 6–7; Xen. Cyr. 7.5.73).10
A judgment by twenty-three judges from Magnesia in a dispute between the
Cretan cities of Hierapytna and Itanos states that men gain ownership by
inheritance, sale, conquest or gift from a stronger power and implies that this
principle is universally recognized by the Greeks (I. Cret. III iv 9).11 In the field
8
Hdt. 7.136.2 with Mosley 1973, 84–92.
9
Thuc. 4.98.6. Cf. Harris 2006, 65–67; Parker 1983, 48.
10
Cf. Harris 2006, 262-263 and Chaniotis 2004, 194–199.
11
See Chaniotis 1996, 307–311, 333–337; 2004, 185–187; Ager 1996, no. 158.
of real security, the evidence that exists reveals that the Greeks used the collateral
form of security and not the substitutive form.12 In contrast to Rome during the
Republic and Empire, Greek communities did not grant masters the possibility
of making their slaves citizens when they manumitted them (IG IX/2 517 = Syll.3
543, ll. 31–34 (214 BC) with Gauthier 2011, 3–12). Finally, the Greeks made a
strict distinction between slavery and debt-bondage.13 Slavery was a permanent
status, which gave the master all the rights of ownership. Debt-bondage was a
temporary status, which restricted the freedom of a debtor only until he paid off
his loan or other obligation.
Some recent studies have shown that despite the institutional differences
among Greek communities, there were also broad similarities in several
areas. The first study is Le mariage grec du VIme siècle av. J.C. à l’époque
d’Auguste by A.-M. Vérilhac and C. Vial.14 In all Greek cities, marriage was
an agreement between the woman’s father or brother and her husband, which
transferred the woman from her natal household to that of her husband (virilocal).
The marriage was normally accompanied by a dowry (proix) given by the
wife’s family to the husband. Everywhere legitimate children (gnesioi) were
distinguished from bastards (nothoi). In general, legitimate children had the
right to inherit their parents’ property while bastards did not. In the Greek rules
for inheritance, descendants took precedence over collaterals, and males in the
same degree received equal portions (partible inheritance); there is no evidence
for primogeniture. All heirs were universal successors, which meant that they
were responsible for the debts of the estate as well as entitled to the assets. If the
liabilities exceeded the value of the assets, the heir(s) had to pay the debts. There
were of course, local variations: at Gortyn, for instance, sisters could inherit
along with brothers although their share was only half that of their brothers. In
some cities, nothoi were citizens, in others they were not.
The Greeks also believed in the ideal of the rule of law, and one of the main
tenets of this ideal was the belief that all officials should be accountable. This
meant that all officials were required to present their accounts after their term of
office and might be subject to review during their term of office. In a valuable
study, P. Fröhlich has shown how the Greek city-states kept their officials
accountable.15 In democratic Athens, all officials had to submit their accounts to a
board of logistai after their terms of office, and that private individuals could bring
12
Harris 2013c.
13
Harris 2006, 249–270; Kristensen 2004 for Gortyn.
14
Vérilhac and Vial 1998. Pomeroy 1990 claimed that women in Hellenistic Egypt attained a higher
status, but see van Bremen 1996 for an important critique, which shows that whatever improvement
there was, there were still firm limits on women’s participation in public life.
15
Fröhlich 2004.
charges against them before the euthynoi (Aeschin. 3.9–31; [Aristot.] Ath. Pol.
48.4; Aristot. Pol. 6.8.16 1322b 7–12). In other cities, other terms are used for
magistrates who examined the activities of officials: katoptai, mastroi, apologoi,
eklogistai and synegoroi. In some cities, officials were required to provide records
of their accounts every month (Myania, Hypnia, Delos, Gambreion and Teos).
Several communities required financial officials to make payments in front of the
Council or other officials. Different cities devised different procedures for holding
magistrates accountable, but the general practice was widespread.
In a study of the decrees of the Greek city-states, P. J. Rhodes has observed:
“There is enough similarity between what is attested for different states ( ... ) to
suggest that, in spite of justified protests against the use of inference from one
place at one time to fill the gaps in our knowledge of another place at another
time, some valid generalizations can be made about Greek law and Greek judicial
procedures.”16 In the area of constitutional law, Rhodes shows that despite local
variations, the practice of having all proposals introduced and approved by the
Council before being submitted to the Assembly was widespread. The formulas
used to express the approval of the people in the Assembly differ in early
inscriptions but becomes more uniform as times goes on. Though the balance
between the powers of the Council and those of the Assembly might vary, there
is much similarity in the relationship between the two bodies in many city-
states. A. Esu has recently shown that both at Athens and at Sparta there was a
requirement that all decrees of the Assembly should be subject to judicial review
(nomophylakia), but each community had different procedures for implementing
this principle.17
The Greek city-states also shared a hostility to tyranny, that is, the concen-
tration of power in the hands of one man, which threatened the interests of the
community as a whole as well as the rights of individuals. To prevent the rise
of tyranny, the Greek city-states devised a common set of strategies as E. M.
Harris has shown in an essay about Solon.18 First, they divided different functions
among different boards of officials. This made it possible for one group of
officials to act as a check on another group. Second, they imposed terms limits
on officials and often prevented them from serving in the same office again or
only after an interval of several years. Third, they imposed penalties for officials
who violated the law and made them accountable as we have seen in Fröhlich’s
study. Fourth, states often assigned duties not to a single individual but to a
board of magistrates. This tendency is found not just in democratic regimes, but
16
Rhodes with Lewis 1997, 529–530, n. 2. See also Sickinger 2008.
17
Esu 2017.
18
Harris 2006, 3–28.
also in aristocratic governments. Fifth, statutes in Greek city-states often added

entrenchment clauses to prevent those in power from overturning laws for their
own benefit. Such clauses are found in inscriptions “from Tauromenium and Issa
in the west to places as far east in Asia Minor as Acmonia and Termessus.”19
One can see the shared understanding of certain legal concepts in the common
legal vocabulary found in inscriptions from different city-states. For instance,
the Greeks widely recognized that when a debtor did not make payment on
time, the creditor had the right to seize and sell his property. This right was
expressed by the same verb (enechyrazein), which had exactly the same meaning
in inscriptions from poleis widely separated throughout the Greek world
(Aeschin. 3.21; IG II2 2492, ll. 5–9 (Athens); IG XI/4 1049, l. 8 (Delos); IG XI
194 (Phocis)).20 The terms hypotheke and hypothema are also found in laws and
legal documents from several different cities to refer to the collateral form of
real security.21 The Greeks also recognized the principle that in contracts of sale
the seller had the duty of warranty of title, that is, he was required to guarantee
that he was the legitimate owner of the item.22 The terminology used to express
this duty (the noun bebaiotes and the verb bebaioun, the noun prater) is similar
in communities as far apart as Amphipolis (SEG XLI 563), Torone (SEG XXIV
574), Tenos (IG XII/5 872, l. 108 (bebaiotes), 27 and passim (prater)), Mylasa
(Mylasa 84, ll. 12–13; 87, l. 5), Delphi (FD, many examples), and Athens (Dem.
37.11).23 The term symbolaion is also found in documents from several Greek
city-states and always refers either to obligations arising from contract or delict
or to disputes arising from such obligations (IG I3 118, l. 22 (Athens); IG XII/5
1065 (Keos), IG XII/6.1 95, ll. 3, 9; Priene 27 [MaCabe], l. 8; Syll.3 344, l. 24;
742, l. 49 (Ephesus); Milet I/3 147, ll. 40, 43).24 One can add many other terms
to the list: diatheke (will), engklema (legal charge), gnesios (legitimate child),
nothos (bastard), enochos (subject to a legal charge), sulan (take reprisals),25
asylia (immunity from reprisals), enktesis (right to acquire property), proxenos
(person appointed to look after foreigners),26 engye and engyetes (personal security
and surety), synthekai (agreement in the form of contract or treaty), ateleia
(immunity from a tax or duty), etc. This common understanding of basic legal
concepts made it possible for Greek poleis to invite foreign judges from other
19
Rhodes with Lewis 1997, 524–525.
20
Cf. Harris 2008a.
21
Ibid. For the Ptolemaic practices and terminology about real security, see Alonso 2016.
22
Pringsheim 1950.
23
On warranty of title, see Pringsheim 1950.
24
Harris 2015a, 8–12.
25
On taking reprisals, see Bravo 1980.
26
On proxenoi, see now Mack 2015.
communities to judge their lawsuits.27 If the legal systems of different poleis were
vastly different and did not share common ideas about law, these foreign judges
could not have performed their tasks.
M. Gagarin has recently argued that the unity of Greek Law lay not in the
realm of substantive law but in procedure.28 This view does not take into account
the many similarities in constitutional law and substantive law noted above
and the major differences between legal procedures of different city-states. The
differences are most noticeable in the contrast between the laws of Classical
Athens and Gortyn in the fifth century BC. In Athens, average citizens brought
a written indictment before a magistrate, then presented their case before a court
of several hundred citizens selected by lot from a panel of six thousand judges.
The judges swore an oath to abide by the law, but there were no requirements
about deciding in favor of litigants who presented witnesses (see below on Legal
Procedure in Athens). In the Gortyn laws, there is no indication that litigants
initiated a case by presenting a written plaint, and all private cases were decided
by individual judges, not a court of many hundred judges.29 Judges at Gortyn
were also bound to rule in favor of an accuser who presented one or more
witnesses in certain cases, which was not true at Athens. At Sparta, private cases
involving delicts and breaches of contract (symbolaia) were decided by the
board of Ephors.30 In Athens trials in public cases were decided in one day by
a court of average citizens selected by lot; at Sparta important cases were to be
tried by the Council, which consisted of the two Kings and the Elders, who were
elected, and would take place over several days. At Athens there were abundant
written records for use in litigation; there is little evidence of the use of written
documents in litigation at Sparta. At his trial in 399 BC, Socrates notes that in
Athens defendants are tried in one day, whereas in other cities trials on important
charges can last for several days (Plat. Apol. 37a–b). At Sparta, the Ephors
appeared to have enjoyed wide discretion in deciding cases, and the Kings had
sole jurisdiction in some cases; at Athens, officials could only impose fines of
small amounts, the Council up to 500 drachmas, most private cases had to go
before a public arbitrator in the fourth century BC; if one of the litigants did not
wish to abide by the public arbitrator’s decision, the case went before a court of
several hundred judges. A fragment of Theophrastus’ On Laws gives a list of very
different legal procedures used in various communities to transfer ownership (frg.
21 [Szegedy-Maszak]). The legal procedures of the Greek city-states tended to
27
On foreign judges, see Magnetto forthcoming with references to earlier scholarship.
28
Gagarin 2005.
29
On legal procedure at Gortyn, see Gagarin and Perlman 2016, 136–139.
30
On the powers of the Ephors, see Richer 1998.
vary according to the nature of the political regime; aristocratic regimes to entrust
cases to single judges or smaller bodies, while democratic regimes had trials
take place before large courts of average citizens. In monarchies, the king would
issue orders that had the force of law; in constitutional regimes, the Assembly or
Council would enact legislation. As a result, there was little unity in procedural
matters from one community to the next.
Sources
The evidence for the laws of the Greek city-states comes mainly from two kinds
of sources: literary works and inscriptions preserved on stone. There are many
literary sources for Athenian law and legal procedure. Aristotle and his followers
collected 158 constitutions of the Greek city-states, but the Constitution of the
Athenians is the only one almost completely preserved. This work is divided
into two parts: the first covers the history of the constitution from Draco down
to the restoration of the democracy in 403 BC (Chapters 1–41), and the second
is a detailed analysis of the constitution in the period c. 330–320 BC (Chapters
42–69). The second part contains a discussion of the three main parts of Athenian
government, the deliberative part including the Council and Assembly (43.2–49),
the officials, starting with the sortitive offices (50–54) and proceeding to the
archons (55–59) and other officials (60–62), and the judicial part with a discussion
of the courts (63–69). The quality of the information found in the historical part
of the work is very uneven. For instance, the interpretation of the seisachtheia is
based on an anachronistic reading of a fragment of Solon’s poetry.31 The account
of the power of the Areopagus after the Persian Wars and the so-called reforms
of Ephialtes are also tendentious and misleading.32 The final section (42–69) on
the institutions of contemporary Athens is generally reliable and confirmed by
evidence from other sources. There are some omissions such as any discussion
of nomothesia but these are not serious.33 The section on the courts of Athens has
been enriched by the finds discovered by the American School of Classical Studies
at Athens. S. Dow has brilliantly explained the workings of the kleroterion, the
machine that assigned judges to different courts, and J. Kroll has published the
allotment tickets given to judges each year.34 A. Boegehold has collected the
archaeological evidence for the courts of Athens.35 There is a valuable Teubner
31
See Harris 1997. The recent attempt of Blok 2017 to argue that the seisachtheia was a cancellation
of debts, is not convincing. A detailed refutation is forthcoming.
32
On the figure of Ephialtes and the contradictory traditions about him, see Zaccarini forthcoming.
The account of the Areopagus by Wallace 1989 should be used with caution.
33
For a recent explanation of the omission, see Canevaro and Esu 2018.
34
Dow 1939; Kroll 1972.
35
Boegehold 1995.
text of the Constitution of the Athenians edited by M. Chambers and a useful

commentary by P. J. Rhodes.36
The other main sources for Athenian law are the forensic speeches of the
ten Attic orators: Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, Aeschines,
Demosthenes, Hyperides, Dinarchus, and Lycurgus. There are reliable
editions for each of these authors. D. J. Murphy and M. R. Dilts have recently
published an excellent Oxford Classical Text of Antiphon and Andocides.37
Dilts has published a Teubner edition of Aeschines and a four-volume Oxford
Classical Text of Demosthenes’ speeches.38 C. Carey has recently contributed
a new Oxford Classical Text of Lysias, 39 which is an improvement over
previous editions because it contains all the fragments attributed to Lysias.
L. Horváth promises a new edition of Hyperides, which will include the
recently discovered fragments of the speeches Against Diondas and Against
Timandros.40 There are many useful commentaries on the forensic speeches of
the orators. Still valuable and not yet replaced is W. Wyse’s commentary on the
speeches of Isaeus.41 Of more recent commentaries one should note in particular
H. Wankel’s massive commentary on Demosthenes’ On the Crown,42 D. M.
MacDowell’s commentary on Demosthenes’ Against Meidias,43 M. Canevaro’s
commentary on Demosthenes’ Against Leptines,44 N. Fisher on Aeschines’
Against Timarchus,45 T. Paulsen’s commentary on the speeches of Demosthenes
and Aeschines’ On the False Embassy,46 S. C. Todd’s commentary on speeches
1–11 of Lysias,47 D. Whitehead on Hyperides’ forensic speeches,48 and K. A.
Kapparis’ commentary on Apollodorus’ Against Neaira.49 Carey has produced
a commentary on selected speeches of Lysias, and Carey and R. A. Reid have
36
Chambers 1994; Rhodes 1981. An abbreviated version with translation is now available: Rhodes
2017, but see the review of Esu 2018 forthcoming.
37
Murphy and Dilts 2018.
38
Dilts 1997; 2002–2009.
39
Carey 2007.
40
For the new fragments, see Horváth 2014.
41
Wyse 1979.
42
Wankel 1976.The commentary of Yunis 2001 addresses mainly issues of style and rhetoric and is
not reliable on historical and legal issues, see the review by Harris 1992.
43
MacDowell 1990 with the review by Harris 1992. MacDowell’s treatment of the documents in the
speech has now been rendered obsolete by Harris in Canevaro 2013, 209–236.
44
Canevaro 2016. There is also a commentary on Against Leptines by Kremmydas 2012, but its
analysis of legal issues has been superseded by Canevaro’s studies of nomothesia. On these, see the
section on Legislation.
45
Fisher 2001.
46
Paulsen 1999. This commentary on Dem. 19 is more reliable than MacDowell 2000.
47
Todd 2007.
48
Whitehead 2000.
49
Kapparis 1999.
produced a commentary on four private speeches of Demosthenes.50 The Texas

series of translations of the Greek Orators is now complete. These translations
contain introductions, notes and bibliography, though the notes in some of the
early volumes are brief and superficial.51
Inserted into some of the forensic speeches of Aeschines, Andocides and
Demosthenes are texts that purport to be copies of laws, decrees, witness
statements and other documents (oracles and contracts). These documents
were the object of intense study in the nineteenth century, but for the most part
this ended with the work of E. Drerup in 1898.52 Recently, the study of these
documents has been renewed in a series of studies by Harris and Canevaro. In
an essay published in 2012, Canevaro and Harris showed that the three long
documents and three shorter documents in Andocides’ On the Mysteries are
forgeries and that the information contained in them is not reliable as evidence
for Athenian law and legal institutions.53 The findings of this study have major
implications for our understanding of the amnesty of 406/405, the examination
of the laws from 409 to 399 BC, and the laws about killing tyrants.54 In 2013,
Canevaro published a study of the laws and decrees in the public speeches of the
Demosthenic corpus (On the Crown, Against Aristocrates, Against Timocrates,
and Against Neaira) with a chapter by Harris on the documents in Against
Meidias. Canevaro made a careful study of the stichometry of these speeches
and has shown that the documents inside the stichometry were inserted at an
early stage of the transmission of the text and tend to contain reliable information
(though not entirely without errors). By contrast, the documents lying outside the
stichometry were added to the transmission very late and are forgeries containing
unreliable evidence for Athenian law and legal procedure. For the implications of
some of these findings, see the section on Legislation.
One should also mention the lexica providing information about Athenian law
and legal procedure. The most valuable of these is the lexicon of Harpocration,
50
Carey 1989, and Carey and Reid 1985.
51
The least satisfactory are Bers’ translation of Demosthenes 50–59, and MacDowell’s translations
of Andocides and of Demosthenes 27–38.
52
Drerup 1898.
53
Canevaro and Harris 2012. Sommerstein 2014, Hansen 2015 and 2016a have attempted to defend
the authenticity of these documents, but their analyses are based on flawed readings of key texts,
ignore key evidence against authenticity and in some cases seriously misrepresent the views of
Canevaro and Harris. For detailed refutation and references to endorsements, see Harris 2013–2014,
and Canevaro and Harris 2016. To the endorsements should be added Murphy and Dilts 2018, who
place brackets around the documents in On the Mysteries.
54
For instance, Harris 2013–2014 shows that the decree of Demophantus was passed after the
overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants. This shows that the views of Teegarden 2014 about the decree of
Demophantus and its role in the overthrow of the Thirty are not reliable. Shear 2011 relies heavily on
the forged documents in Andocides’ On the Mysteries.
which contains definitions and discussions of legal terms. Unfortunately, the

edition of this work by J. Keaney is not reliable and needs to be replaced.55 There
are valuable editions of the scholia to Demosthenes and to Aeschines by M. R.
Dilts.56
There are very few literary sources for other city-states with the exception
of Sparta. The work of Xenophon provides an overview of Spartan laws and
institutions but concentrates on constitutional law and the family.57 Plutarch’s
Life of Lycurgus contains much information about Spartan institutions, but
the reliability of some of the information found in this work has been rightly
questioned. There is a valuable study of the laws and political institutions of
ancient Lesbos by A. Dimopoulou. 58 The work of Theophrastus’ On Laws,
preserved only in fragments, contains information about communities outside of
Athens; there is a useful edition by A. Szegedy-Maszak.59
Inscriptions provide much evidence for the laws and legal procedures of the
Greek city-states. For Athens, the inscriptions from the fifth century have been
edited in two volumes by the late D. M. Lewis. The laws and decrees from
352/351 to 322/321 BC have been edited by S. D. Lambert,60 the laws and decrees
300/299 to 230/229 BC by M. Osborne and S. Byrne,61 and the laws and decrees
from 229/228 to 168/167 BC by V. N. Bardani and S. V. Tracy.62 The volumes
covering the laws and decrees from the period 403/402 to 353/352 BC and from
321/320 to 301/300 BC are still awaited from A. Matthaiou and from G. Oliver
respectively. In the meantime, the old editions of Inscriptiones Graecae II–III
are still useful. Translations of many of these laws and decrees are now available
online with brief commentaries at the valuable and innovative website Attic
Inscriptions Online (AIO) maintained by Lambert. The inscriptions of many cities
are also published in the series Inschriften aus Kleinasien (IK), which contains
translations into German and brief commentaries in German.
The collection of legal inscriptions collected in Receuil d’inscriptions
juridiques grecques published over a century ago by R. Dareste, B. Haussoullier
and T. Reinach still remains valuable and has not yet been replaced.63 For the
Hellenistic period, there are two volumes published by J. Vélissaropoulos,
55
Keaney 1991.
56
Dilts 1983–1986 and Dilts 1992.
57
For a commentary, see Gray 2007.
58
Dimopoulou 2015.
59
Szegedy-Maszak 1981.
60
Lambert 2012.
61
Osborne and Byrne 2015.
62
Bardani and Tracy 2012.
63
Dareste, Haussoullier and Reinach 1891–1904.
which present texts, French translations and brief commentaries.64 For over
thirty years, G. Thür has been responsible for a series entitled Prozeßrechtliche
Inschriften der griechischen Poleis, but so far only one volume about the legal
inscriptions of Arcadia has appeared in 1994, and no new volumes have been
published since then.65 I. N. Arnaoutoglou has provided a translation with brief
bibliography of ancient Greek laws preserved on stone and in the literary sources,
but unfortunately several of these have now been demonstrated to be forgeries.66
A revised edition would be a valuable work for students. For collections of laws
from the Archaic period, see the section on Archaic Law.
There are also valuable collections of certain types of inscriptions. There is
a valuable study of leases by I. Pernin;67 A. Chaniotis has collected the treaties
between the Cretan cities;68 C. Chandezon analyzes inscriptions about grazing
and herds;69 O. Curty collects decrees about gymnasiarchs;70 F. Lefèvre collects
the inscriptions about Delphic Amphictyony and analyzes the functions of the
Council;71 L. Migeotte has collected inscriptions about public loans and about
public subscriptions;72 B. Le Guen and S. Aneziri have studied the epigraphic
evidence for the Dionysiac Artists and their contracts;73 A. Bielman has collected
decrees about the ransom of captives;74 M. J. Osborne has collected the evidence,
both literary and epigraphic, for grants of citizenship at Athens;75 E. Samama has
collected the epigraphic evidence about doctors;76 A. Chankowski has published a
study of the ephebeia in the Hellenistic period based on a study of inscriptions,77
and A. Magnetto has studied the texts about interstate arbitration from 337 to
196 BC.78 Many of these inscriptions contain information about law and legal
procedure even if these are not their main focus. On the so-called leges sacrae,
see the section on Law and Religion.
64
Vélissaropoulos 2011.
65
Thür and Taeuber 1994.
66
Arnaoutoglou 1998. The same problem of including documents that are forgeries, diminishes the
value of the texts about Athenian Law collected by Phillips 2013, which should be used with caution.
67
Pernin 2014.
68
Chaniotis 1996.
69
Chandezon 2003.
70
Curty 2015.
71
Lefèvre 2002, with the analysis in Lefèvre 1998.
72
Migeotte 1984; Migeotte 1992.
73
Le Guen 2001; Aneziri 2003.
74
Bielman 1994.
75
M. J. Osborne 1981–1983.
76
Samama 2003.
77
Chankowski 2010.
78
Magnetto 1997.
Law and Writing

