Greek Law

Sign in Modify your search

Perform this search in

Narrow Your Choices

Availability

Subject

 21-40 of 155 Results  for:

Clear all

Article

asylia  

Jakob Aall Ottesen Larsen and Simon Hornblower

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
Asylia, was freedom from others' right of self-help by seizure of one's goods (συλᾶν); see syle. Such seizure could be exercised not only against the offender but against other citizens and *metics of the offender's state. When asylia was granted to individuals (e.g. Syl.3 644) it meant that whatever claims there were against the individual's state, the personal property of that individual was safe from seizure by citizens and residents of the asylia-granting state. Asylia could be given to entire states.But asylia in this sense of freedom from legalized reprisals came to mean in effect general freedom from acts of *piracy and *brigandage; A more specific, and perhaps original, meaning was inviolability of shrines: Hellenistic cities often asked for and usually got recognition of asylia for sanctuaries in their territory, cf. Rigbsy 106 ff. (*Cos) or 179 ff. (*Magnesia on Maeander).

Article

Athēnaiōn politeia  

P. J. Rhodes

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek History and Historiography
  2. Greek Law
  3. Philosophy
*Aristotle is credited with works on the constitutions of 158 states: a papyrus containing all but the opening few pages of the Athenian constitution was acquired by the British Museum, and was published in 1891. About the first two thirds (chs. 1–41) give a history of the constitution to the restoration of the democracy after the regime of the Thirty (see thirty tyrants). This part derives from a mixture of sources, and is of uneven merit, but at its best it contains valuable information which does not survive in any other text. The remaining third (42–69) gives an extremely useful account of the working of the constitution in the author's time, and appears to be based on the laws of Athens and the author's own observation.There has been much argument as to the authorship of the work: it was regularly attributed in antiquity to Aristotle, and was written (in the 330s bce, with some revision in the 320s) when he was in Athens; there are some striking agreements between the Athēnaiōn politeia and Aristotle's Politics (e.

Article

atimia  

Arnold Wycombe Gomme and P. J. Rhodes

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
Atimia, in a Greek state, the loss of some or all rights. It originally amounted to outlawry, total loss of rights vis-à-vis the individual or community the man made atimos had wronged; later it came usually if not always to denote loss of civic rights (including the right to go to law to protect one's personal rights). In Athens atimia could be temporary (men in debt to the state lost their rights until the debt was discharged), and it could be limited to specific disabilities (soldiers who stayed in Athens under the *Four Hundred lost the rights to serve in the council and to speak in the assembly, see ekklēsia).

Article

Attic Orators  

C. Carey

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
By the time of *Hermogenes (2) (On Ideas 2. 11) writing in the 2nd cent. ce there was a list of ten Athenian orators (*Lysias, *Isaeus (1), *Hyperides, *Isocrates, *Dinarchus, *Aeschines (1), *Antiphon (1), *Lycurgus (3), *Andocides, *Demosthenes (2)) whose classic status was recognized; the same selection figures in the Lives of the Ten Orators falsely ascribed to *Plutarch. This follows a tendency typical of the Hellenistic period, to produce select lists for different genres (see canon). The number ten apparently goes back at least to *Caecilius (1) of Caleacte (Augustan period), who (Suda, entry under Κεκίλιος) wrote a treatise On the Style of the Ten Orators. However, even if Caecilius' ten were the same as Hermogenes', the selection was slow to acquire canonical status. There is evidence for alternative lists. His contemporary *Dionysius (7) (On Imitation 5) lists six orators worthy of imitation (Lysias, Isocrates, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hyperides), while at On the Ancient Orators 4, Isaeus replaces Lycurgus.

Article

autonomy  

Simon Hornblower

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 July 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
In internal affairs it means the state of affairs where a community is responsible for its own laws; in this sense it is opposed to *tyranny (Hdt. 1. 96. 1) and means self-determination, whereas *freedom (eleutheria) means absence of external constraint. But autonomia is also regularly used in the context of interstate relations, where it indicates a limited independence permitted by a stronger power to a weaker; that is, external constraints are relevant to autonomia too. The term first occurs (in the adjectival form ‘autonomous’, αὐτόνομος, and in a personal and metaphorical sense) at Soph. Ant. 821, a play usually but not certainly dated 443 bce.; and it is a plausible hypothesis that ‘autonomy’ was first used in interstate contexts in the *Delian League. It may have been generally guaranteed in the *Thirty Years Peace of 446. Certainly *Aegina's complaint about infringed autonomy featured prominently at the beginning of the *Peloponnesian War.

