Arbitration in Ancient Greece

N. G. L. Hammond
Arbitration International, Vol. 1 No. 2 (1985), pp. 188 - 189

Arbitration appears at the very dawn of Greek history. Homer described the following
scene in the Iliad,(1) a poem composed during the eighth century BC. He was thinking of
his own lifetime, when society was moving from family vendetta to a lawful community. In
Homer's account the killer of a man offered full compensation, but the representative (the
next of kin usually) rejected any compensation. The dispute between the killer and the
representative took place in public in the market square. The two then appealed to a man
‘versed in the law’ to give a decision. He presided while anyone who wished spoke in
support of the one man or the other. Next, he entrusted the judgment to ‘the elders, sitting
on polished stones in a sacred circle, who each in turn held the mace and gave his opinion’.
No doubt a majority vote led to the decision. It was for the president, the man originally
asked to arbitrate, to convey and enforce the decision, if possible.
The same procedure was followed in assessing the blood-guilt or innocence of Orestes in
Aeschylus’ play, Eumenides.(2) The parties in dispute (Orestes and the Furies) appealed to
the goddess Athena to decide. She referred the judgment to the best of the citizens of
Athens, whom she herself selected and put under oath to judge in accordance with justice.
When they had heard the arguments from each side, they cast their votes. Athena reported
and enforced the decision, that Orestes should go free.
In these two cases the disputants chose an arbitrator whom they trusted. The matter was
conducted in public, not in camera. The arbitrator did not decide in person. His or her
selected judges heard the arguments in public, and each of them gave in one case his
opinion in public and in the other case his vote in secret. It lay with the arbitrator to report
the verdict and enforce it. The aim of the arbitration was to arrive at a peaceful settlement
and avoid bloodshed.
When two independent states in Greece were the disputants, they sometimes appealed to a
third independent state to arbitrate. For example, circa 200 BC, Samos and Priene,(3) who
had had a longstanding territorial dispute, appealed to Rhodes to arbitrate. The Rhodian
state, that is the Assembly of the Rhodian citizens, accepted. The Assembly then elected
five Rhodians to ‘judge the case and determine the frontier and issue an award or bring
about an agreed settlement’. The five men next heard the arguments of the delegates of
Samos and of Priene and arrived at their award. The Rhodian state then made a record on
stone (of which much is preserved) of the names of the five men, the delegates and the
officials to whom copies of the award were to be delivered; a full account of the points
made by the delegates; a summary of the considerations which influenced the five men; a
statement of the award; and a full "188"description of the frontier-line which had been laid
down under the award. It was evident that full publication, in writing, was held to be
important.
When two states which were members of a federal system fell into disputes, they usually
appealed to the federal government. For example, Corinth and Epidaurus(4) appealed to
their federal government (the Achaean Council) to arbitrate in their frontier dispute. The
government sent 151 men from Megara (another member state) to investigate on the
ground: ‘They judged that the land belonged to Epidaurus. Corinth contested the
delimitation. Megara sent 31 of the 151 men to fix the boundaries in accordance with the
award made by the Achaeans’ (ie, by the federal government). There follows on the
published record the names of the original 151 men and those of the 31 men. Publicity was
given to such a record by having it inscribed on stone in the capitals of the contending
states, the arbitrating authority and the judging state, and in the temple of a god or goddess
whom they all worshipped.
In the Iliad the man who gave the ‘straightest’ opinion was rewarded with gold. Judges who
earned respect in cases under arbitration were honoured and accorded privileges. They were
sometimes employed directly by another state to arbitrate in its own cases. They had to be
expert in legal matters, since each state had its own code. The Rhodian judges were highly
prized for their expertise and fairness. They were often invited into other states to deal with
a backlog of current cases, which was apt to happen in fully developed democracies which
employed large juries, ranging up to 1,501 in Athens. Great store was set on
‘reconciliation’, that is settlement out of court. In one instance 340 cases out of a backlog of
350 were discharged in this way. Samos, in 280 BC, honoured two judges who had been
sent by Myndus at the request of Samos(5) ‘because they had settled fairly and
advantageously the suits which had been in suspense’ and had succeeded in reconciling the
contestants.
Where states were not equal, a different form of international jurisdiction developed. On
establishing an empire in the fifth century BC. Athens insisted that the People's Court in
Athens should try any case which arose in a subject state involving sentence of death, exile
or disfranchisement; and the same insistence was sometimes made when a Athenian and a
non-Athenian were in dispute in a subject state., On other occasions Athens appointed
Athenians as judges to go out and settle cases in a subject state. Many of these cases arose
from disputes in maritime commerce, of which Athens was the international centre.
When Athens established a second empire in the fourth century BC, she devised another
form of juridical control. Any person in an ‘allied’ state (often in fact a subject state) could
appeal to Athens against a verdict delivered in the local court; and the case was then tried
de novo by the People's Court or by the appropriate court in Athens. This system had
certain advantages. Knowledge of Athenian law spread through the Greek cities of the
Aegean world; Athenian juries and judges were experienced and often impartial; and
decisions were made comparatively quickly. Commercial cases were given priority. They
had to be decided within one month of their reference.
What Athens had begun to do by force was achieved by Rhodes by consent. When
Alexander brought much of Asia into the Greek world, the economic balance of maritime
commerce shifted eastwards and Rhodes became the chief centre of exchange "189"and of
banking for the Greek city-states. She owed her success to her geographical situation on the
sea lanes, her superb mariners and her stable government which combined a strong
aristocratic control and some democratic features. Moreover, she took the lead in putting
down piracy and in guaranteeing the freedom of the seas. In consequence the Rhodian code
of law, especially it maritime law, became an international code in the sense that it was
widely adopted by the maritime city-states in the third and second centuries BC. Thereafter
Rome conquered the East. But the Antonine Emperors adopted the Rhodian code for the
Empire for maritime commerce; and it has been argued that what the Byzantine writers
called ‘The Rhodian Sea-law’(6) was handed on by the Byzantines to Venice and so
affected medieval European law.(7)
1   Iliad xviii 497–508.
2   Aeschylus, Eumenides 433–753.
3   Samos and Priene: Inschriften von Priene 37, 38.
4   Corinth and Epidaurus: Inscriptiones Graecae IV21. 71.
5   Myndus and Samos: Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum I.363.
6   Ashburner, The Rhodian Sea-law (1909).
7   Lowndes and Rudolf, General Average and York Antwerp Rules, Tenth Edition (1975),
paragraphs 1–4.