In a famous essay published in 1963, J. Goody and I. Watt argued that the
invention of the Greek alphabet was the decisive factor in Greek civilization.
Unlike the syllabic scripts of the ancient Near East, which had many characters
and were difficult to learn, the Greek alphabet was easy to master and permitted
widespread literacy, which in turn led to the invention of science, history
and philosophy. Goody and Watt believed that this widespread literacy had
implications for politics: “To begin with, the case of alphabetic reading and
writing was probably an important consideration in the development of political
democracy in Greece: in the fifth century a majority of the free citizens could
apparently read the laws, and take an active part in elections and legislation.”79
The question of literacy is therefore central to our understanding of the way the
legal system worked in Classical Athens and in other Greek poleis. If literacy
was widespread, average citizens could then read laws and decrees, participate in
running the Council and voting on proposals in the Assembly, and present written
indictments when initiating lawsuits and written documents at trials. On the other
hand, if literacy was restricted to a small group, the average citizen would have
been at the mercy of those who knew how to read and write, and the legal system
would not have been accessible to the majority of the population. Shortly after
the publication of Goody and Watt’s article, D. Harvey argued that there was
widespread literacy in Athenian democracy.80 One of his main pieces of evidence
was the use of writing and written documents both in the courts and in legal
business (e.g., the use of written contracts).
In 1989, W. V. Harris reacted against this optimistic view of literacy in
Classical Greece and argued that the level of literacy was not very high and that
few outside the elite could read with any facility. As a result, “legal practice like
the administration of large-scale business, remained to a considerable extent oral
and independent of documents.”81 W. V. Harris went so far as to claim that there
was a certain distrust of writing, which might be viewed as the instrument of
despots. J. Whitley made a similar argument about law and literacy in Crete during
the sixth and fifth centuries BC. Whitley claimed that there was little evidence
for the use of writing by average citizens during this period, and argued that the
numerous laws found on the island were for the use of the elite, who excluded the
majority of the population from participation in politics and the courts.82
In her book Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens, R. Thomas
79
Goody and Watt 1963, 332.
80
Harvey 1966.
81
W. V. Harris 1989, 72.
82
Whitley 1997; 1998. For detailed criticism of Whitley’s views, see Gagarin 2008, 68–71.
noted that Aeschines (2.89; 3.75) stresses the importance of written documents
in speeches delivered in 343 and 330 BC, but believes that Aeschines’ use of
documents was an innovation at the time. On the basis of this interpretation of his
words, she concluded: “the significance of the public archives was only beginning
to be realized properly around the middle of the fourth century.”83 In his book
Writing Greek Law, Gagarin was more pessimistic about the use of writing and
claimed that written documents played only a small role in the administration of
justice in Classical Athens. According to Gagarin, “[i]t seems that the Athenians
restricted the amount of writing in the legal process as far as was practical (...)
the exclusion of writing from trials was a feature of Greek law in general (...)
Athenian litigants participated in this ambivalence [i.e. about writing], sometimes
praising, at other times questioning the value of written documents of all sorts.”84
In the view of Gagarin, “Athenian Law also displays from the beginning a
reluctance to use writing for procedural matters or to insert writing into the
traditionally oral trial process.”85 Gagarin therefore takes “the restricted role given
to written texts in Athenian trials” for granted.86 For instance, Gagarin does not
believe that the Athenians kept records of legal decisions.87 D. Cohen adopts a
similar view and claims that “the social and legal appreciation of the role that
writing might assume was circumscribed and emergent rather than general and
complete.”88 In the Cambridge Economic History, B. Frier and D. Kehoe assert
without evidence that “ancient states were incapable of maintaining extensive
records: the Greeks and Romans generally lacked the systematic public registries
that are necessary for the conclusive resolution of disputes over ownership,
boundaries, land use, servitudes, liens; adequate resources and bureaucracies were
simply unavailable.”89
Recent work has called into question these pessimistic views about the level
of literacy and about the rare use of written documents and has drawn attention
to evidence neglected by these scholars. In their study of the laws from Crete,
Gagarin and P. Perlman draw attention to the fact that the statutes recorded on
stone are written in large letters obviously designed for clear legibility, and
that there is more evidence for literacy than Whitley assumed.90 J. P. Sickinger
has studied the public archive in Athens and observed that litigants had no
83
Thomas 1989, 69–70.
84
Gagarin 2008, 196, 197.
85
Ibid., 206.
86
Ibid., 209.
87
Ibid., 195. Lanni 2004 holds a similar view.
88
D. Cohen 2003, 96.
89
Frier and Kehoe 2007, 135.
90
Gagarin and Perlman 2016, 55–62. Cf. Gagarin 2008, 68–71.
problem finding the laws and decrees relevant for their cases.91 As M. Faraguna
has demonstrated, this extensive use of writing was not an innovation of the
middle of the fourth century BC in Athens, but was already present in the fifth
century BC.92 In an important study about literacy in Athens, C. Pébarthe lists
the numerous written documents used in litigation.93 Many private cases were
first sent to a public arbitrator, who attempted to reconcile the litigants or, if that
did not succeed, to propose a judgment. If either litigant refused to accept the
judgment, all the written documents including witness statements, challenges and
law were placed in a jar (echinos) to be presented at the trial in court ([Aristot.]
Ath. Pol. 53.2–3). At trials, litigants cite laws, decrees, contracts, wills, financial
documents, and inventories. In some cases records of previous trials were also
brought forward as evidence.94 In two important studies, Faraguna has shown that
the Athenians and other Greeks maintained many documents to prove ownership,
mainly records of sales.95 In a valuable collection of inscriptions, J. Game has
gathered numerous inscriptions relating to sales and transfer of property from
Amphipolis, the cities of the Chalcidice, Macedonia, the Cycladic islands, and
Sicily.96 At Athens, sellers were required to pay one percent of the sale price
as a way of recording the transaction (Theophr. fr. 21 [Szegedy-Maszak]), and
Lambert has published the epigraphical evidence for these sales.97 These legal
documents had a major impact on the nature of economic exchange. By providing
written proof of title, these records helped to expand transfers of property and
networks for credit outside the narrow circle of friends, family, and neighbors
and to integrate different parts of the city-state into one unified market.98 Written
contracts were also important in the leasing of land, and I. Pernin has collected
the leases preserved on stone from several Greek communities, showing that the
practice was very common.99
According to Aeschines (2.89; 3.75), written documents helped to protect
the rights of the innocent and to keep politicians accountable. And as Dio
Chrysostomus (31.51) observes, “[t]hen bear in mind that all men regard those
agreements as having greater validity that are concluded with the approval of
the state and are entered in the public records; and it is impossible for anything
91
Sickinger 1999 and 2004.
92
Faraguna 2017.
93
Pébarthe 2006, 315–344. Cf. Faraguna 2008.
94
See Harris 2013b.
95
Faraguna 1997 and 2000.
96
Game 2008.
97
Lambert 1997.
98
See Harris 2016c for the impact of property records on economic exchange. For the view that most
borrowing and lending were limited to the narrow circle of family, friends and neighbors: Millett 1991.
99
Pernin 2014.
thus administered to be cancelled, either in case one buys some land or a boat
or a slave from someone else, or if someone lends money to another person, or
frees a slave or makes a gift to someone.” The evidence of inscriptions clearly
corroborates these two statements and show that written documents played
an important role in public business, private transactions, litigation and legal
procedure in the Greek city-states.
The Laws of the Greek City-States in the Archaic Period

During the Archaic period (700–500 BC), many Greek communities started to
develop the state institutions that would become widespread in the following
centuries. This was also the period of the great lawgivers such as Solon, Lycurgus,
and Charondas. These lawgivers acquired almost mythical status and were
often credited with single-handedly rescuing their communities from anarchy
and violence through their legislation. As Szegedy-Maszak has observed, these
legends often fall into a fixed pattern in which there is violence and chaos in the
community, a lawgiver comes from the outside to provide a code, which restores
order, and after finishing his task, the lawgiver leaves.100 These legends were an
effective way of creating respect for the authority of the laws by linking them to
a charismatic figure. Instead of viewing the process of creating law as a gradual
process that stretched over centuries, Greek communities often attributed their
laws to a single lawgiver, who created an entire code of laws. This inevitably led to
historical distortions: Demosthenes (20.93–94) states that the rules about enacting
legislation were created by Solon, but the evidence shows that these rules were
actually created around 400 BC. The Spartans credited Lycurgus with creating
their laws, and both Xenophon in his Constitution of the Lacedaemonians and
Plutarch in his Life of Lycurgus followed this view. Most scholars now view the
laws of Sparta as the product of a gradual process over several centuries and not
the invention of a single genius at one decisive moment in time.101 There has been
much debate about the authenticity of the laws attributed to Solon, which have
been the subject of studies by E. Ruschenbusch and by D. Leao and Rhodes.102
Many of the literary sources for the early lawgivers come from late sources, the
reliability of which is often difficult to evaluate, but there are many inscriptions
which can be dated to the period before 450 BC that contain legal rules. Many
of these inscriptions can be dated by their letter forms thanks to the pioneering
work of L. Jeffery in her Local Scripts of Archaic Greece.103 One of the earliest
100
Szegedy-Maszak 1978.
101
See, for instance, MacDowell 1986 and Hodkinson 1997 and Hodkinson 2000.
102
See Ruschenbusch 1966 and 2010, and Leão and Rhodes 2015.
103
Jeffery 1990.
comes from Dreros on Crete and concerns the re-election of officials. Others
are very fragmentary and may contain only a few legible words. The main legal
inscriptions for the Archaic period have been collected in two valuable works:
Nomima: Recueil d’inscriptions politiques et juridiques de l’archaisme grec (two
volumes) by H. van Effenterre and F. Ruzé, and Inschriftliche Gesetzestexte der
frühen griechischen Polis by R. Koerner, which was edited posthumously by
K. Hallof. The work of van Effenterre and Ruzé is organized thematically under
several headings: civic identity (1: 25–162), the city in the Greek world (foreign
relations) (1: 163–250), powers of the state (1: 251–291), legal procedure (2:
19–82), rights of persons (2: 83–146), property (2: 147–280), criminal law (2:
281–304), rules about funerals (2: 307–314), about the environment (2: 315–
326), about roads (2: 328–338) and miscellaneous rules (2: 339–349). The work
of Koerner is organized by geographic regions and contains German translations
and commentary. For the early inscriptions of Crete, there is now The Laws of
Ancient Crete c. 650–400 BCE by Gagarin and Perlman. This is a very useful
collection of texts, but the analysis of their contents is not always reliable. For
instance, the authors translate the term dolos as “slave” and the term woikeus
as “serf” and assume that they refer to different statuses.104 The analysis of the
Cretan dialect also contains several mistakes; as M. Bile has written in a review,
the work “est donc à manier avec beaucoup de précaution.”105 From a historical
perspective, there is no attempt to place the laws of Crete in the context of
wider social and political developments in the period. For a study of Crete in the
Archaic and Classical period that places these laws in their broader historical
context, readers should consult the work of G. Seelentag.106
In his study of Early Greek Law, Gagarin attempted to discern an
evolutionary development of three stages during the Archaic period.107 The first
stage is “pre-legal” in which “the society has no recognized procedures for
peacefully settling disputes among its members” and in which legal disputes
were settled mainly by voluntary arbitration. The second stage is “proto-legal”
in which there are “recognizable procedures for settling disputes.” Gagarin
went as far as to claim that the word dikē referred only to legal procedure, but
this was refuted by M. Dickie, who showed that the word has a much broader
ethical meaning.108 The third or “legal” stage is one in which “a society has
104
For an excellent analysis of slave status in early Crete, see Lewis 2013. Gagarin and Perlman
2016, 85, n. 220 dismiss Lewis’ points without addressing them. Cf. Lewis 2018, 150–153 with the
references cited there.
105
Bile 2016–2017, 207.
106
Seelentag 2015.
107
Gagarin 1986, 9–10.
108
Dickie 1978.
recognized legal rules, as well as procedures, a step that almost always requires
the knowledge of writing.” Scholars have noted several problems with this rigid
schema. First, Gagarin denies that there were any laws in the strict sense before
laws were written down starting in the seventh century, but as K. Burchfiel
and E. Cantarella have noted, already in the period of the Homeric poems
individuals recognize the existence of norms, shape their conduct to conform
to these norms and resolve conflicts by applying these norms.109 C. Pelloso has
recently demonstrated that the word dikē in the Homeric poems can denote a
subjective right, which implies the existence of substantive norms.110 In a very
trenchant yet perceptive review of Early Greek Law, K.-J. Hölkeskamp showed
that Gagarin’s scheme is contradicted by the evidence of the laws dated to before
500 BC.111 Finally, Gagarin does not place these laws within the social and
political developments of the period and assumes that legal institutions follow an
evolutionary trajectory largely independent of their social and political contexts.
Some scholars such as Z. Papakonstantinou, S. Forsdyke and J. Hawke hold
that laws in the Archaic period were aimed primarily at restraining and managing
elite competition. Some laws may have been enacted for this purpose, but the
vast majority of laws enacted during this period were directed at regulating the
conduct of all members of the community. For instance, Solon’s law against
enslavement for debt clearly protected the most vulnerable members of society
and not the wealthy and powerful. 112 The law of the East Locrians about
Naupaktos contains rules about land affecting all citizens and does not just
pertain to the elite (Koerner 1993, no. 49). The same is true for the law of the
Locrians about Hyla and Liskara (Koerner 1993, no. 47).
A more fruitful way of approaching the laws of the Archaic period is to place
them in the context of the development of the polis, the political ideals of early
Greece and contemporary political institutions. In a series of studies and in an
extensive monograph, Hölkeskamp shows how early Greek laws reflect the
development of formal magistracies, which separated power from persons, the
division of jurisdictions and functions, and the relationship between officials and
citizens.113 The only weakness in Hölkeskamp’s analysis is that he views the laws
enacted by the early city-state as ad hoc-solutions to particular questions, which
does not do justice to the coherent aims of the early laws such as their intent to
protect the rights of individuals and to prevent tyranny (see above on the Unity of
Greek Law).
109
Cantarella 1987; Burchfiel 1994.
110
Pelloso 2013.
111
Hölkeskamp 1990.
112
See Harris 2006, 249–270.
113
Hölkeskamp 1992, 1999.
Nomothesia (Legislation)
During the Archaic period, it appears that the main laws were written by
lawgivers and approved by the community. Measures about specific matters
were enacted by the Assemblies of the Greek city-states. In the fifth century
BC, the Athenians enacted general provisions relating to all persons or to broad
categories of people, honors and privileges for individuals, and temporary ad
hoc-measures in the Assembly. In fact, the same measure could be called a nomos
(Xen. Hell. 1.7.23) and a psephisma (Xen. Hell. 1.7.20, 34). If the Assembly
wanted to make a measure permanent and difficult to overturn, the proposer
would add an entrenchment clause, which threatened harsh penalties for anyone
who proposed either modifications or to overturn the measure and for those who
put such proposals to a vote.114 After the overthrow of the Thirty and the restoration
of the democracy in 403 BC, the Athenians started to make a strict distinction
between psephismata (decrees) and nomoi (laws). A nomos was a general
measure, which applied to all people and was to remain in effect permanently.
In fact, there was a law passed in around 403 that forbid any law to be enacted
about an individual (Andoc. 1.87; 23.86; 24.59).115 A psephisma (decree) was a
measure about a particular situation and either was intended to apply for a short
time or was enacted for a specific individual. For instance, a decree might order
ambassadors to travel to Macedonia and present King Philip with proposals for
peace and alliance or to send a military expedition. Decrees about individuals
might take various forms, but two of the most numerous were decrees awarding
proxenies for foreigners who looked after Athenians in their native cities and
those awarding citizenship to individuals.116 There are several laws enacted in the
fourth century BC that have been preserved on stone. These concern the testing
of silver coinage,117 or taxes to be paid on the import and export of grain.118 Laws
were superior to decrees, and all decrees had to conform to the existing laws. In a
survey of all the laws and decrees from 403 to 322 BC, M. H. Hansen has shown
that the Athenians followed this distinction consistently. On the basis of the
text of a law found at Andocides’ On the Mysteries (1.87), Hansen claimed that
exceptions could be made to this rule, and laws for individuals could be enacted
if 6,000 voted, but this text is a forgery, and the information in it is not reliable.
The laws that Hansen identifies as exceptions to this rule can be interpreted in
a different way and certainly do not provide evidence for the authenticity of the
114
On entrenchment clauses, see Lewis 1997, 136–149 and Sickinger 2008.
115
See Canevaro and Harris 2012, and Canevaro 2013, 74–75, 145–150.
116
For proxeny decrees, see Mack 2015. For awards of citizenship, see M. J. Osborne 1981–1983.
117
For the editio princeps, see Stroud 1974.
118
For the editio princeps, see id. 1998.
document at Andocides.119 If someone proposed a decree that violated a law, an

accuser could bring a public action against an illegal decree (graphe paranomon)
against the proposer.120
There has been some controversy about the procedure for enacting new laws
(nomothesia). Scholars who have written on the procedure have relied primarily
on a document inserted into the text of Demosthenes’ speech Against Timocrates
(24.20–23), but have observed that the information contained in this document
appears to contradict evidence found in other sources. For instance, the document
states that the procedure for introducing new laws can be initiated only in
Hekatombaion, but inscriptions indicate that new laws could be passed at any
time during the year (IG II3/1 445 was enacted on the 8th of Skirophorion, IG II3/1
320 in the ninth prytany, IG II2 140 in the fifth, the seventh or the tenth prytany).
This led Harrison, MacDowell, Hansen and Rhodes to propose different ways of
reconciling the evidence, but none of the proposals was able to resolve the main
contradictions in the evidence.121 Recently, Canevaro examined the document
at Dem. 24.20–23 in detail and showed that it must be a forgery and does not
contain reliable evidence about the procedure.122 There are several grounds for
rejecting the authenticity of the document. First, the procedure described by
Demosthenes (24.19, 24–25) is for enacting new laws, but the document is about
approving all the laws and rejecting some. Second, Demosthenes states there was
a preliminary vote to allow new proposals, but the document specifies a vote for
existing laws section by section. Third, the document limits the procedure for
enacting new laws to the month of Hekatombaion, but Demosthenes, supported
by the evidence of inscriptions, states that the procedure could take any time
during the year. Fourth, the document provides for the election of five synegoroi
on 11th Hekatombaion, the same day or before new laws were presented. In his
account of the procedure, however, Demosthenes says that they were appointed
later in the process. The document also contains phrases and terminology that are
not consistent with those found in contemporary documents preserved on stone.
119
For detailed refutation of Hansen 2017, see Canevaro forthcoming.
120
On the graphe paranomon, see Hansen 1974 and Wolff 1970. Yunis 1988 has claimed that in
cases about graphe paranomon the courts could take political considerations into account, but this is
contradicted by the evidence for the decisions in these cases (e.g. Dem. 24.14) and by passages such
as Dem. 23.95–99, which states that such arguments were considered “shameful.” Yunis believes that
the court ignored the law at the trial of Ctesiphon in 330 BC, but this view does not take into account
crucial evidence from inscriptions and is unconvincing. For detailed refutation, see Harris 2013,
225–233, and 2017.
121
Harrison 1955, MacDowell 1975, Hansen 1979–1980, Rhodes 1984 and 1987.
122
Canevaro 2013a with a summary in 2013b, 94–102. Hansen 2016b has attempted to defend the
document’s authenticity, but his arguments are refuted in detail in Canevaro 2018, who presents
additional evidence against authenticity.
Once the unreliable information from the forged document is removed from
consideration, it is possible to use the information found in Demosthenes’
Against Leptines and Against Timocrates to reconstruct the procedure:
1) There was a preliminary vote in the Assembly about whether to invite
proposals for new laws (Dem. 24.25).
2) All new proposals had to be placed in front of the monument of the
Eponymous Heroes so that everyone could read them (Dem. 20.94; 24.25).
3) The secretary was to read out all proposals at every meeting of the Assembly
until nomothetai were appointed (Dem. 20.94).
4) During the third meeting of the Assembly, the people were to pass a decree
designating the nomothetai (Dem. 20.95; 24.25).
5) If there were any laws contrary to a law being proposed, the proposer had
to bring a public action against an inexpedient law (graphe nomon me epitedeion
theinai) to repeal these statutes (Dem. 20.93; 24.32, 34–35).
6) After opposing laws were repealed, the nomothetai enacted the new law.
The aim of the procedure was to preserve the integrity and the consistency of
the system of laws as a whole. As Demosthenes (20.93) states, “opposing laws
are repealed so that there is one law for each subject. This avoids confusion
for private individuals, who would be at a disadvantage in comparison to those
who are familiar with the laws. The aim is to make points of law the same
for all to read as well as simple and clear to understand” (trans. Harris). This
shows that the Athenians tried to implement two key features of the rule of law:
the accessibility to the law for average citizens and the absence of conflicting
statutes, which would have led to inconsistent decisions.
Another question remains: who were the nomothetai? In a recent essay,
Canevaro and Esu have drawn attention to a passage in which Aeschines (3.38–39)
describes a procedure to keep the laws consistent and to remove contradictory
laws.123 If the thesmothetai find any laws that conflict with each other, they are
to write them up on boards and place them in front of the Eponymous Heroes.
The prytaneis are then to call a meeting of the Assembly and to “write on”
(epigraphein) this meeting nomothetai. This must mean that at this meeting
of the Assembly the people sat as “legislators,” which is why all laws passed
in this period begin with the phrase “enacted by the legislators” (edoxe tois
nomothetais). Rhodes believes that the phrase just means that the prytaneis are
to put the appointment of the nomothetai on the agenda for the meeting, but this
is impossible because the passage does not mention an appointment, and because
the word for putting an item on the agenda is not epigraphein but prographein
123
Canevaro and Esu 2018.
([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 43.3). This analysis is confirmed by a passage in Against