Article

axones  

Victor Ehrenberg and P. J. Rhodes

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
  2. Greek Material Culture
At Athens the laws of *Draco and of *Solon were inscribed on numbered axones; the term kyrbeis (of unknown origin), used of Solon's laws, is thought by some to refer to a different set of objects, but is more probably an alternative name for the same objects. They were probably three- or four-sided wooden pillars, mounted on a vertical axis so that readers could turn them. Probably they could still be read and studied in the 4th cent.; in the time of *Plutarch small fragments survived.

Article

betrothal, Greek  

Gordon Willis Williams and Mark Golden

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
  2. Greek Law
Greek betrothal, ἐγγύη, was a contract between two men, the groom and the bride's father (or other κύριος, ‘controller’, male representative at law) which established that a union was a fully valid marriage. In Classical Athens, this contract was oral, more or less formulaic (judging from examples in *Menander (1)), aimed at assuring the legitimacy of children, and accompanied by an agreement concerning dowry; the bride herself need not be present, or even of an age to understand the proceedings, and the celebration of the marriage and cohabitation might be long delayed or in the end not take place (*Demosthenes (2)'s sister was betrothed at 5 to a man she never married). Marriages at Sparta too might involve betrothal; sources speak as well of another custom, abduction marriage (conceivably with the complicity of the bride and her family). Scattered references to betrothal in Hellenistic documents from a number of cities go some way towards confirming the suggestion that most Greeks practised ἐγγύη (Diod.

Article

boulē  

Arnold Wycombe Gomme, Theodore John Cadoux, and P. J. Rhodes

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 July 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
In Greek states, a council; frequently the council which had day-to-day responsibility for the state's affairs. Its membership and powers could vary with the complexion of the regime: in the Homeric world it was a meeting of nobles called to advise the king; in an oligarchic state eligibility might be restricted, membership might be for a long term, and the council might be relatively powerful and the citizens' assembly relatively weak (cf. the *gerousia, council of elders, in *Sparta); in a democratic state eligibility would be broader, a limited term of office would ensure that more of the citizens served at some time, and the council would be the servant rather than the master of the assembly. The council would be involved in decision-making, administration and jurisdiction. Most states, except some of the very smallest, had a council of this kind. In the cities of *Boeotia in the Classical period one quarter at a time of the citizens with full rights served as the council.

Article

bribery, Greek  

Simon Hornblower

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek Law

Much Greek vocabulary for bribery is neutral (‘persuade by gifts/money’, ‘receiving gifts’), although pejorative terms like ‘gift-swallowing’ are found as early as Hesiod (Op. 37 ff.). Attic tragedy contains accusations of bribery against e.g. seers like Tiresias (Soph. OT 380 ff.); Thucydides' *Pericles (1) (2. 60. 5, cf. 65. 8) finds it necessary to say that he has not taken bribes; clearly the normal expectation was that politicians did. Accusations of bribery are frequent in 4th cent. orators, partly because you had to prove bribery in order to make a treason accusation (*eisangelia) stick: Hyperides 4. 29 f. Hyperides 5. 24 f. (with D. Whitehead's comm., 2000) implies an Athenian distinction between bribes taken for and against the state's interests; the latter type have been called ‘catapolitical’ (Harvey; but see H. Wankel, ZPE 85 (1991), 34 ff.). See also corruption.

Article

bureaucracy, Greek  

P. J. Rhodes

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
Because the Greek world remained a world of separate, small states, and because those states entrusted their administration as far as possible to individual citizens or boards of citizens, often appointed for a single year, rather than to professional administrators, bureaucracy in the Greek world is not a large subject. However, administrative machinery had to be kept in motion, documents had to be drafted, and records had to be kept and retrieved; and, even in the amateur culture of the Greek city-states, there were some opportunities for specialization in this kind of work.Athens, as usual, is the state about which we are best informed. Inventories were compiled, and often inscribed, of the contents of temple treasuries and of dockyards; there were contracts for tax-collection, mine leases, and the like; there were records of decrees and of lawcourt verdicts. Some public slaves (dēmosioi) were used not for manual labour but for keeping records and producing them when required, and for assisting in the elaborate procedures of the jury-courts (Ath.