Leptines in which Demosthenes (20.93–94) speaks about the powers of the
Athenian people in general and recalls how proposals for laws are read out many
times so that each person in the Assembly will enact legislation (hekastos hymôn ...
nomothetêi) after fully considering the merits of the proposals.
M. Ostwald and Hansen thought that the new procedures for legislation were
part of a package of reforms that marked a transition from popular sovereignty,
which prevailed in the fifth century BC under the so-called “radical democracy,”
to the sovereignty of law, which prevailed in the fourth century BC.124 According
to the Constitution of the Athenians (41.2) attributed to Aristotle, however, the
Athenian people still exerted control of all aspects of life in the community
through their decrees, their powers in the courts and their control of the Council
in the fourth century BC after these reforms.125 Other passages in the orators
agree with the view that the people continued to rule in Athens (Aeschin. 1.4–6;
3.6–7; Dem. 20.2–4, 102–103; [Dem.] 59.88). The new rules for nomothesia did
not take the process of legislation out of the hands of the people, who still made
the decision to set the procedures in motion and to approve the new laws. The
Athenians certainly believed in democracy in the fifth century BC, but they also
believed at the same time in the basic tenets of the rule of law before 403 BC:
the right to trials before impartial judges, resolution of legal disputes according
to fixed and stable rules, access to laws and legal procedures, and equality
before the law (Thuc. 2.37.1; Eur. Suppl. 429–437). Some have argued that the
Areopagus gained new powers toward the end of the fourth century and that
these powers made inroads on the powers of the Assembly.126 But even though
the Areopagus is mentioned more frequently after 350 BC than before, there is no
reason to believe that it acquired a new role, which undermined the sovereignty
of the people. The Areopagus could conduct investigations on its own initiative or
on the orders of the Assembly and submit a report (apophasis), but the Assembly
and courts still had the power to reject the proposals in the report or not to act on
its findings (Dem. 18,132; Din. 1.63). The Assembly might also delegate tasks to
the Areopagus, but this was no innovation: the Assembly also delegated tasks to
the Council in the fifth century BC (Andoc. 1.36; 65; cf. 14; IG I3 102, ll. 39–47).
In the fifth century BC as in the fourth century BC, the Athenians attempted to
uphold both democracy and the rule of law and did not see any conflict between
them.
124
Ostwald 1986; Hansen 1974.
125
On these points, see Harris 2016a.
126
Wallace 1989 has argued that the Areopagus gained new powers in the late fourth century BC.
Athenian Law and Legal Procedure

There were several studies of Athenian legal procedure in the nineteenth
century, culminating in the monumental work of J. Lipsius in the early
twentieth century.127 The general work of R. J. Bonner and G. Smith about the
administration of justice in Ancient Greece contained a long section on Athenian
legal procedure,128 and the second volume of Harrison’s The Law of Athens was
devoted to procedure.129 MacDowell produced a book for non-specialists on the
law of Athens,130 and Todd’s book The Shape of Athenian Law also contained
chapters on legal procedure.131 Recent work has focused on the role of law in the
decisions of the courts.
In an essay published in 2004, Rhodes argued that litigants in court tended to
keep to the point and not to include irrelevant statements in their speeches.132
Rhodes was reacting against studies by D. Cohen, who claimed that litigation in
Athens had very little to do with enforcing the law, but was a form of feuding, in
which powerful individuals competed with each other for status and prestige (see
below). Rhodes noted that litigants in private cases swore to “keep to the point”
and not to discuss matters outside the main issue (exo tou pragmatos). One also
finds litigants criticizing their opponents for introducing irrelevant material.
Though Rhodes’ reaction to D. Cohen’s approach was justified, his essay
contained several weaknesses. First, Rhodes never explained how the Athenians
knew what the point was, and how they determined what was relevant and what
was not. Second, Rhodes never analyzed any specific speeches in detail, and
many of his assertions about the contents of speeches are arbitrary. Third, Rhodes
never examined how topics like the performance of liturgies or statements about
character might be relevant to the legal issues at the trial. Fourth, Rhodes claimed
that the Athenians had a looser standard of relevance than modern courts, but
never explained how Athenian standards differed from modern standards. The
essay contains not a single reference to modern works about relevance either in
Common Law or in Civil Law.
In an essay published shortly after Rhodes’ essay, Thür commented briefly
on the topic of relevance and observed that the charges in the plaint (enklema)
submitted to the magistrate such as the thesmothetai indicated what was relevant
and what was not.133 If a litigant did not address these charges, the judges would
127
Lipsius 1905–1915.
128
Bonner and Smith 1930–1938.
129
Harrison 1971.
130
MacDowell 1978.
131
Todd 1993.
132
Rhodes 2004.
133
Thür 2007.
then give a shout (thorubos) to indicate their disapproval. But Thür did not
discuss the nature of the plaint, its contents, and the relationship between the
plaint and the law. For the most part, Thür relied on the passages collected by
Lipsius and Harrison about the plaint. In an essay on relevance, Gagarin followed
many of Thür’s points but also failed to connect the contents of the plaint with
the substantive aspect of the law.134 In an essay published in 2013, which is
summarized in his book The Rule of Law in Action, Harris collected the evidence
about the plaint neglected by previous scholars and showed that the accuser had
to draw up his charges in the plaint following the language of the substantive
part of the law he was following to bring his case.135 If he charged the defendant
with theft, he had to state that the defendant had stolen certain items belonging
to the accuser. If the accuser charged the defendant with proposing an illegal
decree, he had to include the laws the defendant had violated in his plaint. When
drawing up his eisangelia against Philocrates, Hyperides closely followed the
key substantive terms in the statute about eisangelia (Hyp. Eux. 29–30). This
has important implications for the understanding of the way the judges made
their decisions. The oath that the judges swore required them to vote according
to the laws and decrees of the Athenians, without favor or hostility toward either
litigant, with a most honest judgement, and to vote only about the charges in the
indictment.136 This meant that the judges had only two options: they could vote to
convict because the defendant had violated the law, or they could vote to acquit
because the accuser did not prove that the defendant had broken the law. There
was no other possibility. When litigants mention the verdicts of the courts, they
state that defendants were convicted because they violated a written statute, or
were acquitted because the accuser did not prove that they had violated a written
law.137 One litigant is reported to have argued that even though the defendant had
proposed an illegal decree, the court should still acquit him because the decree
was beneficial for the community. But this argument was regarded as shameless,
the kind of argument that judges would find offensive because it asked them to
violate their duty to vote according to the laws (Dem. 23.100–102).
A. Lanni has claimed that only the homicide courts and the so-called
“commercial courts” had a stricter and narrower standard of relevance, and that
the regular courts had a much broader standard of relevance by allowing litigants
to discuss a broad range of issues such as liturgies, and to appeal to pity.138 None
134
Gagarin 2012.
135
Harris 2013b and 2013a, 114–136.
136
On the judicial oath, see Harris 2013, 101–137.
137
For a list of all trials mentioned by litigants, see Harris 2018c.
138
Lanni 2006, passim. Lanni mistakenly believes that the commercial suits (dikai emporikai) were
tried in different courts, but these charges were brought in the same courts as other private charges.
of these claims is supported by the evidence from the speeches. First, liturgies
are mentioned only when they are somehow relevant to an aspect of the case
such a proof of wealth. Litigants occasionally mention liturgies to show that they
are good citizens, but these statements are often found in speeches about charges
of treason where the defendant uses his patriotism to show that he was unlikely
to have committed the crime of which he is accused (e.g. Aeschin. 2.167–170).
As D. Konstan has shown, litigants believe that only the innocent deserve pity;
those who are guilty do not merit compassion.139 When a defendant asks for pity
or a speaker says that a defendant deserves pity, the reason is that he is not guilty
of the charges against him. Pity does not operate independently and outside the
law; it is the proper emotional reaction for those unjustly accused who have not
broken the law. Finally, there is no reason to believe that the homicide courts
had a stricter standard of relevance. One finds similar arguments in both kinds of
speeches.140
D. Cohen takes a more extreme position and claims that litigation in Athenian
courts was a form of feuding. According to D. Cohen, trials in Athens were
battles for status and prestige, often between powerful leaders. Instead of
addressing the legal issues, litigants boasted about their public service or
character and attacked their opponents with insults and personal slander. Basing
himself mainly on Demosthenes’ Against Meidias, D. Cohen sees trials as
maneuvers in social struggles within the elite, which could be compared to
feuding in Medieval Iceland. This attitude to litigation resulted from the allegedly
“agonistic” ethic of Athenian culture.141
This approach, though differing from that of Lanni, is vulnerable to many of
the same objections and ignores the effect of the plaint and the duties of judges
expressed in the judicial oath. Despite occasional insults, litigants for the most
part address the legal charges in the plaint. Far from exhibiting an agonistic
ethic, litigants portray themselves as cooperative, peaceful and law abiding. As
G. Herman observes,
The arguments put forward by the litigants show that they hoped, quite
consistently, to enlist the dikasts’ support by parading themselves not as
vindictive, violent, explosive machos but as moderate citizens. This they did
by imputing feuding characteristics to their opponents (hence the abundance
139
Konstan 2000.
140
For detailed criticism of Lanni 2006, see Harris 2009–2010. Lanni 2016 repeats the points made
in 2006 without addressing any of the objections to her arguments.
141
D. Cohen 1995. Ober 1989 takes a similar approach to the courts, which he sees as an arena for
elite competition and as an institution by which the “mass” controlled the elite. The main problems
with this approach are that many Athenian litigants were not members of the elite and that the
Athenians saw the courts as an institution enforcing the laws passed in the Assembly.
of aggressive motives in the speeches) and gentle characteristics (self-restraint,

meekness, a low-key sense of honour and a total lack of any explosive or
aggressive disposition, for example) to themselves. In other words, they expected
to sway their mass audiences by distancing themselves as much as possible
from any suggestion that their actions might have been structured by feuding,
violence, or vengeance. This must mean that feuding, violence and vengeance
were behavioural patterns of which the dikasts, and hence the Athenian civic
population in general, strongly disapproved.142
When litigants discuss the reasons why a defendant was convicted, it is because
he is guilty of the charges, not because he had less power or prestige than his
opponent.143 But the most serious objection to D. Cohen’s approach is that
litigation in Classical Athens bears no resemblance to feuding in societies like
Medieval Iceland. As W. Miller has shown,144 feuding behavior exhibits certain
characteristics:
1. Feud is a [hostile] relationship between two groups.
2. Unlike ad hoc-revenge killing that can be an individual matter, feuding
involves groups that can be recruited by any number of principles, among which
kinship, vicinage, household, or clientage are most usual.
3. Unlike war, feud does not involve relatively large mobilizations, but only
occasional mustering for limited purposes. Violence is controlled; casualties
rarely reach double digits in any single encounter.
4. Feud involves collective liability. The target need not be the actual
wrongdoer, nor, for that matter, need the vengeance-taker be the person most
wronged.
5. A notion of exchange governs the process, a kind of my-turn/your-
turn rhythm, with offensive and defensive positions alternating after each
confrontation.
6. As a corollary to the preceding item, people keep score.
7. People who feud tend to believe that honor and affronts to it are the prime
motivators of hostilities. Cross-culturally, there appears to be a correlation
between the feud and a culture of honor.
8. Feud is governed by norms that limit the class of possible expiators and the
appropriateness of responses. For instance, most feuding cultures recognize a
rough rule of equivalence in riposte, the lex talionis being but one example.
9. There are culturally acceptable means for making temporary or permanent
settlements of hostility.
142
Herman 2000, 18.
143
See Harris forthcoming.
144
Miller 1990, 180–181.
Virtually none of these features can be found in Athenian litigation.145 In fact,

the Athenian courts had several rules that inhibited the development of feuding
such as the principle of res iudicata, penalties for frivolous prosecution in public
cases, and fines for losing private cases. 146 And out of-court settlements by
mediation or private arbitration were viewed a culturally more acceptable than
fighting out disputes in court.147
Relying on a passage from Against Androtion (Dem. 22.25–29), R. Osborne has
argued that several different procedures were available for each type of offense
and that the aim of this plurality of procedures was to enable those less powerful
to gain access to the legal system.148 There are several decisive objections to
this view. First, the passage from Against Androtion is highly tendentious and
should not be taken out of its rhetorical context. The information contained in
the passage is not reliable, and the speaker generalizes about the Athenian legal
system from a few isolated examples. Second, as Carey has shown, there are
major substantive differences between various legal procedures.149 For instance,
there were major substantive differences between the private action for theft
(dikē klopes) and the procedure of arresting thieves who were clearly guilty and
bringing them to the Eleven.150 Third, the way the Athenians made the courts
accessible was to make it easy for private citizens to bring charges and to uphold
the principle of equality before the law.
There have been several studies about specific aspects of Athenian legal
procedure. MacDowell has examined the epobolia, the penalty of one-sixth
the amount claimed imposed of plaintiffs who lost private cases.151 Pelloso has
studied the meaning of the term ephesis and shown that it is not similar to the
term “appeal” in modern law, but simply refers to a litigant’s right to reject a
legal decision and have the case tried in another venue. L. Rubinstein has studied
the role of supporting speakers in Athenian trials.152
The nature of the paragraphe (counter-suit) procedure has also given rise
to debate. If an accuser brought a private action that was barred by statute, the
defendant could bring a counter suit to bar the action. Paoli noticed that in the
145
For an analysis of several conflicts between individuals that do not conform to this type of
behavior, see Harris 2013a, 76–98. Despite the obvious flaws in Cohen’s approach Phillips 2008 also
believes that Athenian litigation was a form of feuding.
146
For these and other measures discouraging feuding, see Harris 2103b, 70–76.
147
On the aims of public arbitrators and their implications for the ethos of Athenian litigation, see
Harris 2018a.
148
Osborne 1985.
149
Carey 2004.
150
See Harris 2006, 373–390.
151
MacDowell 2008.
152
Rubinstein 2000.
speeches in the Demosthenic corpus delivered in paragraphe-cases, the litigants

discuss not only the procedural issue (was the action barred by statute or not?),
but also the substantive issue (was the defendant guilty of the charge and liable
for damages?).153 This led Paoli to argue that the court heard both cases at once
and decided about the procedural and the substantive issue together. H.-J. Wolff
challenged this view and analyzed all the paragraphe-speeches in some detail.154
He drew attention to passages in which the litigant emphasizes the point that the
accuser’s suit is not actionable, but he was forced to claim that many passages in
these speeches dealt with irrelevant material or deliberately misrepresented the
law. Many scholars sided with Wolff, but E. Carawan and M. Talamanca tried
to support Paoli’s view.155 In a recent essay, Harris shows that Paoli and Wolff
are each partly right and partly wrong.156 Paoli was right that litigants do argue
about the merits of the accuser’s suit, but that is because the procedure allowed
the defendant to bring a paragraphe because there was no “actionable liability.”
This is the meaning of the term symbolaion in the statute about maritime cases,
which could be brought only if the defendant had incurred liability either through
a delict or a failure to abide by the terms of a contract on a voyage either from or
to Athens. The procedure was an attempt to deter frivolous and malicious actions
as several litigants state explicitly (Dem. 33.2; 36.2). On the other hand, Wolff was
correct to state that the court vote first about whether the suit could go forward.
If the court rejected the paragraphe brought by the defendant, the main case was
then tried in court with the difference that in the second hearing the court not only
heard arguments about liability but also about the amount of the damages to be
paid by the defendant. Wolff rightly noted that litigants make a distinction between
euthydikia (straight trial without any delay) and the use of the paragraphe. If
both the paragraphe and the main case were tried together as Paoli and Carawan
believe, this distinction would make no sense. Recent translations such as those of
MacDowell need to be completely revised in the light of these findings.157
Hansen has produced a monograph on the procedure of eisangelia, a special
procedure for three types of crimes: 1) attempts to overthrow the democracy,
2) treason and betrayal of the armed forces, and 3) bribery of public speakers
(Hyp. Eux. 7–9).158 Hansen believes that the procedure had its origins in the
fifth century BC, and that trials on this procedure were originally tried in the
153
Paoli 1933.
154
Wolff 1966.
155
Harrison 1971, and Isager and Hansen 1975 side with Wolff. Carawan 2011 and Talamanca 2017
side with Paoli.
156
Harris 2015a.
157
MacDowell 2004a.
158
Hansen 1975.
Assembly before being transferred to the courts around the middle of the fourth
century BC. The main problem with Hansen’s analysis is that many of the trials
he considers cases of eisangelia do not use this word to describe the procedure
and appear rather to be cases brought by ad hoc-procedures in the Assembly (e.g.
the trial of the generals in the Assembly in 406 BC: Dem. 19.276–279). A new
study of the procedure is a desideratum. Hansen has also produced a study of
the various procedures used against atimoi, kakourgoi (criminals), and exiles.159
Much of the study, however, relies on the document inserted into the text of
Andocides 1.77–79, which has now been shown to be a forgery.160 Hansen also
believes that atimia originally meant “outlawry” and gave citizens the right to kill
the atimos with impunity, but this view has rightly been criticized and rejected.161
Finally, Hansen’s analysis of Aeschin. 1.90–92, which is key to understanding
the legal category of kakourgoi, is very problematic.162
There has been some debate about the role of witnesses in an Athenian court.
The traditional view was that witnesses were expected to provide evidence
about key facts to the judges, but S. C. Todd questioned this view and argued
that the main role of witnesses was to show that the litigant who presented them
enjoyed greater social backing in the community.163 S. Humphreys claimed that
the evidence that the witnesses provided was less important than their identity
and social status.164 In an extensive critique of both these views, Rubinstein
drew attention to the fact that in roughly half of passages in which witnesses
are called to testify, the litigant does not identify them by name or discuss their
social status or political activity. 165 When litigants explain why a witness is
called, they often say that they have summoned the witness because he knows
the facts and was present at key events relevant to the case. Finally, the existence
of a private action against false testimony (dikē pseudomartyrion) shows that
the laws expected witnesses to tell the truth, considered that their main duty and
penalized witnesses when they did nor perform their duty. Carey has written on
the procedure of issuing summons to witnesses.166 Thür has studied the torture
of slaves for evidence in Athenian legal procedure and argued that it was mainly
a rhetorical ploy and was not used to settle disputes.167 Mirhady objected to this
159
Hansen 1976.
160
See Canevaro and Harris 2016–2017, 10–33.
161
Joyce 2018.
162
See Harris 2006, 291–293 with endorsements at 293–295.
163
Todd 1990.
164
Humphreys 2007.
165
Rubinstein 2005.
166
Carey 1995.
167
Thür 1977.
approach and drew attention to evidence showing that the torture of slaves did
actually occur and could be used to end a dispute.168
Litigants might also use private arbitrators to mediate or make a decision in
their disputes. These decisions were considered legally binding. In the fourth
century BC, if someone attempted to bring a private suit in a case already
resolved by arbitration, his opponent could bring a paragraphe to prevent
the case from going forward. Around 400 BC the Athenians instituted public
arbitrators, and certain cases had to go first before these public arbitrators, who
would attempt to mediate the dispute or give a judgment in the case. If both
litigants accepted the mediation or the judgment, the case would be settled, but
if either litigant did not accept the settlement or decision, the evidence from the
arbitration would be placed in an echinos, and the case would be presented to a
court. At the trial no new evidence could be presented ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 53.1–
7). There have been studies of private and public arbitration by A. Steinwenter,
H. C. Harrell, V. Hunter, and A. Cozzo. 169 Harris compares the advantages
and disadvantages of private arbitration and trials in court, and shows how the
institution of public arbitrators was an attempt to keep the advantages of private
arbitration while avoiding the disadvantages.170
On legal procedures in communities outside Athens, there is a valuable study
by A. Cassayre.171
Homicide Law
In Classical Athens, homicide was considered the most serious crime. In Against
Leptines, Demosthenes (20.157) says that the most important goal of the laws is
to prevent people from killing each other. Homicide was prosecuted as a private
offense (dikē) by the relatives of the deceased, but the procedures for homicide
differed from those in other private cases: 1) the accuser had to swear a solemn
oath about the truth of his charges calling down destruction on himself for a false
accusation, 2) the basileus who accepted the charge banned the defendant from
the agora and religious ceremonies, 3) the trial was preceded by three hearings
(prodikasiai), 4) cases were tried by special courts, 5) trials were held in the open
air, 6) the successful accuser swore an oath asserting the justice of his charges.
There are several speeches about homicide in the works of the Attic orators:
On the Murder of Eratosthenes, Against Eratosthenes, and Against Agoratus
168
Mirhady 1996.
169
Steinwenter 1925, Harrell 1936, Hunter 1994, 55–62 and Cozzo 2014. On the account of
arbitration in Scafuro 1997, see MacDowell 1998 and Harris 2018a, 214, n. 6.
170
Harris 2018a.
171
Cassayre 2010.
of Lysias (1, 12, 13) and three speeches by Antiphon (1, 5, 6). The Tetralogies
attributed to Antiphon, but probably written by another author, also deal with
hypothetical cases of homicide.172 One of the best sources for homicide law is
Demosthenes’ speech Against Aristocrates, which contains a long section about
the laws of Draco and the different homicide courts (Dem. 23.22–84).173 The
basic features of homicide law are clear. First, there was a charge of intentional
homicide, which was tried at the Areopagus ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 57.3; Dem.
23.22–23). One still finds the translation “homicide with premeditation” for the
term phonos ek pronoias, but several passages make it clear that this covered
all cases in which the defendant acted intentionally, not just those in which he
planned ahead.174 The penalty was death if the defendant remained in Athens
for the verdict. If the defendant left before the verdict, he was condemned
to permanent exile and the confiscation of his property (Dem. 21.43). If the
defendant committed involuntary homicide, that is, he was responsible for the
death of the victim, which however occurred against his will, he was tried at the
Palladion ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 57.3; Dem. 23.71–73). If he was convicted, he
would go into exile until he was pardoned by the relatives (Dem. 37.59). There
were complex rules governing the rights of the man convicted on this charge
while in exile. If the person accused of homicide admitted that he had killed
but claimed that he did so justly or according to the laws, he was tried at the
Delphinion ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 57.3; Dem. 23.74–75). There were also courts in
Phreatto and at the Prytaneion for special cases of homicide.
Because of its importance and the numerous sources, homicide law has
attracted much attention from legal historians; since 1963, there have been at
least six books devoted to the topic.175 The first book to attempt to collect the
evidence for this offense was MacDowell. The book still retains its value as a
collection of sources, but several of MacDowell’s views are no longer accepted.
More seriously, MacDowell did not place the laws and procedures for homicide
within the broader context of the nature of the polis and its political institutions.
MacDowell starts with an analysis of the purpose of the laws about homicide
and weighs the role of vengeance, deterrent and religious pollution (1–8; cf.
141–150). He next studies the role of the family but argued that others besides
the relatives of the victim might bring a charge of murder (8–32) and the role of
the basileus, the official who received charges of murder (33–38), the different
courts for homicide (39–89), the use of oaths witnesses penalties and pardon and
172
There is an edition of the speeches attributed to Antiphon with commentary in Gagarin 1997 with
discussion of the authorship of the Tetralogies.
173
For translation and notes, see Harris 2018c, 35–60.
174
See Harris 2013, 182–189. The term is mistranslated by Stroud 1978 and Wallace 1989, 125.
175
MacDowell 1963; Tulin 1996; Carawan 1998; Phillips 2008; Eck 2012; Pepe 2012.
alternative procedures for homicide (130–140).

MacDowell’s view that others than relatives could bring a private charge of
homicide was rejected in a detailed study by A. Tulin, whose analysis MacDowell
accepted.176 In 2001 Harris, drawing on work by Gagarin, showed that the verb
kteinein (“to kill”) included both cases where the offender killed with his own
hand or by direct causality and also cases in which the offender caused death
indirectly, for instance, by ordering another person to kill.177 The private charge
of planning (dikē bouleuseos) was brought in cases of attempted homicide, not
for cases where the offender caused death by plotting, as MacDowell believed
(60–69). Finally, MacDowell believed that beliefs about pollution did not have
much influence on the laws about homicide. In a general study of ideas about
pollution, R. Parker took a similar view and argued that beliefs about pollution
for homicide originated in the Homeric period when there were no strong
political and legal institutions, but faded as the state and the courts grew strong
and took over the role of policing murder.178 This approach has much in common
with the views of K. Latte, who argued that religious rituals played a large role
in legal procedure when central authority was weak.179 In a study published in
2015, Harris showed that there is no evidence for pollution for homicide in the
Iliad and the Odyssey.180 For instance, Orestes who is considered polluted in
Attic tragedy, is never considered polluted in Homeric epic. Far from weakening,
the view that homicide caused pollution remained strong in the fourth century
and later. A recently published inscription from Thyateira in Asia Minor shows
that concerns about pollution caused by homicide remained strong down to
the second century BC.181 Beliefs about pollution for homicide expressed the
community’s views about the gravity of the offence, which posed a unique threat
to the state’s attempt to monopolize the use of deadly force.182 One should not
consider pollution some irrational force existing outside legal institutions; the
rules about pollution were enacted by the institutions of the polis and attempted
to harness the forces of religion to deter violence and encourage all citizens to
enforce the law and uphold the authority of the state.
MacDowell did not discuss the inscription recording the republication of
Draco’s law about homicide in 409/408 BC. The inscription was found in the
176
Tulin 1996 with MacDowell 1997.
177
Harris 2001 = Harris 2006, 391–404. Additional evidence for the view that attempted homicide
could also be prosecuted and caused pollution, can be found at Liv. 45.5.
178
Parker 1983, 104–143. Eck 2012 follows Parker.
179
Latte 1920. Parker 2005, 68–79 later criticized Latte’s views for their evolutionist assumptions.
180
See Harris 2015b which has been endorsed by Todd 2016 and Phillips 2016.
181
Malay and Petzl 2017. For more evidence against Parker’s view, see Harris forthcoming.
182
For the state and its powers in Classical Athens, see Harris 2013, 21–59.
middle of the nineteenth century, and U. Köhler published a text with bold
restorations in the parts where no letters could be read. 183 R. S. Stroud re-
examined the stone and in 1968 published a new text of the law, which however
accepts most of Köhler’s supplements for the gaps in the inscription but claimed
to find new letters confirming Köhler’s readings.184 The main puzzling feature of
the inscription is that it does not appear to include any provision about intentional
homicide. Stroud argued that these provisions were recorded on the lower part of
the stone where virtually all the letters have been erased. In a study published in
1981, Gagarin argued that Draco’s law made no distinction between the penalties
for intentional and involuntary homicide.185 In both cases, the punishment was
exile. Gagarin followed Köhler’s restoration of the crucial line 11, but argued that
the words kai ean did not mean “and if he kills intentionally” but “even if he kills
intentionally.” Although Carawan followed Gagarin’s view, this interpretation
has been widely rejected, yet no scholar has yet offered a satisfactory explanation
for the fact the law starts with the word kai (“and”). Both Stroud and Gagarin
believed that lines 33–35 contained a provision exonerating a defendant who had
killed after the victim had “started unjust blows.”186 In a recent study, Harris re-
examined the stone and found that this phrase cannot be read in the letters that
are preserved on the stone.187 The phrase was mistakenly restored from Antiphon
(4.2.1–2). In fact, Demosthenes (23.50) clearly implies that this phrase was not to
be found in the laws about homicide, but in the laws about assault (aikeia).
In 1998, Carawan published a study, which took an evolutionary view of
homicide law in Archaic and Classical Athens. He saw procedures for homicide
developing from a primitive stage in which “the plaintiff’s subjective grievance
and what they intend to do about it are of more immediate importance than
the objective reality of what the defendant actually did” (extrinsic formal
rationalism) to a stage in which “the questions of legal responsibility that
statute law defined were ordinarily submitted to citizen juries to decide for the
community the objective reality of who had done wrong.”188 He further claims
that earlier forms of proofs such as the use of oaths and the torture of slaves
persisted in homicide procedure when they were becoming outmoded in other
forms of procedure.189 Carawan’s evolutionary schema is hard to reconcile with
the evidence of the speeches about homicide and other offenses: the use of
183
Köhler 1867.
184
Stroud 1968.
185
Gagarin 1981.
186
Stroud 1968; Gagarin 1981.
187
Harris 2016b.
188
Carawan 1998, 26.
189
Ibid., 27.
oaths and the torture of slaves can be found in speeches about murder and other
charges such as false testimony (e.g. Dem. 47). In his analyses of Antiphon 1
and Antiphon 6, Carawan also relies on the ideas of Thür about the prominence
of oaths and oath challenges in early legal procedure, which have not gained
wide acceptance and have encountered much criticism. He also accepts Parker’s
views about the fading of fears about pollution in the Classical period and does
not take into account the evidence showing that these fears persisted into the
Hellenistic period. This undermines his evolutionary approach. The monograph
of D. D. Phillips interprets homicide in Athens in terms of the concept of feuding
(on the absence of feuding in Athens, see the section on Legal Procedure and
Litigation).190
Although there is little evidence from other communities, it appears that
many of the basic principles in the Athenian laws about homicide were shared
by other Greeks. In a speech of Lysias (1.1), the speaker states that all Greeks
whether they live in democratic or oligarchic communities recognize the right
of men to kill someone who seduces their wives or young daughters (moichos).
Many communities also permitted citizens to kill a tyrant with impunity. 191
The principle that the person who attempted to commit murder or commanded
someone else to commit murder was also guilty of homicide, can also be seen
in an incident that took place on the island of Samothrace in the second century
BC when Evander was banned from the sanctuary because he was polluted
from an attempt to kill King Eumenes (Liv. 45.5). An anecdote about a statue
of the athlete Theogenes on Thasos killing a man refers to the law of Draco,
which indicates that the laws of Athens about homicide were followed in other
communities (Paus. 6.11.6). And a decree of Alexander the Great reveals that all
Greeks considered murderers to be ritually polluted (Diod. Sic. 17.109.1; 18.8.4).
This is another case in which the laws of the Greek city-states exhibited many
similarities, which makes it possible to speak of the “unity of Greek Law.”
Law and Religion

Greek Religion is a topic of perennial fascination among Classical scholars, but
it has not attracted much attention from legal historians until recently. In the past,
it was fashionable to believe that the laws and legal procedures of early Greece
were rooted in religious rituals such as the oath-challenge and the ordeal, but that
190
Phillips 2008.
191
Teegarden 2014 collects these laws, but does not see how there were laws against tyranny
earlier than 410 BC. He also mistakenly believes that the document at Andoc. 1.96–98 is a genuine
document and can be dated to 409/408 BC, but see Harris 2013–2104, which shows that this
document is a forgery and the decree of Demophantos should be dated to after the Thirty, as stated by
Lycurgus’ Against Leocrates 124.
the law gradually freed itself from its religious shackles and became “rational” by
the Classical period when statutes drew their legitimacy from popular sovereignty
and not from religious authority. In a well-known essay, L. Gernet attempted to
trace the survivals of “pre-law” in later legal procedures,192 and M. Ostwald, who
drew on the work of R. Hirzel, claimed to see a gradual transition from thesmos,
law grounded in traditional authority and imposed from above, to nomos, law
based on the sovereignty of the people.193 The problem with Ostwald’s view is
that the two words thesmos and nomos are used interchangeably, and there is
no clear shift from one term to the other.194 The work of Parker on pollution for
homicide is influenced by these ideas. Parker believes that the belief that murder
created pollution, which might threaten the entire community originated in the
Homeric period when central authority was weak, and faded when the polis grew
strong, but, as we saw in the section on Homicide, this view clashes with the
evidence of our sources.
The study of law and religion has been greatly enriched by the publication of
four volumes of so-called leges sacrae by F. Sokolowski and E. Lupu.195 The
volumes of Sokolowski were based on collections by J. Prott and L. Ziehen,
which were begun but never completed. The first volume by Sokolowski was
intended as a supplement to the work of Prott and Ziehen, but Sokolowski then
re-edited those found in Prott and Ziehen. Recently, Lupu has collected the leges
sacrae published since the volumes of Sokolowski. Several of the texts in these
collections as well as some other texts not included by Sokolowski and Lupu
are now available online at the valuable website Corpus of Greek Ritual Norms
with Greek texts, translations into English and French and brief commentaries in
English. The collection is, however, limited mainly to texts about sacrifice and
purification.
The term leges sacrae has recently drawn criticism for several reasons. In
2004, Parker observed that no one had ever attempted to analyze the term
and that scholars “often behave as if the texts assembled in Sokolowski are
sacred laws, and sacred laws are the texts assembled in Sokolowski.”196 Parker
examined the regulations about religious matters found in laws and decrees and
drew attention to the fact that they were enacted in most Greek city-states by
the Council and the Assembly, that is, the same bodies that enacted laws and
decrees about non-religious matters, but this accounted for only a portion of the
texts in the four collections. M. Carbon and V. Pirenne-Delforge have also drawn
192
Gernet 1948–1949 = Gernet 1968, 7–119.
193
Ostwald 1969; Hirzel 1907.
194
Hölkeskamp 2002.
195
Sokolowski 1955, 1962 and 1969; Lupu 2005.
196
Parker 2004, 58.
attention to the problems encountered when using the term “sacred laws” and
prefer to speak of “ritual norms.”197 S. Georgoudi has made a similar point about
the inadequacy of the term “sacred laws.”198
In a valuable preface to his collection of what he calls “sacred laws,” Lupu
analyzes the different aspects of religious practices that were regulated by the
city-state, subdivisions of the polis and by private associations. But he does not
offer a typology of these rules or analyze the different authorities who issued
and enforced them. Harris has now proposed a typology for classifying the texts
in the four volumes of so-called leges sacrae according to the authority that
enacted and enforced the regulation and for distinguishing laws and decrees
about sacred matters from other types of documents such as calendars, contracts,
and accounts.199 He has also made a distinction between the standard forms of
laws and decrees of the state and the by-laws of private associations and “signs,”
that is, notices placed in shrines with brief orders commanding certain groups
of people to stay out or to enter in a certain way or instructing worshippers what
offerings to make or not to make.
At the highest level of authority there are regulations created by federal leagues
or international bodies like the Delphic Amphictyony or other Panhellenic
sanctuaries. Next are regulations enacted by the city-state. This is a rather large
category and includes regulations about many different matters such as public
priesthoods, calendars for public cults, the building and maintenance of public
shrines, and rules about public festivals such as the Dionysia at Athens. Beneath
this level are the regulations enacted by the subdivisions of the city-state such
as tribes (phylai) and demes. There are also regulations for private associations,
which often imitate the institutions of the city-state and are subject to the laws
of the community, but operate independently, formulate their own rules, make
decisions about accepting new members and excluding those who disobey, and
can impose fines for infractions of their rules. These private associations can
be based on cults established by a particular family such as the association of
Poseidonius (LSAM no. 72 = Syll.3 1044) and Diomedon (LSCG no. 177). With
the help of Carbon, Harris has now classified the texts in Sokolowski’s three
volumes.200
Rituals such as oaths and curses figure prominently in some laws, which
led Latte to argue that these religious elements were relics preserved from an
earlier period when legal and political institutions were weak and when the
197
Carbon and Pirenne-Delforge 2012.
198
Georgoudi 2010.
199
Harris 2015c.
200
These are available at the Kernos website.
Greeks had to rely on the gods to enforce their social rules. As Rubinstein has
shown, however, the Greeks continued to include curses against offenders
alongside penalties to be imposed by human authorities right down through the
Hellenistic period. A project at Nottingham has recently compiled a database
for oaths and published several volumes about the role of oaths in the Greek
world. A. Sommerstein and A. Bayliss discuss the role of oaths in court in their
synthesis about oaths.201 Oaths could take various forms. Officials might swear
an oath to perform their duties according to the law (e.g. [Aristot.] Ath. Pol.
55.5). Judges at Gortyn and arbitrators in Athens would swear an oath before
rendering judgment. Litigants might also challenge opponents in court to swear
an oath about a certain fact relevant to the case or swear an oath before making
a statement to enhance their credibility.
One topic in religion that has drawn the interest of legal historians is the crime
of impiety (asebeia). The most famous cases of impiety in Athens were the
trials for those who desecrated the Herms and parodied the Mysteries in 415 BC
(Thuc. 6.28–29, 53, 60–61; Andocides’ On the Mysteries), the trial of Socrates
for impiety (Plato’s Apology of Socrates) and the prosecution of Andocides
for not respecting the ban on participation in the Mysteries, both in 400/399
BC (Andocides’ On the Mysteries). There are also several trials of intellectuals
for impiety in the fifth century BC, but these come from late sources, and the
information about them may not be reliable.202 D. Cohen has argued that there
was no definition of the term “impiety,” and this meant that the courts would
interpret the term in different ways at different times and not judge cases of
impiety in any consistent way.203 Yet the absence of any definition of the offense
in the statute about impiety need not imply that the term might mean anything
litigants would want it to mean. The term “illegal” in the statute about the public
procedure against illegal decrees also did not define the term “illegal,” but this
was not necessary because what was illegal was specified by individual statutes.
For instance, when Aeschines brought an action for proposing an illegal decree
against Ctesiphon, he charged that Ctesiphon had violated three specific laws
about decrees (Aeschin. 3.9–50). When defendants were charged with impiety,
their accusers cited specific laws. For example, the orator Apollodorus reports
that the hierophant Archias was punished because “he had sacrificed on the altar
in the courtyard at Eleusis a victim brought by the courtesan Sinope when it was
illegal to sacrifice on that day and when not he, but the priestess had the right
to perform the sacrifice” ([Dem.] 59.116–117). There is no reason to believe
201
Sommerstein and Torrance 2014. See also the essays in Sommerstein and Bayliss 2012.
202
On these trials, see Filonik 2013 with references to earlier scholarship.
203
D. Cohen 1991, 203–217.
that litigants and the courts could make the term “impiety” mean anything they
wanted it to mean. At Athens, there was also a special procedure for passing a
motion of censure against those who committed an offense against the festival of
Dionysus or the Eleusinian Mysteries. At a meeting of the Assembly held after
each festival, any citizen could charge a participant with having “wronged” the
festival of the god (Dem. 21.8–11).204 One offense was to seize defaulting debtors
during the festival or to use violence to disrupt the peaceful atmosphere of the
rites (Dem. 21.175–180). If the Assembly agreed with the accuser, it would pass
a motion of censure (Dem. 21.1–4; Aeschin. 3.52). There was no other penalty,
but the accuser could bring another, separate charge against the offender as
Demosthenes did against Meidias when he charged him with hybris.205
One ritual that became a legal procedure and included legal elements was
supplication (hikesia). The ritual of supplication contained four basic steps, the
first three performed by the suppliant, and the fourth being the decision made by
the person supplicated or supplicandus. In the first step the suppliant approached
the person or group whom he or she wanted to supplicate. The person or group
would naturally be those who were in a position to grant the request. In the
second step, the suppliant would perform a gesture to indicate that he or she was
making a solemn request. When someone supplicated a private individual, he or
she might grasp the knees of the supplicandus. J. Gould thought that grasping
the knees was a quasi-magical gesture, which had the power to compel the
supplicandus to grant the request,206 but as Naiden has shown, several suppliants
who make this gesture are actually rejected, and their supplicandi suffer no
harm as a result (e.g. Iliad 6.37–67).207 Alternatively, the suppliant might carry
a bough (Iliad 1.14). When suppliants wished to appeal to an entire community,
they would go to a public altar to convey their intention (Hdt. 6.108.4). In the
third phase of the ritual, suppliants would present their requests and use various
arguments to persuade the supplicandus. These arguments might include legal
claims. In the fourth step, the supplicandus would make his decision. He would
have to weigh the arguments of the suppliant and determine if the request was
justified. If he found the request persuasive he would grant the request and invite
the suppliant to rise (Iliad 24.515–516). If he rejected the request, he might thrust
the suppliant away or avert his gaze.
The Athenians formalized the ritual for public supplication and placed
supplication on the agenda of the Assembly ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 43.6). An
204
The documents at Dem. 21.8 and 10 are forgeries. See Harris in Canevaro 2013, 211–223.
205
On the probole, see Harris 2008, 79–81 with references to earlier discussions.
206
Gould 1973.
207
Naiden 2006.
incident described in Demosthenes’ Against Timocrates (24.11–12) illustrates

how the procedure worked. During a diplomatic mission, two Athenian trierarchs
seized goods belonging to people of Naucratis and brought them back to Athens.
The owners of the goods came to Athens and supplicated the Assembly with a
request to recover their property. The Assembly however declined their request
on the grounds that the property owned by foreign enemies but seized by
Athenians belonged to the state (see Pritchett 1971, 85–92). Even though the
procedure was grounded in religious ritual, the decision about the request was
made on legal grounds. In 333/332 BC, a group of merchants from Cition on
Cyprus made a supplication to the Assembly to establish a shrine to Aphrodite,
the patron goddess of the island (IG II3 337). The politician Lycurgus moved that
because the merchants had made a legitimate supplication (ennoma hiketeuein),
their request should be granted, and the Assembly voted to grant them the right
to acquire land (normally forbidden to foreigners except for those who obtained
a special grant of enktesis – see Pecirka 1966). In contrast to the request of the
merchants from Naucratis, the request of the merchants from Cition had legal
justification and was therefore granted (for other cases, see IG II3 302 (346/345
BC); 418 (before 336/335 BC)). What is interesting in supplication is the
combination of religious ritual and legal rules. One cannot separate the two and
assign them to different stages of social evolution. On the contrary, both exist
side by side without any visible conflict.
The organization of international shrines and festivals often involved legal
arrangements between communities. Before Panhellenic festivals, the host city
would declare a truce and conclude individual truces with all cities sharing in
the event so that participants could travel safely to Olympia, Delphi, Nemea,
the Isthmus and Eleusis (e.g. IG I3 6 = LSS 3 = IEleusis 19). The Council of
Amphictyons who controlled the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi had extensive
legal powers to keep order and could impose penalties on both individuals and
entire communities. A copy of an Amphictyonic law dated before 380/379 BC
indicated the wide range of the council’s jurisdiction (IG II2 1126 = LSCG no.
78 = Syll.3 145). The law sets down rules about sacrificial victims, (ll. 13–14),
buildings in the sanctuary (ll. 21–26), repairs (ll. 34–40), roads and bridges
(ll. 40–43), and the length of the sacred truce (ll. 43–49). If a hieromnemon,
an official representative from a city belonging the the Amphictyony, does not
contribute to repairs, his city can be banned from the sanctuary (ll. 39–40). The
same penalty is imposed on those city-states which do not accept the sacred
truce (ll. 47–48). One penalty clause appears to call for the Amphictyons to
declare war on a community that violates rules about sacred land (ll. 19–21).
This penalty was taken very seriously: in 340/339 BC, Aeschines (3.118–21)
accused the Amphissans of cultivating sacred land, which led to a declaration

of war against the Amphissans (Aeschin. 3.122–129). The Greeks also took
violations of the sacred truce for the Olympic games very seriously. When the
Spartans were accused of violating the truce in 420 BC, they were banned from
the games. When one of their citizens attempted to participate in the games,
he was severely beaten (Thuc. 5.49.1–50; cf. Xen. Hell. 3.2.21; Paus. 5.2.2).
When the people of Trichonium arrested the men sent to announce the truce for
the Eleusinian Mysteries in 367/366, the Athenians sent an official embassy to
protest (SEG XXXII 57). Certain sanctuaries were granted the right of asylia,
which granted them special protection in international law.208 Sanctuaries also
issued special rules for theoroi, officials appointed by communities to represent
them at international festivals.209 The rules for festivals could be extensive and
detailed: the law about the Mysteries at Andania is 194 lines long and contains
many clauses with references to several officials and public bodies.210
Law and Economy