Article

Charondas  

Michael Gagarin

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law

The lawgiver of his native town *Catana and other Chalcidic colonies, especially *Rhegium. He is often associated with *Zaleucus, but he lived later, probably towards the end of the 6th cent. bce. Much of our information about him is legendary. More reliable are reports that he set very precise penalties for different offences and that he prohibited the extension of credit in commercial transactions.

Article

citizenship, Greek  

John Davies

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
06 July 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
Greek citizenship stemmed from the fusion of two distinct but related elements, (a) the notion of the individual state as a ‘thing’ with boundaries, an ongoing existence, and a power of decision, and (b) the notion of its inhabitants participating in its life as joint proprietors. The first element was a product of the various processes of state formation which eroded personal chieftainship by centralizing power and exercising it through a growing number of offices or magistracies with limited length of tenure: at first denoted by an extended use of the word *polis (cf. ML 2), it later engendered the more abstract term politeia, ‘polity’, ‘constitution’, or ‘commonwealth’. The second element developed from the informal but ineradicable roles which *epic already portrays as being played in communal life by the dēmos (the territory or settlement and its inhabitants) and the laos (the people in terms of roles—especially military—and relationships): reflected in various ways in early texts such as ML 2 (Dreros on *Crete), ML 8 (*Chios), or the Great Rhetra of *Sparta (Plut.

Article

cleruchy  

Simon Hornblower

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Law
Cleruchy (κληρουχία), a special sort of Greek colony (see colonization, greek) in which the settlers kept their original citizenship and did not form a completely independent community. In Classical Greek history (see end of this article for the Hellenistic position) the term is confined to certain Athenian settlements founded on conquered territory (Greek and non-Greek) from the end of the 6th cent. bce, especially during the period of the *Delian League. It is often difficult to decide whether a settlement of the 5th cent. is a cleruchy, as ancient authors do not always distinguish cleruchies from other colonies (see apoikia), and because it seems that colonists did not forfeit their Athenian citizenship any more than did cleruchs. Perhaps in the 5th cent. ‘cleruchy’ was appropriate where (as at *Lesbos, Thuc. 3. 50) the original Greek inhabitants remained, ‘colony’ where they did not. (This does not work for 4th-cent. *Samos.

Article

Common Peace  

Polly Low

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek History and Historiography
  2. Greek Law
The “Common Peace” (koinē eirēnē) is a diplomatic innovation of the 4th century bce. It is a multilateral peace agreement, distinguished by the presence of clauses which offer a range of protections to many (though not all) Greek states; most important among these is the guarantee of autonomia or limited independence. The first successful attempt to set up a Common Peace dates to 387/6; further Common Peaces were concluded in 375, 371 (twice), probably 365, and 362/1. The League of Corinth also has some characteristics of a Common Peace. From the start, the Common Peaces were exploited by Greek states as a vehicle for their hegemonic ambitions or to undermine the hegemonic ambitions of others. However, some have argued that the Common Peaces were not merely a tool of power politics, but also reflect significant developments in Greek attitudes to war, peace, and international law.“Common Peace” is the English term used to describe a series of multilateral treaties contracted between various Greek powers, often also with the involvement of the Persian King, in the 4th century .

Article

decarchies  

Paul Cartledge

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
Decarchies were juntas, literally ‘ten-man rules’, established under the aegis of *Lysander in parts of the former Athenian empire (see delian league) following Sparta's victory in the *Peloponnesian War. They were non-responsible, absolute dictatorships (dunasteiai in Greek parlance), sometimes supported by a garrison under a Spartan commander known as a *harmost. They collected their city's share of the war-tax levied by Sparta (Ath. pol. 39. 2) and in other ways functioned as instruments of Sparta's nasty, brutish, and short-lived Aegean empire. Best-attested, and most notorious, were the *Thirty Tyrants at Athens, who ruled with the aid of the Piraeus Ten. But their overthrow in 403 bce was soon followed by the abolition of many other decarchies, especially in the Asiatic cities, in 403–2; the rest fell either after Sparta's defeat at sea off *Cnidus (394) or at the conclusion of the *King's Peace (386).