The ancient Greeks were well aware of the connection between the rule of law
and economic growth. Writing in the late fifth century or fourth century BC, the
author of a work entitled the Anonymous Iamblichi noted:
Trust (or credit) is the first advantage gained from law and order (eunomia),
which brings the greatest advantages to all men and is responsible for the
greatest benefits. For as a result of this goods come into common use, and thus
even if there is a little, these goods are sufficient because they are circulating;
without this (sc. law and order) not even if there were many goods, would they
be sufficient. Men’s fortunes in wealth and in life, whether they be good or bad,
are governed to their greatest advantage as a result of law and order; the former
can be enjoyed in safety and without threat of attack, while the unfortunate are
helped by the fortunate because of the interaction and trust that arises from law
and order. (...) The following are the evils that come from lawlessness: first,
men lack the security to pursue their work and devote themselves to what is
most unpleasant, intrigues and not work, and they hoard up their goods and do
not share them through distrust and lack of contact, and in this way goods grow
scarce even if they are plentiful. (trans. Harris)
208
On asylia, see Rigsby 1996.
209
On theoroi, see Perlman 2000 and Rutherford 2013.
210
See Deshours 2006 and Gawlinski 2012.
A litigant speaking before an Athenian court around 322 BC also saw the
connection between the enforcement of contracts and the volume of trade (Dem.
56.48; cf. 34.50–52):
Do not ignore the fact that by deciding this case you are passing a law for the
entire port of Athens. Many of the men who have chosen to engage in overseas
trade are watching to see how you decide this case. If you think that written
contracts and agreements between partners should be binding and if you will
not take the side of those who break them, those involved in lending will more
readily makes their assets available. As a result, the port will thrive, and you will
benefit.
The study of the economy of Ancient Greece has recently undergone a major
transformation, and this has had implications for the understanding of the laws of
the Greek poleis.211 The debate about the ancient economy goes back to the late
nineteenth century when K. Bücher and E. Meyer clashed. Bücher believed that
the economy of ancient Greece was based mostly on the household, and there
was little exchange between households.212 As a result, there was little commerce
between communities, and the majority of the population existed at subsistence
level. This drew a sharp response from Meyer, who pointed to the evidence for
trade and commerce, to large issues of coinage, to banks, and to extensive trade
between cities.213 M. Weber made several comments on the ancient economy
and modified the very pessimistic view of Bücher, but laid much stress on
the obstacles to the development of capitalism in the ancient world.214 Weber
argued that the main aim of households was self-sufficiency, that most loans
were for consumption and not for production, and that urban settlements were
primarily consumer-cities, which drew rents from the countryside but did not
contain much craft production aside from luxury products for the elite. Weber
drew a stark contrast between the citizen of the ancient city, who aimed at being
a homo politicus, who spent his time as an official, sitting in the Assembly or
serving as a soldier, with the citizen of the medieval city, who aimed at being a
homo oeconomicus. Weber’s views were incorporated into the work Staat und
Handel im alten Griechenland published in 1928 by J. Hasebroek and translated
into English as Trade and Politics in Ancient Greece in 1933.215 Hasebroek also
believed that the average citizen of the Greek city was concerned with politics
211
See the survey by Günther et al. 2017.
212
Bücher 1893.
213
Meyer 1895 = Meyer 1910, 79–168.
214
Weber 1976.
215
Hasebroek 1928 and 1933. This book was based on earlier studies on trade and banking in 1920
and 1923.
and left trade and commerce in the hands of metics and foreigners because these
activities were viewed as socially inferior. The governments of the city-states
were only interested in securing a supply of imports and showed no interest in
exports. The overriding objective was to achieve self-sufficiency, not integration
into wider trade networks.
This approach to the ancient Greek economy was developed by M. I. Finley
first in his Columbia dissertation of 1951, published as Studies in Land and
Credit, then more extensively in his Sather Lectures, which were published as
The Ancient Economy in 1973.216 Legal issues played an important role in the
former work, which was a study of real security based on a collection of horoi
published up to 1951. The horoi are stones that were roughly worked and carry
inscriptions indicating that the property on which they are placed has been
pledged as security for a loan. Finley’s general analysis of the horoi was built on
three main assumptions. First, Finley thought that there were three basic forms
of real security in ancient Athens (hypotheke, prasis epi lysei, and apotimema).
In this regard Finley agreed with J. V. A. Fine and previous scholars though (as
we will see) differing with him on points of detail. Second, Finley believed that
there were no property records in Classical and Hellenistic Athens. Third, Finley
thought that there were no extensive markets in Classical Athens and that as a
result the Athenians often did not think in market terms. These basic assumptions
influenced several of his main conclusions. First, Finley argued that real security
in Athenian Law in particular and Greek law in general was substitutive and not
collateral. In the substitutive form of security, the creditor accepts the property
as a substitute for the loan if the debtor defaults. The creditor does not view the
property pledged as security as a commodity that can be exchanged for cash
in the market to pay off the debt. He is not interested in the cash value of the
security but in the security as property for his own use. This has two important
implications. On the one hand, the borrower cannot make further loans on the
security after pledging it to one creditor. On the other, if there is a difference
between the market value of the security and the amount of the loan, the borrower
does not have a right to the excess, and the creditor cannot demand the payment
of any deficit. In more general terms, it means that the creditor does not view
the security as a commodity, only as property capable of being transferred to his
ownership. Second, Finley thought that the practice of real security was confined
mainly to the wealthy and did not extend to the other members of society.
Third, because Finley believed the use of real security was restricted primarily
to the upper class, he claimed that there were no laws regulating the practice
of real security. Fourth, according to Finley most loans were for the purposes
216
Finley 1952 and 1973.
of consumption, not for productive uses. In the years since the publication of
Studies in Land and Credit, each of these views has been refuted in detail.217
Finley presented a general approach to the ancient economy in his The Ancient
Economy, but the most striking feature of this work was his avoidance of the
term “market.” His justification for this is presented at the end of the first chapter
where he claims that there was not enough specialization of labor to support the
growth of inter-regional markets.218 As a result, Finley asserted (mostly without
analysis of the evidence) that most exchanges of goods and services moved along
channels shaped by social and political relationships such as family, clientage,
patronage, and tribute. It should come as no surprise that one cannot find any
discussion of the terms “contract” or “marketplaces.” In fact, one cannot find the
terms in the index to the book. Some of the themes in these two works were taken
up by Finley’s student P. Millett, who in his study of Lending and Borrowing
in Ancient Athens claimed that loans were primarily made to friends, relatives
and neighbors according to the ethics of philia (friendship), which placed the
emphasis on reciprocity and not on gain.219
Like Marxism under Lenin and Stalin, the main tenets of Finley’s approach
hardened into a rigid dogma, which was summarized by K. Hopkins in a volume
on Trade in the Ancient World. The main tenets were that most households aimed
at just producing for their own needs, that towns were the residence of large
landowners, centers of government and religious worship, but craft activities
catered mainly to the luxury tastes of the elite, and that there was little inter-
regional trade. Towns did not specialize in the manufacture of cheaper goods, but
only luxury products.220 These dogmas were repeated almost without any revision
in the introduction to The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman
World.221 In the section, in general, the essays in the volume have almost nothing
to say about property rights and the enforcement of contracts (there is only one
entry for contracts in the index), and the discussion of market regulations is very
brief.
E. E. Cohen attempted to challenge some of Finley’s views in his Athenian
Economy and Society: A Banking Perspective published in 1992.222 The main
critique of this work was that Finley had underestimated the profit motive in the
conduct of individuals. But E. E. Cohen took an extreme position by claiming
that women and slaves played a greater role in the economy than previous
217
For analysis of the flaws in Finley’s analysis with references to recent work, see Harris 2013.
218
For analysis, critique and evidence against this view, see Harris and Lewis 2016, 3–5.
219
Millett 1991.
220
Hopkins 1983, xi–xii.
221
Scheidel, Morris and Saller 2007.
222
E. E. Cohen 1992.
scholars thought, that much of the economy was conducted in secret because the
wealthy found the public burdens of performing liturgies and financing the fleet
too burdensome. As a result, they hid their assets in banks, which in turn made
loans to merchants who carried on trade. As R. Bogaert commented in his review,
the study is “fondée principalement sur une interprétation faussée des sources.”223
E. E. Cohen never proves that the wealthy found their duties so burdensome that
they hid their money in banks. Further, he underestimates the philotimia (desire
for reputation) of the wealthy who desired public honors and were willing to
spend lavishly to win golden opinions of themselves. In this regard, E. E. Cohen
appears to have been unaware of the valuable work of P. Gauthier on public
benefactors.224 There is also no evidence for banks financing maritime loans, and
the loans in the bank of Pasion were secured by land in Attica (Dem. 36.6), not
ships sailing abroad (which was a very risky investment and thus inappropriate
for an institution that needed to win trust for reliability). The maritime loans
mentioned in the private speeches of the Demosthenic corpus are all made by
private individuals, not by banks (Dem. 32, 33, 34, 35, 56). Finally, E. E. Cohen
does not locate his analysis in the wider context of the development of markets in
goods and services and within the legal framework of civic institutions designed
to facilitate and promote exchange.
More serious challenges to Finley’s pessimistic approach to the ancient
economy were presented by A. Bresson and Harris. In 1987, Bresson published
an essay on “Aristotle and Foreign Trade.” He showed that in all passages
discussing trade, Greek authors link exports and imports and see them as
mutually reinforcing; in short, there are no imports without exports. No Greek
author asserts that a city-state should only secure a supply of necessary imports
and attempt to restrict exports except in the special case of grain. Bresson then
examined laws and regulations about trade and found that they show an equal
concern for imports and exports. In his collection of essays entititled La cité
marchande, Bresson reprinted this study and several other questioning key tenets
of the “New Orthodoxy.” Shortly after this in 2002, Harris published an essay
on the specialization of labor in Classical Athens.225 Most previous studies had
assumed that there was little specialization of labor and that most occupations
were agricultural. Harris compiled a list of over 170 occupations in Classical
period but also observed that while there was much horizontal specialization (the
number of different skills needed to produce goods and services), there was very
little vertical specialization, which meant that the production of very few goods
223
Bogaert 1995.
224
Gauthier 1985.
225
Harris 2002.
required more than a few workers. Lewis has now increased this number to
around two hundred.226 The low level of technology meant that workshops were
generally small. This had several implications for the development of commercial
law. First, the number of occupations fostered the growth of market relations
and led to the creation of permanent markets, which were so large that they had
different sections for different types of goods and services. This generated a need
for different types of contracts and market regulations (for both, see below). On
the other hand, because the size of workshops was small, there was no need for
the development of the contract of agency and the concept of corporation.227
To some extent, slaves could act as agents for their masters and make contracts
on their behalf. The absence of the notion of corporation created a problem in
maritime contracts, but this was solved by creating a special type of maritime
contract.228
Bresson published a comprehensive study in two volumes of the economy
of the Greek city-states in the Classical and Hellenistic periods in 2007 and
2008. An English translation was published in 2015. This is a very rich work,
which would be hard to summarize in a short space. One of the most important
aspects of the work is that it provides a systematic approach to the ancient
Greek economy which emphasizes the role of markets and inter-regional trade
and enables the scholars to move beyond the static (if not stagnant) approach of
Finley and his followers.229 Bresson draws on the insights of New Institutional
Economics pioneered by scholars like D. North and places economic activities
within their legal framework. One should also note the work of P. Acton, who
shows among other things that the small size of workshops in Athens was
economically rational and was not dictated by social ideals (pace Finley).230 In
an economy with a low level of technology, there was little scope for economies
of scale. The collection The Ancient Greek Economy contains an introduction
and fifteen different studies examining the different kinds of commodities, types
of markets and institutional frameworks required to promote the expansion of
markets, which was one of the main motors of economic growth.231
The main studies of Greek Law relevant to the economy are those concerning
226
Lewis in Harris, Lewis and Woolmer 2016, 24 and 35–36, n. 123.
227
E. E. Cohen 1992, 98–101 claims that the Athenians developed the legal concept of agency, but
see Harris 2013d, 105–112 with detailed analysis of the passages which Cohen claims are evidence
for agency.
228
See Harris 2006, 241–248.
229
The study of Ober 2015 builds on the essay of Harris 2002 and takes a more optimistic view
of the economy, but takes little account of legal institutions and places most emphasis on political
institutions. For a trenchant critique, see Manning and Oliver 2017.
230
Acton 2016.
231
Harris, Lewis and Woolmer 2016.
three topics: ownership and property, contracts and their enforcement, and market
regulations.
In a classic essay, A. M. Honoré analyzed the concept of ownership drawing
both on anthropological work and on modern lawcodes in both Common Law
and Civil Law countries.232 Honoré showed that in all communities, those who
own objects enjoy the same basic rights and liabilities: 1) the right to posssess,
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. In a careful study of
ownership in Ancient Greece, A. Kränzlein showed that the Greeks made a clear
distinction between ownership and mere physical control over an object and that
those who owned objects enjoyed all these powers enumerated by Honoré.233 For
instance, those who owned property in Greece had the right to remain in control
of their land and possessions (right to possess). This right was protected by the
dikē exoules, which gave owners the right to eject those who occupied their
property wrongfully. Athenian law also granted owners the right to arrest thieves
caught with stolen goods whose guilt was obvious (ep’autophoro). Those who
suspected that someone had taken their goods but did not catch him in highly
incriminating circumstances could bring a private action against the offender
(dikē klopes).234 Owners were also permitted to kill thieves breaking into their
houses at night or who were carrying off their goods (Dem. 23.60). Modern
law makes a distinction among three types of theft: larceny, embezzlement, and
fraud. In the first case, the thief may take the stolen object without the victim’s
knowledge or may use force to take it from him. In the case of embezzlement,
the owner entrusts an object to another person who then misappropriates it again
the owner’s will. D. Cohen has argued that the term klope covered only cases
of larceny and not cases of embezzlement,235 but the evidence from Classical
Greece shows that the term covered both kinds of theft in the same way as
furtum in Roman Law covered both larceny and embezzlement.236
Owners could also use and manage their property in any way they wished, and
this included the right to lease their land as numerous lease contracts attest.237 In
these lease contracts all the money gained from rent went to the owner (right to
income). Owners had the right to all crops grown on their land. Aristotle (Rhet.
232
Honoré 1961.
233
Thür 2008 claims that the Greeks had a more flexible concept of ownership, but this view is not
convincing. See Harris 2008.
234
On these two actions, see Harris 2006, 373–390.
235
D. Cohen 1983. For a more reliable study of theft in Greek and Roman Law, see Pelloso 2008.
236
For detailed criticism, see Harris 2006, 387–388.
237
See Pernin 2014.
1.5.7 1361a 16–19) thought that alienation by gift or sale was the most important
feature of ownership (right to capital). The Greek city-states also guaranteed the
rights of ownership against unlawful confiscation. For instance, according the
terms of the League of Corinth, no community could carry out a redistribution of
land, a cancellation of debts or free slaves for the purpose of insurrection (Dem.
17.15). At Athens, the incoming archon swore to maintain safe possession of all
property for his term of office ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 56.2). Owners also had the
right to pass on their property to their descendants or to adopt children if they
did not have any legitimate children (transmissibility).238 Finally, if a citizen
or resident of a Greek community did not pay a debt to the state or to a private
individual, the property he owned was subject to seizure (e.g. Dem. 21.43; 23.45)
(liability to execution).
The rights of ownership also extended to the master’s rights over his slaves. As
Lewis shows, owners considered slaves their property and exercised the powers
of ownership over all aspects of their lives.239 Masters had the rights to all the
fruits of a slave’s labor and owned the children born from their slaves. They had
the right to use their slaves as they wished and could beat, starve and whip them
as a means of discipline. Masters could sell their slaves or lease them to others
in return for payment of rent. After they died, their slaves would be inherited
by their heirs. And when a master owed money to a creditor or the state, their
slaves could be seized for pay for the debt. It would be a serious mistake to think
that the Greeks considered slaves to be property only after the work of Aristotle;
masters clearly had the rights of ownership over slaves as early as the Iliad and
Odyssey.240
Even though the basic rights of ownership do not vary from one society to the
next, different communities can place different restrictions on ownership. These
vary in three main areas: 1) who can own?, 2) what can be owned?, and 3) what
restrictions can be placed on the rights of owners? One of the most important
restrictions in Greek city-states was the prohibition on foreigners owning land
unless they received a special grant (enktesis).241 At Athens, women and children
were not allowed to conduct transactions worth more than a medimnos of barley
(Is. 10.10). In Athens, women who were the daughters of citizens or the wives
238
There are several examples of wills in the Attic orators (e.g. Dem. 27.8–11) and in the lives of
several philosophers in Diogenes Laertius. From Thera there is the will of Epicteta preserved in a
long inscription. See Wittenberg 1990.
239
Lewis 2018, 33–48.
240
View that slavery only started to be understood in terms of ownership only after Aristotle:
Vlassopoulos 2011. Evidence showing that masters exercised the rights of ownership in the Iliad and
Odyssey: Harris 2013.
241
For restrictions on ownership, see Hennig 1994. For enktesis, see Pecirka 1966.
of citizens do not appear to have owned land and other property, but there does
not seem to have been a formal restriction.242 On the other hand, wives might
manage their husband’s property.243 At Athens, private citizens were not allowed
to own silver mines in the fourth century BC, but could only lease them from
the state. There were also restrictions on the way land could be used.244 A stele
from Thasos and dated to the early fifth century BC contains several restrictions
on the rights of owners along certain streets in the city.245 It has been claimed
that land was inalienable in Athens before the end of the fifth century BC, but
Finley showed that all the existing evidence for transfer of property during this
period indicates that land could be bought and sold.246 Some late sources state
that land in Sparta during the Archaic period was divided into equal parcels and
distributed to citizens who did not have the right to sell to others, but Hodkinson
has demontrated that all the contemporary evidence for land in Sparta indicates
that owners had the full right to alienate by gift, will or sale.247
Contracts
In a small-scale economy in which most transactions take place among family,
friends and neighbors, there may be little need for formal contracts: social
pressure and the ties of friendship and kinship provide a sufficient level of trust
needed to exchange goods and services and other economic relationships (for
this primitivist approach, see Millett 1991). In a large permanent market like the
agora at Athens or in other Greek cities where most exchanges occurred between
strangers, there was a need for a legal framework to ensure that agreements
would be honored. Most of the evidence for contracts in the ancient Greek world
comes from Athenian sources,248 but there is no reason to believe that Athens
was unusual. In fact, most of the contracts attested in Athens can be found in the
sources for other Greek communities. There was no term in Athenian law that
was the precise equivalent of the Roman word contractus. The terms homologia
and synthēkai were the most common words used to designate agreements that
we call contracts, but their range of meaning was more extensive: the term
homologia could refer to any written or oral statement, and the term synthēkai
could refer to treaties between communities. Symbolaion could refer to
242
Schaps 1979 is still valuable. Foxhall argues that women in Athens exercised a type of ownership,
but the evidence she adduces does not prove her point. See Harris 2006, 334, n. 4.
243
See Harris 2014 and Cox 1998.
244
See Kränzlein 1963, 53–70; Hennig 1995.
245
Duchêne 1992.
246
Finley 1968. For the view that land was not alienable before the end of the fifth century BC, see
Fine 1951.
247
Hodkinson 1986.
248
See Knopf 2005 for the Athenian evidence about contracts in the orators.
contractual relationships but also to obligations arising from delicts (Lys. 17.2–3;
Isoc. 20.16; Arist. NE 9.1.9 1164b 13; IG I3 118, ll. 18–20; Syll.3 286, ll. 14–17)
or from wills (Is. 4.12).249 The term synallagma could denote obligations arising
from contract and from delict (Arist. NE 5.2.13 1131a).
There was a general statute in Athenian law that all transactions that the parties
have agreed to willingly (hekōn) are binding (Dem. 56.2).250 There was also a
clause forbidding the parties to do anything illegal (Hyp. Ath. 13). The wording
of the law implies that all that was required to create a legally binding agreement
was the mutual consent of the parties or a simple promise (or exchange of
promises) to perform certain actions. The laws of Athens did not prescribe
any formal procedures to create a contract, and there was no requirement for a
“consideration” as in Common Law. The speeches of the orators often mention
contracts in writing, but there does not seem to have been a requirement that
a contract had to be in writing or that an oral contract was not binding (the
view that contracts had to be in writing for a maritime suit at Athens is based
on a misreading of Dem. 32.1). Nor was it necessary to register contracts with
public officials for them to take effect. Litigants often summoned witnesses to
prove that an agreement had been made, but the law did not require them to be
present (e.g. Dem. 35.9–14). Finally, the Athenians did not classify contracts into
separate categories, each of which became binding in a different way. To enforce
an agreement, a litigant in an Athenian court did not have to show that certain
procedures were followed or that the agreement fell into a category set forth in
the law. All he had to do was to prove that both parties had willingly agreed to
perform certain actions. The action used for breach of contract was the private
action for damage (dikē blabēs). If the plaintiff won his case, the court could only
order the defendant to pay damages, not to perform what he had promised to do.
Wolff argued that the Greeks did not develop the modern notion of the
consensual contract and that the liability in Greek contracts did not derive from
the agreement of the two parties but from the misuse of property given by one
party to another.251 A binding obligation was not created by a promise or an
exchange of promises but by the transfer of a physical object for a set purpose
(Zweckverfügung) as in the real contracts of Roman Law. To use terminology
borrowed from Roman Law, the liability in a Greek contract was delictual, which
would explain why contracts were enforced by the private action for blabē, the
249
See Harris 2016, 8–12 with references to earlier scholarship.
250
There have been some recent attempts to cast doubt on the existence of this law, but see Gagarin
2018. For criticisms of the views of Phillips 2009 about contracts, see Dimopoulou 2014, who shows
that there were many laws declaring certain types of contracts invalid (akyron).
251
Wolff 1957. Carawan 2006 attempts to defend the views of Wolff, but his arguments are vulnerable
to the objections made above.
same one which was used in cases where an object was damaged. According to
this view the homologia, a word often translated as “contract,” was actually a
statement by one party acknowledging that he had received an object from the
other party. There are several reasons to reject this view. First, this view may
work for agreements such as loans, the rental of land, deposits and real security,
in which a physical object is passed from one person to another, but it does not
work for other agreements such as the hire of services, partnership (koinōnia) and
personal security (engyē), where there is no transfer of a physical object. In each
of these cases, the liability arises from the promise of one party. Second, there are
several cases described in the orators in which the liability clearly arises from the
consent of the parties without any physical tranfer of assets (e.g. the loans made
to Timotheos by Pasion in [Dem.] 49). Third, it is true that the word homologia
can mean “receipt” but there are other cases when the verb homologein is
followed by a future infinitive indicating a promise. Fourth, plaintiffs in private
cases often state that they are bringing actions for damages because the defendant
has not performed what he promised to do in the written agreement, not because
he misused an object placed in his hands (e.g. Dem. 37). In a lease made by the
members of the deme of Aixone, the terms state explicitly that if the demes-
men propose a motion or put a motion to the vote contrary to the terms of the
agreement, they are liable to a private action for damages (IG II2 2492, ll. 29–31).
This clearly implies that liability would arise from a violation of the terms of the
contract, not from a misuse of the property.
Although the Athenians (and apparently other Greeks) did not classify contracts
in the same way as the Romans did, their courts appear to have enforced most
of the bona fide-contracts found in Roman law. An interest-bearing loan was
considered a single contract in Athenian law (e.g. Dem. 56.5), not a combination
of two contracts as in Roman law. On the other hand, the Athenians distinguished
among loans made on interest (daneion), those made to start a business in the
agora (aphormē), and those made without interest (eranos), for each of which
there was a different action ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 52.2).252 It has been claimed that
the eranos-loan was the standard form of loan,253 but one finds few examples of
them in the ancient sources: in the Attic horoi, there are only thirteen out of a
total of about 130 loans, and possibly fewer, and there are very few references to
eranoi in the Attic orators in comparison to regular loans.254
The Greeks also recognized and enforced contracts of lease (misthōsis),
which includes the same types of agreement covered under the Roman contract
252
See Harris 2006, 335–336.
253
Millett 1991, 153–159; Herman 2006, 390.
254
For references to eranos-loans in the Attic Orators, see Harris 2006, 335–336 with ns. 10-12.
of locatio-conductio (lease-hire): locatio rei (lease of land or a movable), and

locatio operarum (hire of labor). Roman law carefully listed the incidents of
these contracts, describing the rights and duties of each party.255 Although the
Greek courts enforced these kinds of contracts, they left it up to the parties to
work out each person’s responsibilities.
A type of agreement that was very important in banking was the parakatathēkē
or “deposit” (Aristot. NE 5.2.13 1131a).256 One might leave an object such as
a cup or a sum of money for safekeeping. Bankers in Athens and other Greek
states might use money from deposits to make loans at interest (Dem. 36.5).
On the other hand, there is no indication that banks paid interest on deposits
to attract capital for loans.257 In Greece, those cooperating in a business might
enter into an agreement called koinōnia or koinopraxia, which was similar to the
Roman contract of societas (Inst. 3.25). This contract did not create a new legal
personality akin to the modern concept of partnership or corporation. In private
law both in the Greek city-states and at Rome, one brought an action against an
individual, not an entity representing the interests of a group. This also held true
for the law of Greco-Roman Egypt.258 Each partner made his own contract with
third parties; when the third party brought an action, it was against the individual
partner, not the group as a whole. For instance, when the Athenian Pantainetos
borrowed money on security from the two partners Evergos and Nikoboulos and
thought that his creditors had violated the terms of their agreement, he brought
one suit against Evergos, then another against Nikoboulos (Dem. 37.1).259 In the
Grain Tax Law of 374/373 BC, there are associations that receive the right to
collect taxes, but all of the members are subject to joint and several liability (SEG
XLVII 96, ll. 33–36).260 The concept of limited liability did not exist. If one of the
partners suffered a loss, the other partners were obligated to share in the loss. In
Roman law if they did not compensate him, the remaining partner could bring an
actio pro socio, which dissolved the partnership. The dikē koinōnikē in Athenian
law may have been similar ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 52.2).261
The laws of the Greek states also recognized two accessory contracts, personal
security and real security. The Athenians (and apparently other Greeks) had
only one form of personal security (engyē), which is first attested in the Odyssey
255
Nicholas 1962, 182–185; Crook 1967, 192–198.
256
Beauchet 1897, 3, 324–340.
257
Pace Cohen 1992.
258
Taubenschlag 1944, 49.
259
See Harris 2006, 241–247.
260
Stroud 1998, 66–67.
261
See Harrison 197, 22.
(8.347–348).262 This contract is found in conjunction with loans, leases, contracts

to collect taxes, and public fines. At Athens, the law limited the liability of
sureties to one year (Dem. 33.27). If there were two or more sureties, it appears
that each was responsible for the entire obligation, not just a share. Personal
security played an important role in allowing foreigners, who could not own
land, to provide security for various types of contracts. For instance, a metic
was able to obtain a contract for work in the sanctuary of Amphiareos at Oropos
by providing an Athenian guarantor (I. Oropos 292, ll. 36–37 (= IG VII 4255)).
Kanon, a citizen from Thespiai was awarded a large contract for work on
Delos during the Athenian hegemony after providing five Athenian citizens as
guarantors (IG II2 1678, ll. 29–32). It thus helped to expand the circulation of
goods and labor beyond the confines of the city-state.
From a legal perspective, the Athenians and other Greek city-states had
essentially one form of real security, which was in effect a lien against the
debtor’s property. In the event of default, the debtor had the right to any
excess over the amount of the debt (collateral security).263 Some scholars have
assumed that the Athenians made a distinction between two or more forms of
real security, but they lacked the distinction between procedural remedies for
dominium (the vindicatio) and those for possessio (possessory interdicts), which
would have made such a distinction possible. By contrast, Roman law began
by distinguishing between two types of real security, fiducia cum creditore, by
which the creditor gained ownership of the security, and pignus, by which the
creditor gained only possessio.264 Though Finley claimed that there were no
laws regulating real security and that most loans on security were taken by the
wealthy, both of these assumptions are contradicted by the evidence.265
Market Regulations and Interstate Trade

The growth of permanent markets required the enactment of market regulations
and the appointment of officials to enforce these regulations. In a Berkeley
PhD-thesis, P. Stanley collected the evidence for market regulations in ancient
Greece,266 and L. Capdetrey and C. Hasenohr have edited a valuable collection
of essays about agoranomoi in the Greek world and aediles in charge of markets
in the Roman world.267 This includes an essay by G. O. Oliver about agoranomoi
in Athens. There are also essays about the regulation of Greek markets in the
262
Partsch 1909.
263
Harris 2008.
264
Harris 2006, 175–176.
265
See Harris 2013.
266
Stanley 1976.
267
Capdetrey and Hasenohr 2012.
important collection Tout Vendre, Tout Acheter edited by V. Chankowski and P.

Karvonis.268 The essays of P. Themelis, C. Hasenohr, S. Fritzilas and G. Geraci in
this volume provide studies of sekomata, which were used to measure liquids and
regulated by public officials. The essays of O. Kakavogianni and M. Anetakis
reveal the existence of markets in Attica outside of Athens and cause scholars to
revise their views about Greek farmers living on their autarkic plots of land.269
The most extensive set of regulations for the market are found in an
inscription dated to the second century BC, which has been lost but was copied
by M. Fourmont in the eighteenth century and now republished by C. Doyen.270
These regulations order officials to make public measures for wet and dry goods
and compel buyers and sellers to use them (ll. 7–9). Officials must enforce the
standard weights or face penalties (ll. 10–15). The Council is to supervise the use
of weights and measures (ll. 16–18). There are detailed rules about measuring
items such as nuts and beans (ll. 19–26). If merchants do not use official
measures, the official should confiscate the goods and sell them at auction (ll.
27–29). Public slaves are to be given official measures and are to make them
available to anyone who wishes to use them (ll. 37–42). The final clause of the
law grants the Areopagus the power to commit offenses against official weights
and measures (ll. 56–60).
To encourage trade, communities might grant special privileges to individual
foreign merchants or groups of merchants. These privileges might include
exemption from taxes (ateleia), the right to own land (enktesis), and gold crowns
for exceptional public service.271 D. T. Engen has collected Attic inscriptions
granting honors to merchants.272 In some cases, communities might conclude
commercial treaties (symbola), which have been well studied by Gauthier.273
International Law
As discussed in the section about The Unity of Greek Law, the Greek communi-
ties of the Classical and Hellenistic period recognized several norms in their
relationships such as the duty to respect heralds and truces for international
religious festivals. In interstate arbitration judges might also justify their decisions
by appeal to generally recognized legal principles such as in the judgment
given by the Magnesians judges in the dispute between Itanos and Hierapytna.
268
Chankowski and Karvonis 2012.
269
For more markets outside Athens in Attica, see Harris and Lewis 2016, 12–13.
270
Doyen 2016.
271
For types of ateleia, see MacDowell 2004b. For privileges to merchants, see the general treatment
of Woolmer in Harris, Lewis and Woolmer 2016, 66–89.
272
Engen 2010.
273
Gauthier 1972.
These interstate arbitrations have been studied by L. Piccirilli, S. L. Ager

and Magnetto.274 Two valuable studies by P. Low and A. Giovannini examine
the principles underlying international relations in Greece. As in interstate
arbitrations, the Greeks also recognized some shared norms which shaped their
relations.275 As Low perceptively observes, these norms “do not make up a single,
straight-forward code of international behaviour, still less do they absolutely
control the ways in which states and individuals behave. But they do provide
an overall framework within which that behaviour operates and can be judged,
and within which arguments about proper conduct of interstate relations can be
situated.”276
Prospects for Future Research

As Margaret Thatcher once said, “there is now work to be done.” One area that
would repay study is the relationship between the laws of the Greek city-states
and the laws of Hebrew Scriptures and the Near Eastern kingdoms. R. Westbrook,
who edited A History of Near Eastern Law, wrote several essays comparing laws
about homicide and laws about marriage in Greece and the Near East. Harris
has examined the similarities between debt bondage in Archaic and Classical
Greece and in Israel and other parts of the Near East.277 Lewis applies the concept
of ownership in defining slavery to a comparative study of Greek systems of
slavery and those found in the ancient Near East.278 A volume of essays edited
by Yiftach-Firanko compares the legal use of letters in Egypt, Greece and the
Near East,279 and another volume of essays edited by Faraguna studies legal
archives and archival documents in Greece and the Near East.280 Lewis has also
compared laws about debt and enslavement in Attica and ancient Israel.281 A
recent Durham doctoral thesis by B. Clapperton compares laws about homicide
and about adultery in the laws of Athens and in the Hebrew Scriptures.282 There
is clearly more scope for other comparative studies in areas like property law and
contracts. At the same time, there is a need to look to the West and to compare
the laws of the Greeks to those of Rome in the early Republic. There have been
some studies comparing aspects of Greek Law with aspects of Roman Law such
274
Piccirilli 1973, Ager 1996 and Magnetto 1997.
275
Low 2007; Giovannini 2007.
276
Low 2007, 252.
277
Harris 2006, 249–270.
278
Lewis 2018.
279
Yiftach-Firanko 2013.
280
Faraguna 2013.
281
Lewis 2017.
282
Clapperton 2018.
as Wolff’s study of Greek contracts, but more needs to be done.283 The work
of Mitteis published in 1891 traced the relationship between the laws of the
Greek communities under the Roman Empire and Roman Law, and this topic
has recently attracted interest among scholars such as J. Fournier and C. Brélaz,
which is summarized in an essay by G. Kantor.284 This is a very promising area
for future study. There is a recent volume edited by J. Powell and J. Patterson on
Cicero the Advocate, and it would be good to have a volume comparing the legal
rhetoric of Cicero with that of the Attic orators.285
There have been several recent commentaries on speeches of the Attic orators,
but there are several speeches for which there are no scholarly commentaries
taking account of recent work in Ancient Greek Law. Demosthenes’ Against
Aristocrates and Against Timocrates are rich sources of information about
homicide law and about legislation, but there are no modern commentaries.286 The
speeches in the Demosthenic corpus about maritime suits (Dem. 32–35) would
also benefit from new commentaries, and there are other speeches that merit
detailed treatment. The commentary of Wyse on the speeches of Isaeus, noted
above, is still a valuable source of information, but now very out of date. There
are no up-to-date commentaries in English on Aeschines’ On the False Embassy
and Against Ctesiphon, and Todd has covered only in the first eleven speeches
in his Oxford Commentary on Lysias. A new commentary on Andocides’ On the
Mysteries is also needed to replace that of MacDowell. Whitehead promises a
commentary on the forensic speeches of Isocrates.
As noted at the beginning, this essay does not cover recent scholarship on
the law of Ptolemaic Egypt. Wolff was of the few scholars who made notable
contributions both to the study of the laws of the Greek city-states and the laws
of Ptolemaic Egypt,287 but since his death there has been little dialogue between
scholars working in these two fields. The work of A.-M. Vérilhac and C. Vial on
marriage is one of the few exceptions. But this topic would require a separate
essay.
Perhaps the most promising area for future study in ancient Greek Law is the
analysis of inscriptions. There have been several valuable studies of individual
inscriptions such as Gauthier and M. Hatzopoulos on the gymnasiarch law from
Beroea, A. V. Walser on the debt law from Ephesus, Saba on the municipal
283
Harris 2006, 163–206 compares Roman and Greek practices concerning real security and finds
differences, and Harris 2006, 373–390 compares laws concerning theft and finds major similarities.
284
Kantor 2015. See Brélaz 2005 and Fournier 2008.
285
Powell and Patterson 2004.
286
On the documents in these speeches, see Canevaro 2013a, 37-180.
287
See Wolff 1978-2002 for this study of the law of the papyri in Ptolemaic Egypt and during the
Roman Principate.
regulations from Pergamum, and N. Deshours and L. Gawlinski on the law about
the Mysteries at Andania.288 There are many other long inscriptions that would
benefit from detailed study such as the recently published law about the ephebeia
in Amphipolis.289 As noted above, there have been many valuable studies of
groups of inscriptions about specific institutions, many of them produced by
French scholars working in the tradition of L. Robert and Gauthier. Finally, there
is a need for a new version of the old but still valuable collection Recueil des
inscriptions juridiques grecques of Dareste, Haussoullier and Reinach.
Bibliography
Acton, P. 2016.
Poiesis: Manufacturing in Classical Athens. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ager, S. L. 1996.
Interstate Arbitration in the Greek World, 337–90 B.C. Berkeley, Los Angeles &
London: University of California Press.
Alonso, J. L. 2016.
“One en piste, Guarantee Sales and Title-Transfer Security in the Papyri.” In:
Leão and Thür 2016, 121–192.
Aneziri, S. 2003.
Die Vereine der dionysischen Techniten im Kontext der hellenistischen Gesell-
schaft: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte, Organisation und Wirkung der helle-
nistischen Technitenvereine. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag.
Arnaoutoglou, I. 1998.
Ancient Greek Laws: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge.
Arnaoutoglou, I., Mirhady, D. M. and Sundahl, M. 2011.
A New Working Bibliography of Ancient Greek Law (7th to 4th Centuries BC).
Athens: Academy of Athens.
Bardani, V. and Tracy, S. V. 2012.
Inscriptiones Graecae voluminis II et III editio tertia: Inscriptiones Atticae
Euclidis anno posteriores. Pars I: Leges et decreta. Fasciculus V: Leges et decreta
annorum 229/8–168/7. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Beauchet, L. 1897.
Histoire du droit privé de la République athénienne. Paris: Chevalier-Marescq.
288
Gauthier and Hatzopoulos 1993; Walser 2008; Saba 2012; Deshours 2006; Gawlinski 2012.
289
See the preliminary remarks of Rousset 2017.
Bielman, A. 1994.
Retour à la liberté: Libération et sauvetage des prisonniers en Grèce ancienne:
Recueil d‘inscriptions honorant des sauveteurs et analyse critique. Athens and
Lausanne: Ecole Française d’Athènes, Université de Lausanne.
Bile, M. 2016–2017.
“Review of Gagarin and Perlman 2016.” Dike 19–20: 201–212.
Biscardi, A. 1999.
Scritti di diritto greco. Milan: A. Giuffrè.
Blok, J. and Krul, J. 2017.
“Debt and Its Aftermath: The Near Eastern Background to Solon’s Seisachtheia.”
Hesperia 86/4: 607–643.
Bogaert, R. 1995.
“Review of E. E. Cohen 1992.” Gnomon 67: 604–609.
Boegehold, A. 1995.
The Lawcourts at Athens: Sites, Buildings, Equipment, Procedure, and
Testimonia. Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Bonner, R. J. and Smith, G. 1930–1938.
The Administration of Justice from Homer to Aristotle. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Bravo, B. 1980.
“Sultan. Représailles et justice privée contre des étrangers dans les cités
grecques.” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 10: 675–987.
Brélaz, C. 2005.
La sécurité publique en Asie Mineure sous le principat (Ier–IIIème s. ap. J.-C.):
Institutions municipales et institutions impériales dans l’Orient romain. Basel:
Schwab.
Bresson, A. 1987.
“Aristote et le commerce extérieure.” Revue des Études Anciennes 89: 217–238.
——— 2000.
La cité marchande. Bordeaux: Diffusion de Boccard.
——— 2007.
L’économie de la Grèce des cités (fin Vie – Ier siècle a.C.). vol. I: Les structures
et la production. Paris: A. Colin.
——— 2008.
L’économie de la Grèce des cités (fin Vie – Ier siècle a.C.). vol. II: Les espaces
de l’échange. Paris: A. Colin.
——— 2015.
The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy: Institutions, Markets and Growth in
the City-States. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bücher, K. 1893.
Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft. Tubingen: Laupp.
Bultrighini, U. and Dimauro, E. (eds.). 2014.
Donne che contano. Lanciano: Carabba.
Burchfiel, K. 1994.
“The Myth of ‘pre-law’ in Early Greece.” In: Thür 1994, 79–104.
Canevaro, M. 2013a.
“Nomothesia in Classical Athens: What Sources Should We Believe?” Classical
Quarterly 63: 1–22.
——— 2013b.
The Documents in the Attic Orators: Laws and Decrees in the Public Speeches of
the Demosthenic Corpus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
——— 2016.
Demostene Contro Leptine: Introduzione, Traduzione e Commento Storico.
Berlin: De Gruyter.
——— 2018.
“The Authenticity of the Document at Demosth. or. 24.20–3, the Procedures of
nomothesia and the so-called ἐπιχειροτονία τῶν νόμων.” Klio 100: 70–124.
——— forthcoming.
“Honorary Decrees and νόμοι ἐπ᾽ ἀνδρί: on IG II3 1 327; 355; 452.” In: L. Gagliardi
and L. Pepe (eds.), Festschrift for A. Maffi.
Canevaro, M. and Esu, A. 2018.
“Extreme Democracy and Mixed Constitution in Theory and Practice:
Nomophylakia and Fourth-Century Nomothesia in the Aristotelian Athenaion
Politeia.” In. C. Bearzot et al. (eds.), Athenaion Politeiai tra storia, politica e
sociologia: Aristotele e Pseudo-Senofonte. Quaderni di Erga/Logoi. Milan: Led
Edizioni, 105–145.
Canevaro, M. and Harris, E. M. 2012.
“The Documents in Andocides’ On the Mysteries.” Classical Quarterly 62: 98–129.
——— 2016.
“The Authenticity of the Documents at Andocides’ On the Mysteries 77–79 and
83–84.” Dike 19: 7–48.
Cantarella, E. 1987.
“Tra diritto e prediritto: un problema aperto.” Dialogues d’ histoire ancienne 13:
149–160.
——— (ed.). 2007.
Symposion 2005: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte.
Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Capdetrey, L. and Hasenohr, C. (eds.). 2012.

Agoranomes et édiles: Institutions des marchés antiques. Pessac and Paris:
Diffusion de Boccard.
Carawan, E. 1998.
Rhetoric and the Law of Draco. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
——— 2006.
“The Athenian Law of Agreement.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 46:
339–374.
——— (ed.). 2007.
Oxford Readings in the Attic Orators. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
——— 2011.
“Paragraphe and the Merits.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 51: 254–295.
Carbon, J.-M. and Pirenne-Delforge, V. 2013.
“Beyond Greek ‘Sacred Laws’.” Kernos 25: 163–182.
Carey, C. 1989.
Lysias: Selected Speeches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——— 1995.
“The Witness’s Exomosia in the Athenian Courts.” Classical Quarterly 45: 114–119.
——— 2004.
“Offense and Procedure in Athenian Law.” In: Harris and Rubinstein 2004, 111–136.
——— (ed.). 2007.
Lysiae Orationes cum Fragmentis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carey, C. et al. 2008.
“Fragments of Hyperides’ Against Diondas from the Archimedes Palimpsest.”
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 165: 1–19.
Carey, C. and Reid, R. A. 1985.
Demosthenes: Select Private Speeches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cartledge, P. C., Millett, P. and Todd, S. C. (eds.). 1990.
Nomos: Essays in Athenian Law, Politics, and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Cassayre, A. 2010.
La justice dans les cités grecques: De la formation de royaumes hellénistiques au
legs d’Atttale. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes.
Chambers, M. 1994.
Aristoteles ᾽Αθηναίων Πολιτεία. Stuttgart & Leipzig: B.G. Teubner.
Chandezon, C. 2003.
L’élèvage en Grèce (fin Ve – fin Ier s. a. C.). Bordeaux: Diffusion de Boccard.
Chankowski, A. S. 2010.
L‘éphébie hellénistique: Étude d‘une institution civique dans les cités grecques
des îles de la Mer Égée et de l’Asie Mineure. Paris: Diffusion de Boccard.
Chankowski, V. and Karvonis, P. (eds.). 2012.

Tout vendre, tout acheter: Structures et équipments des marchés antiques.
Bordeaux: Diffusion de Boccard.
Chaniotis, A. 1996.
Die Verträge zwischen kretischen Poleis in der hellenistischen Zeit. Stuttgart:
Steiner Verlag.
——— 2004.
“Justifying Territorial Claims in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: The Beginn-
ings of International Law.” In: Harris and Rubinstein 2004, 185–213.
Clapperton, B. 2018.
Ancient Greek Law in a Near Eastern Context: Comparative Case Studies of
Homicide Pollution and Adultery Law in Greece and the Near East. PhD-thesis:
Durham University.
Cohen, D. 1983.
Theft in Athenian Law. Munich: C.H. Beck.
——— 1991.
Law, Sexuality and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——— 1995.
Law, Violence and Community in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
——— (ed.). 2002.
Demokratie, Recht, und soziale Kontrolle im klassischen Athen. Schriften des
historischen Kollegs Kolloquien 49. Munich: Oldenbourg.
Cohen, E. E. 1973.
Ancient Athenian Maritime Courts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
——— 1992.
Athenian Economy and Society: A Banking Perspective. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Cox, C. A. 1998.
Household Interests: Property, Marriage Strategies, and Family Dynamics in
Ancient Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cozzo, A. 2014.
«Nel mezzo». Microfisica della mediazione nel mondo greco antico. Pisa: Pisa
University Press.
Crook, J. 1967.
Law and Life of Rome. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Curty, O. 2015.
Gymnasiarchika: Recueil et analyse des inscriptions de l’époque hellénistique en
l’honneur des gymnasiarques. Paris: Diffusion de Boccard.
Dareste, R., Haussoullier, B. and Reinach, T. 1891–1904.

Recueil des inscriptions juridiques grecques. 2 vols. Paris: Leroux.
Deshours, N. 2006.
Les mystères d’Andania: Étude d’épigraphie et d’histoire religieuse. Pessac:
Ausonius.
Dickie, M. 1978.
“Dike as a Moral Term in Homer and Hesiod.” Classical Philology 73/2: 91–101.
Dilts, M. R. (ed.). 1983–1986.
Scholia Demosthenica. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner.
——— (ed.). 1992.
Scholia in Aeschinem. Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner.
——— (ed.). 1997.
Aeschines Orationes. Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner.
——— (ed.). 2002–2009.
Demosthenis Orationes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dimopoulou, A. 2014.
“Ἄκυρον ἔστω: Legal Invalidity in Greek Inscriptions.” In: Gagarin and Lanni
2014, 249–276.
——— 2015.
Lesbion Politeiai: Politeuma, thesmoi kai dikaio ton poleon tes Lesbou (archaïkoi,
klassikoi, ellenistikoi, romaikoi chronoi). Athens: Eurasia.
Doyen, C. 2016.
“Ex schediis Fourmonti. Le decret agoranomique athénien (CIG 1 123 = IG II–
III3 1013).” Chiron 46: 453–487.
Dow, S. 1939.
“Aristotle, the Kleroteria and the Courts.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
50: 1–34.
Drerup, E. 1898.
“Über die bei den attischen Rednern eingelegten Urkunden.” Jahrbücher für
classische Philologie Suppl. 24: 221–366.
Eck, B. 2012.
La mort rouge: homicide, guerre et souillure en Grèce ancienne. Paris: Les
Belles Lettres.
Esu, A. 2017.
“Divided Power and Eunomia: Deliberative Procedures in Ancient Sparta.”
Classical Quarterly 67: 353–373.
——— 2018 forthcoming.
“Review of Rhodes 2017.” Classical Review 68/2: 366–369.
Engen, D. T. 2010.
Honor and Profit: Athenian Trade Policy and the Economy and Society of
Ancient Greece. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Faraguna, M. 1997.
“Registrazioni catastali nel mondo greco: il caso di Atene.” Athenaeum 85: 7–33.
——— 2000.
“A proposito degli archivi nel mondo greco: terra e registrazioni fondiarie.”
Chiron 30: 65–115.
——— 2008.
“Oralità e scrittura nella prassi guidiziaria ateniese tra V e IV sec. a. C.” In:
Harris and Thür 2008, 63–82.
——— (ed.). 2013.
Archives and Archival Documents in Ancient Societies. Trieste: Edizioni
Università di Trieste.
——— 2017.
“Documents, Public Information and the Historian: Perspectives on Fifth Century
Athens.” Historika 7: 23–52.
Filonik, J. 2013.
“Impiety Trials: A Reappraisal.” Dike 16: 11–96.
Fine, J. V. A. 1951.
Horoi: Studies in Mortgage, Real Security and Land Tenure in Ancient Athens.
Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Finley, M. I. 1952.
Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens 500–200 B.C. New Brunswick:
Transaction Press.
——— 1968.
“The Alienability of Land in Ancient Greece.” Eirene 7: 25–32.
——— 1973.
The Ancient Economy. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.
——— 1975.
The Use and Abuse of History. London: Chatto and Windus.
Fisher, N. R. E. 2001.
Aeschines: Against Timarchus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Forsdyke, S. 2006.
Exile, Ostracism, and Democracy: Politics of Expulsion in Ancient Greece.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Fournier, J. 2008.
Entre tutelle romaine et autonomie civique: L’administration judiciaire dans les
provinces hellénophones de l’Empire romain (129 av. J.-C. – 235 apr. J.-C.).
Paris: Ecole Française d’Athènes.
Frier, B. and Kehoe, D. 2007.

“Law and Economic Institutions.” In: Scheidel, Morris and Saller 2007, 113–143.
Fröhlich. P. 2004.
Les cités grecques et le contrôle des magistrats (IVe–Ier avant J.-C.). Geneva: Droz.
Gagarin, M. 1973.
“Dikē in the Works and Days.” Classical Philology 68: 81–94.
——— 1974.
“Dikē in Archaic Greek Thought.” Classical Philology 69: 186–197.
——— 1981.
Drakon and Early Athenian Homicide Law. New Haven: Yale University Press.
——— 1986.
Early Greek Law. Berkeley: University of California Press.
——— 1989.
The Murder of Herodes: A Study of Antiphon 5. Frankfurt am Main & New York
Peter Lang.
———1997.
Antiphon: The Speeches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——— 2006.
“Unity of Greek Law.” In: Gagarin and Cohen 2006, 29–40.
——— 2008.
Writing Greek Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——— 2012.
“Law, Politics, and the Question of Relevance in the Case On the Crown.”
Classical Antiquity 31: 293–314.
——— 2018.
“Hyperides’ Against Athenogenes and the Athenian Law of Agreements.” In:
Perlman 2018, 35–53.
Gagarin, M. and Cohen, D. (eds.). 2006.
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gagarin, M. and Lanni, A. (eds.). 2014.
Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Gagarin, M. and Perlman, P. 2016.
The Laws of Ancient Crete c. 650–400 BCE. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Game, J. 2008.
Actes de vente dans le monde grec. Témoignages épigraphiques des ventes
immobilières. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient Méditerraneen.
Garnsey, P., Hopkins, K. and Whittaker, C. R. (eds.). 1983.

Trade in the Ancient Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gauthier, P. 1985.
Les cités grecques et leurs bienfaiteurs. BCH Suppl. Athens & Paris: Diffusion
de Boccard.
——— 2011.
Études d’histoire et d’institutions grecques: Choix d’écrits. Ed. by D. Rousset.
Geneva: Droz.
Gauthier, P. and Hatzopoulos, M. 1993.
La loi gymnasiarque de Béroia. Athens: Diffusion de Boccard.
Gawlinski, L. 2012.
The Sacred Law of Andania: A New Text with Commentary. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Gernet, L. 1948–1949.
“Droit et prédroit en Grèce ancienne.” Année sociologique 3me s.: 21–119.
——— 1968.
Droit et institutions en Grèce ancienne. Paris: Flammarion.
Georgoudi, S. 2010.
“Comment régler le theia pragmata. Pour une étude de ce qu’on appelle le ‘lois
sacrées’.” Métis N.S. 8: 39–54.
Giovannini, A. 2007.
Les relations entre états dans la Grèce antique du temps d’Homère à l’intervention
romaine (ca. 700–200 av. J.-C.). Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag.
Goody, J. and Watt, I. 1963.
“The Consequences of Literacy.” Comparative Studies in Society and Social
History 5/3: 304–345.
Gould, J. 1973.
“Hiketeia.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 93: 74–103.
Gray, V. J. 2007.
Xenophon on Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Günther, S. et al. 2017.
“Research Survey: The Ancient Economy – New Studies and Approaches:
Introduction (S. Günther), Ancient Greece (S. Günther), Ancient Rome (Including
Greco-Roman Egypt) (P. Reinard), Das alte Vorderasien (H. Neumann), Zur
Ökonomie Ägyptens bis zum Ende des Neuen Reiches (H. Köpp-Junk), The
Formation and Features of the Ming / Qing Imperial Agro-mercantile Society (Y.
Zhao).” Journal of Ancient Civilizations 32/1–2: 55–67, 69–81, 83–105, 185–210,
211–228, 229–255.
Hansen, M. H. 1974.
The Sovereignty of the People’s Court in the Fourth Century BC and the Public
Action against Unconstitutional Proposals. Odense: Odense University Press.
——— 1975.
Eisangelia: The Sovereignty of the People’s Court in Athens in the Fourth
Century B.C. and the Impeachment of Generals and Politicians. Odense: Odense
University Press.
——— 1976.
Apagoge, Endeixis, and Ephegesis against Kakourgoi, Atimoi, and Pheugontes:
A Study in the Athenian Administration of Justice in the Fourth Century B.C.
Odense: Odense University Press.
——— 1979–1980.
“Athenian Nomothesia in the Fourth Century B.C.” Classica & Mediaevalia 32:
87–104.
——— 2006.
Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State. Oxford & New York:
Oxford University Press.
——— 2015.
“Is Patrokleides’ Decree (Andoc. 1.77–79) a Genuine Document?” Greek, Roman
and Byzantine Studies 55: 884–901.
——— 2016a.
“Is Teisamenos’ Decree (Andoc. 1.83–84) a Genuine Document?” Greek, Roman
and Byzantine Studies 56: 34–48.
——— 2016b.
“The Authenticity of the Law about Nomothesia Inserted in Demosthenesʼ
Against Timokrates 20–23.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 56: 438–474.
——— 2017.
“Nomos ep’ andri in Fourth-Century Athens: On the Law Quoted at Andocides
1.87.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 57: 268–281.
Harrell, H. C. 1936.
Public Arbitration in Athenian Law. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri.
Harris, E. M. 1992.
“Review of MacDowell 1990.” Classical Philology 87: 71–80.
——— 1997.
“A New Solution to the Riddle of the Seisachtheia.” In: Mitchell and Rhodes 1997,
103–111.
——— 2005.
“Review of Yunis 2001.” Classical Journal 101/2: 215–217.
——— 2006.
Democracy and the Rule of Law in Classical Athens: Essays on Law, Society and
Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——— 2008a.
Demosthenes, Speeches 20–22. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press.
——— 2008b.
“Response to Gerhard Thür.” In: Harris and Thür 2008, 189–200.
——— 2009–2010.
“Review of Lanni 2006.” Dike 12/13: 323–331.
——— 2012.
“Homer, Hesiod, and the ‘Origins’ of Greek Slavery.” Revue des Études
Anciennes 114/2: 345–366.
——— 2013a.
The Rule of Law in Action in Democratic Athens. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
——— 2013b.
“The Plaint in Athenian Law and Legal Procedure.” In: Faraguna 2013, 143–162.
——— 2013c.
“Finley’s Studies in Land and Credit Sixty Years Later.” Dike 16: 123–146.
——— 2013d.
“Were there Business Agents in Classical Greece? The Evidence of Some Lead
Letters.” In: Yiftach-Firanko 2013, 105–124.
——— 2014.
“Wife, Marketplace and Household.” In: Bultrighini and Dimauro 2014, 183–
207.
——— 2013–2014.
“The Document at Andocides 1.96–98.” Tekmeria 12: 121–153.
——— 2015a.
“The Meaning of the Legal Term Symbolaion, the Law about Dikai Emporikai
and the Role of the Paragraphe Procedure.” Dike 18: 7–36.
——— 2015b.
“The Family, the Community and Murder: The Role of Pollution in Athenian
Homicide Law.” In: C. Ando and J. Rüpke (eds.), Public and Private in Ancient
Mediterranean Law and Religion. Berlin, Munich & Boston: De Gruyter, 11–35.
——— 2015c.
“Toward a Typology of Greek Regulations about Religious Matters: A Legal
Approach.” Kernos 28: 53–83. This is accompanied by a classification of sacred
regulations in Lois sacrées des cités grecques at the Kernos website (50 pages) and in
Lois sacrées d’Asie Mineure (38 pages) and in Lois sacrées. Supplément (50 pages).
——— 2016a.
“From Democracy to the Rule of Law? Constitutional Change.” In: Tiersch 2016,
73–87.
——— 2016b.
“The Nature of Self-Defense in Draco’s Homicide Law: The Restoration of IG 13
104, lines 33–35.” Hyperboreus 22/2: 203–216.
——— 2016c.
“The Legal Foundations of Economic Growth in Ancient Greece: The Role of
Property Records.” In: Harris, Lewis and Woolmer 2016, 116–146.
——— 2017.
“Applying the Law about the Award of Crowns to Magistrates (Aeschin. 3.9–
31): Epigraphic Evidence for the Legal Arguments at the Trial of Ctesiphon.”
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 202: 105–117.
——— 2018a.
“Trials, Private Arbitration, and Public Arbitration in Classical Athens or the
Background to [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 53, 1–7.” In: C. Bearzot et al. (eds.), Athenaion
Politeiai tra storia, politica e sociologia: Aristotele e Pseudo-Senofonte.
Quaderni di Erga/Logoi. Milan: LED Edizioni Universitarie, 213–230.
——— 2018b.
“The Athenian View of an Athenian Trial.” In: C. Carey, I. Giannadaki and B.
Griffith-Williams (eds.), The Use and Abuse of Law in the Athenian Courts.
Leiden: Brill, 42–74.
——— 2018c.
Demosthenes, Speeches 23–26. Austin TX: The University of Texas Press.
“Pollution for Homicide after 400 BCE: More Evidence for the Persistence of a
Belief.” In: L. Gagliardi and L. Pepe (eds.), Festschrift for A. Maffi.
Harris, E. M. and Canevaro, M. (eds.). forthcoming.
The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harris, E. M. and Thür, G. (eds.). 2008.
Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Harris, E. M., Lewis, D. M. and Woolmer, M. (eds.). 2016.
The Ancient Greek Economy: Markets, Households, and City-States. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Harris, W. V. 1989.
Ancient Literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Harrison, A. R. W. 1955.
“Law-Making at Athens at the End of the Fifth Century B.C.” Journal of Hellenic
Studies 75: 26–35.
——— 1968.
The Law of Athens. vol. 1: The Family and Property. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
——— 1971.
The Law of Athens. vol. 2: Procedure. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Harvey, D. 1966.
“Literacy in the Athenian Democracy.” Revue des Études Grecques 79: 585–635.
Hasebroek, J. 1928.
Staat und Handel im alten Griechenland. Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr.
——— 1933.
Trade and Politics in Ancient Greece. London: G. Bell and Sons.
Hawke, J. 2011.
Writing Authority: Elite Competition and Written Law in Early Greece. Dekalb:
Northern Illinois University Press.
Hennig, D. 1994.
“Immobilienerwerb durch Nichtbürger in der klassischen und hellenistischen
Zeit.” Chiron 24: 305–344.
——— 1995.
“Staatliche Ansprüche an privaten Immobilienbesitz in der klassischen und
hellenistischen Zeit.” Chiron 25: 235–282.
Herman, G. 2000.
“Athenian Beliefs about Revenge: Problems and Methods.” Papers of the
Cambridge Philological Society N.S. 46: 7–27.
——— 2006.
Morality and Behaviour in Democratic Athens: A Social History. Cambridge:
Hirzel, R. 1907.
Themis, Dike und Verwandtes: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Rechtsidee bei den
Griechen. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.
Hodkinson, S. 1986.
“Land Tenure and Inheritance in Classical Sparta.” Classical Quartely 36: 378–406.
——— 1997.
“The Development of Spartan Society and Institutions in the Archaic Period.” In:
Mitchell and Rhodes 1997, 82–102.
——— 2000.
Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. London: Classical Press of Wales.
Hölkeskamp, K.-J. 1990.
“Review of Gagarin 1986.” Gnomon 62: 116–128.
——— 1992.
“Written Law in Archaic Greece.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological
Society N.S. 38: 87–117.
——— 1999.
Schiedsrichter, Gesetzgeber und Gesetzgebung im archaischen Griechenland.
Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.
——— 2002.
“Nomos, Thesmos und Verwandtes: Vergleichende Überlegungen zur Kon-
zeptualisierung geschriebenen Rechts im klassischen Griechenland.” In: Cohen

2002, 115–146.
Hopkins, K. 1983.
“Introduction.” In: Garnsey, Hopkins and Whittaker 1983, ix–xxv.
Horváth, L. 2014.
Der neue Hypereides: Textedition, Studien und Erläuterungen. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Humphreys, S. C. 2007.
“Social Relations on Stage: Witnesses in Classical Athens.” In: Carawan 2007,
140–213.
Hunter, V. 1994.
Policing Athens: Social Control in the Attic Lawsuits, 420–320 B.C. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Jeffery, L. 1990.
The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece: A Study of the Origin of the Greek Alphabet
and its Development from the Eighth to the Fifth Centuries B.C. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Joyce, C. 2018.
“Atimia and Outlawry in Archaic and Classical Greece.” Polis: The Journal for
Ancient Greek Political Thought 35/1: 33–60.
Kantor, G. 2015.
“Greek Law under the Romans.” In: Harris and Canevaro forthcoming.
Kapparis, K. A. 1999.
Apollodorus: Against Neaira. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter.
Keaney, J. 1991.
Harpocration: Lexeis of the Ten Orators. Amsterdam: Hakkert.
Keenan, J. G., Manning, J. G. and Yiftach-Firanko, U. 2014.
Law and Legal Practice in Egypt from Alexander to the Arab Conquest: A
Selection of Papyrological Sources in Translation, with Introductions and
Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Knopf, E. 2005.
Contracts in Athenian Law. Unpublished PhD-thesis: City University of New York.
Koerner, R. 1993.
Inschriftliche Gesetzestexte der frühen griechischen Polis. Cologne: Böhlau.
Köhler, U. 1867.
“Attische Inschriften.” Hermes 2: 16–36.
Konstan, D. 2000.
“Pity and the Law in Greek Theory and Practice.” Dike 4: 125–145.
Kränzlein, A. 1963.
Eigentum und Besitz im griechischem Recht. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot.
Kremmydas, C. 2012.
Commentary on Demosthenes’ Against Leptines. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kristensen, K. R. 2004.
“Gortynian Debt-Bondage: Some Considerations.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie
und Epigraphik 149: 73–79.
Kroll, J. 1972.
Athenian Bronze Allotment Plates. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Lambert, S. D. 1998.
The Phratries of Attica. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
——— 1997.
Rationes Centesimarum: Sales of Public Land in Lykourgan Athens. Amsterdam: Brill.
——— (ed.). 2012.
Euclidis anno posteriores. Pars I: Leges et decreta. Fasciculus II: Leges et
decreta annorum 352/1–322/1. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Lanni, A. 2004.
“Arguing from Precedent: Modern Perspectives on Athenian Practice.” In: Harris
and Rubinstein 2004, 159–171.
——— 2006.
Law and Justice in the Courts of Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
——— 2016.
Law and Order in Ancient Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Latte, K. 1920.
Heiliges Recht: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der sakralen Rechtsformen in
Griechenland. Tubingen: Scientia Verlag.
Leão, D. and Rhodes, P. J. (eds.). 2015.
The Laws of Solon: A New Edition with Introduction, Translation and
Commentary. London: I.B. Tauris.
Leão, D. and Thür, G. (eds.). 2016.
Symposion 2015: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtgeschichte.
Vienna: Verlag der Österrreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Lefèvre, F. 1998.
L’Amphictionie Pyléo-Delphique: histoire et institutions. Paris: École Française
d’Athènes.
——— (ed.). 2002.
Corpus des inscriptions de Delphes. vol. 4: Documents amphictioniques. Paris:
Le Guen, B. 2001.
Les associations de Technites Dionysiaques à l’époque hellénistique. 2 vols.
Nancy: Diffusion de Boccard.
Lewis, D. M. 2013.
“Slave Marriages in the Laws of Gortyn: A Matter of Rights?” Historia 62: 390–416.
——— 2017.
“Making Law Grip: Inequality, Injustice, and Legal Remedy in Solonian Attica
and Ancient Israel.” In: Xydopoulos, Vlassopoulos and Tounta 2017, 28–49.
——— 2018.
Greek Slave Systems in their Near Eastern Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. M., Jeffery, L. and Erxleben, E. (eds.). 1981–1998.
Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis Anno Anteriores. 3rd ed. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Lipsius, J. 1905–1915.
Das attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren. Leipzig: O. R. Reisland.
Low, P. 2007.
Interstate Relations in Classical Greece: Morality and Order. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Lupu, E. 2005.
Greek Sacred Law: A Collection of New Documents. Leiden & Boston: Brill.
MacDowell, D. M. 1963.
Athenian Homicide Law in the Age of the Orators. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
——— 1975.
“Law-Making at Athens in the Fourth Centurty B.C.” Journal of Hellenic Studies
95: 62–67.
——— 1978.
The Law in Classical Athens. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
——— 1986.
Spartan Law. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.
——— 1990.
Demosthenes: Against Meidias. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
——— 1997.
“Prosecution for Homicide.” Classical Review 47: 384–385.
——— 1998.
“Review of Scafuro 1997.” Greece & Rome N.S. 45: 227–228.
——— 2000.
Demosthenes: On the False Embassy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
——— 2004a.
Demosthenes, Speeches 27–38. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press.
——— 2004b.
“Epikerdes of Kyrene and the Athenian Privilege of Ateleia.” Zeitschrift für
Papyrologie und Epigraphik 150: 127–133.
——— 2009.
Demosthenes the Orator. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mack, W. J. B. G. 2015.
Proxeny and Polis: Institutional Networks in the Ancinet Greek World. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Magnetto, A. 1997.
Gli arbitrati interstatali greci. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione, commento
indici. vol. 2: Dal 337 al 196 A.C. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore.
“Interstate Arbitration and Foreign Judges.” In: E. M. Harris and M. Canevaro (eds.),
The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Malay, H. and Petzl, G. 2017.
New Religious Texts from Lydia. Ergänzungsbände zu den Tituli Asiae Minoris
28. Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Manning, J. G. and Oliver, G. J. 2017.
“Review of Ober 2017.” The Journal of Economic History 77/2: 599–601.
Meyer, E. 1895.
“Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung des Altertums.” Jahrbücher für National-
ökonomie und Statistik 9: 1–70.
——— 1910.
Kleine Schriften zur Geschichtstheorie und zur wirtschaftlichen und politischen
Geschichte des Altertums. Halle: Niemeyer.
Mitchell, L. and Rhodes, P. J. (eds.). 1997.
The Development of the Polis in the Archaic Period. London & New York:
Routledge.
Migeotte, L. 1984.
L’emprunt public dans les cités grecques: Recueil des documents et analyse
critique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
——— 1992.
Les souscriptions publiques dans les cités grecques. Geneva & Quebec: Droz.
Miller, W. I. 1990.
Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Millett, P. 1991.
Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mirhady, D. 1996.
“Torture and Rhetoric in Athens.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 116: 119–131.
Mitteis, L. 1891.
Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den östlichen Provinzen des Römischen
Kaiserreichs. Leipzig: Köhlers Antiquarum.
Mosley, D. J. 1972.
Envoys and Diplomacy in Ancient Greece. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Murphy, D. J. and Dilts, M. R. 2018.
Antiphontis et Andocides Orationes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Naiden, F. S. 2006.
Ancient Supplication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nicholas, B. 1962.
An Introduction to Roman Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ober, J. 1989.
Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Osborne, M. J. 1981–1983.
Naturalization in Athens. 4 vols. in 3. Brussels: Paleis der Academiën.
Osborne, M. and Byrne, S. (eds.). 2015.
Euclidis anno posteriores. Pars I: Leges et decreta. Fasciculus IV: Leges et
decreta annorum 300/299–230/29. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Osborne, R. 1985.
“Law in Action in Classical Athens.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 105: 40–58.
Ostwald, M. 1969.
Nomos and the Beginnings of the Athenian Democracy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
——— 1986.
From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law: Law, Society, and Politics
in Fifth-Century Athens. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Paoli, U. E. 1933.
Studi sul processo attico. Padua: Cedam.
Papakonstantinou, Z. 2008.
Lawmaking and Adjudication in Archaic Greece. London: Routledge.
Parker, R. 1983.
Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
——— 2004.
“What are Sacred Laws?” In: Harris and Rubinstein 2004, 57–70.
——— 2005.
“Law and Religion.” In: Gagarin and Cohen 2005, 61–81.
Partsch, J. 1909.
Griechisches Bürgschaftsrecht. I. Teil: Das Recht des altgriechischen Gemeinde-
staats. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner.
Paulsen, T. 1999.
Die Parapresbeia-Reden des Demosthenes und des Aischines: Kommentar
und Interpretation zu Demosthenes, or. XIX und Aischines, or. II. Trier:
Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
Pébarthe, C. 2006.
Cité, démocratie et écriture: Histoire de l’alphabetisation d’Athènes à l’époque
classique. Paris: De Boccard.
Pecírka, J. 1966.
The Formula for the Grant of Enktesis in Attic Inscriptions. Prague: Universita
Karlova.
Pelloso, C. 2008.
Studi sul furto nell’antichità mediterranea. Padua: Cedam.
——— 2013.
“The Myth of the Priority of Procedure over Substance.” Rivista di Diritto
Ellenico 3: 223–275.
Pepe, L. 2012.
Phonos: Omicidio da Draconte all’ età degli oratori. Milan: Giuffrè Editore.
Perlman, P. 2000.
City and Sanctuary in Ancient Greece: The Theorodokia in the Peloponnese.
Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
——— (ed.). 2018.
Greek Law in the Twenty-First Century. Austin, TX: The University of Texas
Press.
Pernin, I. 2014.
Les baux ruraux en Grèce ancienne: corpus épigraphique et étude. Lyon: Maison
de l’ Orient et de la Méditerranée.
Phillips, D. D. 2008.
Avengers of Blood: Homicide in Athenian Law from Draco to Demosthenes.
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
——— 2009.
“Hyperides 3 and the Athenian Law of Contracts.” Transactions of the American
Philological Association 139: 89–122.
——— 2013.
The Law of Ancient Athens. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
——— 2016.
“Notes on Pollution and Jurisdiction in Athenian Homicide Law.” In: Leão and
Thür 2016, 351–364.
Piccirilli, L. 1973.
Gli arbitrati interstatali greci. Florence: Edizioni Marlin.
Pomeroy, S. B. 1990.
Women in Hellenistic Egypt. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Powell, J. and Patterson, J. (eds.). 2004.
Cicero the Advocate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pringsheim, F. 1950.
The Greek Law of Sale. Weimar: Böhlau.
Prott, J. and Ziehen, L. (eds.). 1896–1906.
Leges Graecorum sacrae e titulis collectae. 2 vols. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner.
Rhodes, P. J. 1981.
A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
——— 1984.
“Nomothesia in Fourth Century Athens.” Classical Quarterly 35: 55–60.
——— 1987.
“Nomothesia in Classical Athens.” L’educazione giuridica 5/2: 5–26.
——— 2004.
“Keeping to the Point.” In: Harris and Rubinstein 2004, 137–158.
——— 2017.
The Athenian Constitution Written in the School of Aristotle. Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press.
Rhodes, P. J. with Lewis, D. M. 1997.
The Decrees of the Greek States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Richer, N. 1998.
Les Ephores: Études sur l’histoire et sur l’image de Sparte. Paris: Publications
de la Sorbonne.
Rigsby, K. J. 1996.
Asylia: Territorial Inviolability in the Hellenistic World. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Rousset, D. 2017.
“Considérations sur la loi éphébarchique d’Amphipolis.” Revue des Études
Anciennes 119: 49–84.
Rubinstein, L. 2000.
Litigation and Cooperations: Supporting Speakers in the Courts of Classical
Athens. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
——— 2005.
“Main Litigants and Witnesses in the Athenian Courts.” In: Wallace and Gagarin
2005, 99–120.
——— 2007.
“‘ARAI’ in Greek Law in the Classical and Hellenistic Periods: Deterrence of
Concession to Tradition?” In: Cantarella 2007, 269–286.
Rutherford, I. 2013.
State Pilgrims and Sacred Observers in Ancient Greece. A Study of Theoria and
Theoroi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ruschenbusch, E. 1966.
Σόλωνος νόμοι: Die Fragmente des Solonischen Gesetzeswerkes, mit einer
Text- und Überlieferungsgeschichte. Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag.
——— 2010.
Das Gesetzeswerk-Fragmente: Übersetzung und Kommentar. Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag.
Saba, S. 2012.
The Astynomoi Law from Pergamon. Mainz: Verlag Antike.
Samama, E. 2003.
Les médecins dans le monde grec: Sources épigraphiques sur la naissance d’un
corps médical. Geneva: Droz.
Scafuro, A. 1997.
The Forensic Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schaps, D. M. 1979.
The Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Scheidel, W., Morris, I. and Saller, R. (eds.). 2007.
The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World. Cambridge:
Seelentag, G. 2105.
Das archaische Kreta. Institutionalisierung im frühen Griechenland. Berlin: De
Gruyter.
Shear, J. L. 2011.
Polis and Revolution: Responding to Oligarchy in Classical Athens. Cambridge:
Sickinger, J. P. 1999.
Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press.
——— 2004.
“The Laws of Athens: Publication, Preservation and Consultation.” In: Harris and
Rubinstein 2004, 93–109.
——— 2008.
“Indeterminacy in Greek Law: Statutory Gaps and Conflicts.” In: Harris and Thür
2008, 99–112.
Sokolowski, F. 1955.
Lois sacrées de l’Asie Mineur. Paris: Diffusion de Boccard.
——— 1962.
Lois sacrées des cités grecques. Supplément. Paris: Diffusion de Boccard.
——— 1969.
Lois sacrées des cités grecques. Paris: Diffusion de Boccard.
Sommerstein, A. 2014.
“The Authenticity of the Demophantus Decree.” Classical Quarterly 64: 49–57.
Sommerstein, A. and Bayliss, A. (eds.). 2012.
Oath and State in Ancient Greece. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Sommerstein, A. and Torrance, I. 2014.
Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Stanley, P. V. 1976.
Ancient Greek Market Regulations and Controls. Unpublished PhD-thesis:
University of California, Berkeley.
Steinwenter, A. 1925.
Die Streitbeendigung durch Urteil, Schiedsspruch und Vergleich nach
griechischem Recht. Munich: C.H. Beck.
Stroud, R. S. 1968.
Drakon’s Law on Homicide. Berkeley: University of California Press .
——— 1974.
“An Athenian Law on Silver Coinage.” Hesperia 43: 157–188.
——— 1998.
The Athenian Grain-Tax Law of 374/3 B.C. Hesperia Suppl. 29. Princeton:
American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Szegedy-Maszak, A. 1978.
“Legends of the Greek Lawgivers.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 19:
199–209.
——— 1981.
The Nomoi of Theophrastus. New York: Ayer.
Talamanca, M. 2017.
Dike ouk Eisagogimos: Contributi allo studio del processo Attico. Vienna: Verlag
der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Taubenschlag, R. 1944.
The Law of Greco-Roman Egypt in the Light of the Papyri, 332 B.C. – 640 A.D.
New York: Herald Square Press.
Teegarden, D. 2014.
Death to Tyrants! Ancient Greek Democracy and the Struggle against Tyranny.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Thomas, R. 1989.
Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Thür, G. 1977.
Beweisführung vor den Schwurgerichtshöfen Athens. Die Proklesis zur Basanos.
Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
——— (ed.). 1994.
Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften.
——— 2007.
“Das Prinzip der Fairness im attischen Prozess: Gedanken zu echinos und
enklema.” In: Cantarella 2007, 131– 158.
——— 2008.
“Ownership and Security in Macedonian Sale Documents.” In: Harris and Thür
2008, 173–187.
Thür, G. and Taeuber, H. (eds.). 1994.
Prozessrechtliche Inschriften der griechischen Poleis: Arkadien (IPArk). Vienna:
Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Tiersch, C. (ed.). 2016.
Die athenische Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert: Zwischen Modernisierung und
Tradition. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag.
Todd, S. C. 1990.
“The Purpose of Evidence in Athenian Courts.” In: Cartledge, Millett and Todd
1990, 19–39.
——— 1993.
The Shape of Athenian Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
——— 2007.
A Commentary on Lysias 1–11. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
——— 2016.
“Death and Religion in Athenian Law: Identifying Pollution.” In: Leão and Thür
2016, 325–350.
Tulin, A. 1996.
Dike Phonou: The Right of Prosecution and Attic Homicide Procedure. Stuttgart:
B.G. Teubner.
Van Bremen, R. 1996.
The Limits of Participation: Women and Civic Life in the Greek East in the
Hellenistic and Roman Periods. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben.
Van Effenterre, H. and Ruzé, F. 1994–1995.
Nomima: Recueil d’inscriptions politiques et juridiques de l’archaisme grec. 2
vols. Rome: École Française de Rome.
Vélissaropoulos, J. 1980.
Les nauclères grecs: Recherches sur les institutions maritimes en Grèce et dans
l’Orient hellénisé. Geneva & Paris: Droz & Libraire Minard.

——— 2011.
Droit grec d’Alexandre à Auguste (323 av. J.-C. – 14 ap. J.-C.). 2 vols. Athens:
Vérilhac, A.-M. and Vial, C. 1998.
Le mariage grec du VIme siècle av. J.C. à l’époque d’Auguste. Paris: École Fran-
çaise d’Athènes.
Vlassopoulos, K. 2011.
“Greek Slavery: From Domination to Property and Back Again.” Journal of
Hellenic Studies 131: 115–130.
Wallace, R. W. 1989.
The Areopagus Council, to 307 B.C. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Wallace, R. W. and Gagarin, M. (eds.). 2005.
Symposion 2001: Akten der Gesellschaft für griechische und hellenistische Rechts-
geschichte. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Walser, A. V. 2008.
Bauern und Zinsnehmer: Politik, Recht und Wirtschaft im frühhellenistichen
Ephesos. Munich: C.H. Beck.
Wankel, H. 1976.
Demosthenes, Rede für Ktesiphon über den Kranz. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Weber, M. 1976.
The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations. Trans. R. I. Frank. London: Verso.
Weiss, E. 1923.
Griechisches Privatrecht auf rechtsvergleichender Grundlage. Leipzig: Scientia Verlag.
Whitehead, D. 2000.
Hyperides. The Forensic Speeches: Introduction, Translation and Commentary.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whitley, J. 1997.
“Cretan Laws and Cretan Literacy.” American Journal of Archaeology 101: 635–661.
——— 1998.
“Literacy and Law-making. The Case of Archaic Crete.” In: N. Fisher and H.
van Wees (eds.), Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Evidence. London:
Duckworth with the Classical Press of Wales, 311–331.
Wittenburg, A. 1990.
Il Testamento di Epikteta. Trieste: Giulio Bernardi Editore.
Wolff, H.-J. 1946.
“The Origin of Judicial Litigation among the Greeks.” Traditio 4: 31–87.
——— 1957.
“Die Grundlagen des griechischen Vertragsrechts.” Zeitschrift der Savigny-
Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Romanistische Abteilung 72: 26–72.

——— 1970.
Normenkontrolle und Gesetzbegriff in der attischen Demokratie: Untersuchungen
zur Graphe Paranomon. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
——— 1966.
Die attische Paragraphe. Weimar: Böhlau.
——— 1978–2002.
Das Recht der griechischen Papyri Ägyptens in der Zeit der Ptolemäer und des
Prinzipats. 2 vols. Munich: C.H. Beck.
Wyse, W. 1979.
The Speeches of Isaeus. Reprint of the original edition of 1904. New York:
Xydopoulos, I. K., Vlassopoulos, K. and Tounti, E. (eds.). 2017.
Violence and Community: Law, Space and Identity in the Ancient Eastern
Mediterranean. London: Routledge.
Yiftach-Firanko, U. (ed.). 2013.
Legal Documents in Ancient Societies (LDAS) I: The Letter: Law, State, Society
and the Epistolary Format in the Ancient World. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Yunis, H. 2001.
Demosthenes: On the Crown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zaccarini, M. forthcoming.
“The Fate of the Lawgiver: The Invention of Ephialtes and the Patrios Politeia.”
Historia.

Some Recent Developments in The Study of Ancient Greek Law

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Some Recent Developments in The Study of Ancient Greek Law

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE STUDY OF

ANCIENT GREEK LAW

187 JAC 33/2 (2018)

The Unity of Greek Law

also in aristocratic governments. Fifth, statutes in Greek city-states often added

text of the Constitution of the Athenians edited by M. Chambers and a useful

produced a commentary on four private speeches of Demosthenes.50 The Texas

which contains definitions and discussions of legal terms. Unfortunately, the

Law and Writing

The Laws of the Greek City-States in the Archaic Period

document at Andocides.119 If someone proposed a decree that violated a law, an

([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 43.3). This analysis is confirmed by a passage in Against

Athenian Law and Legal Procedure

of aggressive motives in the speeches) and gentle characteristics (self-restraint,

Virtually none of these features can be found in Athenian litigation.145 In fact,

speeches in the Demosthenic corpus delivered in paragraphe-cases, the litigants

alternative procedures for homicide (130–140).

Law and Religion

incident described in Demosthenes’ Against Timocrates (24.11–12) illustrates

accused the Amphissans of cultivating sacred land, which led to a declaration

Law and Economy

of locatio-conductio (lease-hire): locatio rei (lease of land or a movable), and

(8.347–348).262 This contract is found in conjunction with loans, leases, contracts

Market Regulations and Interstate Trade

important collection Tout Vendre, Tout Acheter edited by V. Chankowski and P.

These interstate arbitrations have been studied by L. Piccirilli, S. L. Ager

Prospects for Future Research

Capdetrey, L. and Hasenohr, C. (eds.). 2012.

Chankowski, V. and Karvonis, P. (eds.). 2012.

Dareste, R., Haussoullier, B. and Reinach, T. 1891–1904.

Ancient Greece. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Frier, B. and Kehoe, D. 2007.

Garnsey, P., Hopkins, K. and Whittaker, C. R. (eds.). 1983.

zeptualisierung geschriebenen Rechts im klassischen Griechenland.” In: Cohen

l’Orient hellénisé. Geneva & Paris: Droz & Libraire Minard.

Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Romanistische Abteilung 72: 26–72.

You might also like