Article

decision-making, Greek  

P. J. Rhodes

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law

A Greek state was the community of its citizens, and at any rate the most important decisions were made by an assembly of the citizens. *democracies and *oligarchies differed not over that principle but over its application: how many of the free adult males were full citizens, entitled to participate in the assembly; which decisions were reserved for the assembly and which could be made by ‘the authorities’ (the magistrates and/or a council). The widespread principle of probouleusis, ‘prior consideration’ by a council of business for the assembly, provided further scope for variation. In democratic Athens the council (see boulē) had to approve items for the assembly's agenda, and could, but did not have to, propose a motion; but in the assembly any citizen could speak, and could propose a motion or an amendment to a motion already proposed. In more oligarchic states proposals might be allowed only from the magistrates and/or the council, and the right to address the assembly might be limited to magistrates and members of the council.

Article

demes, dēmoi  

David Whitehead

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Law
Demes dēmo (δῆμοι), local territorial districts—villages, in effect—in Greece, and, by extension, the inhabitants or members thereof. The first of these twin meanings has been detected in the Linear B tablets, and both of them occur in *Homer (Whitehead (below), app. 1, with D. M. Lewis in O. Murray and S. Price (eds.) (1990), The Greek City 260 ff.); the first remains common thereafter, but of greater significance is the second, which at local level—*dēmos as the word for an entire citizen-body being a related but separate story—expresses the fact that a Classical or Hellenistic state's dēmoi sometimes served as its official, constitutional subdivisions, besides sustaining internally organized communal functions of their own. Jones (below) assembles evidence, mainly epigraphic, concerning one or the other or both of these roles in 24 places altogether. Some of them manifest deme systems apparently sui generis (e.g. *Calymnos, *Chalcis, *Cos, *Elis, *Eretria, *Histiaea, *Rhodes, *Stratonicea) but more than half betray the impact, direct (*cleruchies) or indirect (e.

Article

democracy, Athenian  

M. H. Hansen

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek History and Historiography
  2. Greek Law
Athenian democracy from 508/7 to 322/1 bce is the best known example in history of a ‘direct’ democracy as opposed to a ‘representative’ or ‘parliamentary’ form of democracy.Today democracy is invariably a positive concept, almost a buzz-word, whereas dēmokratia in ancient Greece was a hotly debated form of constitution, often criticized by oligarchs and philosophers alike. The Athenian democrats themselves, however, connected dēmokratia with the rule of law (Aeschin. 1. 4–5) and, like modern democrats, they believed that democracy was inseparably bound up with the ideals of liberty and equality (Thuc. 2. 37). Democracy was even deified, and in the 4th cent. bce offerings were made to the goddess Demokratia (Inscriptiones Graecae 22. 1496. 131–41).Dēmokratia was what the word means: the rule (kratos) of the people (*dēmos), and decisions of the assembly were introduced with the formula .

Article

democracy, non-Athenian and post-Classical  

Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek History and Historiography
  2. Greek Law
Democracy or people's power (see demos) was not an Athenian monopoly or even invention. (See democracy, Athenian.) The Archaic Spartan constitutional document (rhētra) preserved in Plutarch Lycurgus 6 explicitly says that ‘the people shall have the power’, but Sparta soon ossified. Sixth-cent. bce*Chios, as an inscription (ML 8) reveals, had a constitution with some popular features, though Classical Chios, like Classical Sparta, was no longer democratic: Thuc. 8. 24 (late 5th cent.) brackets Sparta and Chios and implies that both were oligarchies; for Chios see also Syll.3 986. Classical Greek states other than Athens, such as *Argos (1), were or were perceived as democracies (Thuc. 5. 31. 6 and other evidence) but Athenian influence can usually be postulated (see democracy, Athenian). Thus assembly pay, a feature of the developed Athenian democracy (it was introduced only after the main *Peloponnesian War) is also attested at Hellenistic *Iasus and *Rhodes, no doubt exported there originally from Athens.

Article

Demophanes and Ecdelus  

R. M. Errington

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
Demophanes and Ecdelus, sometimes named Megalophanes and Ecdemus (Plut.Phil. 1), Megalopolitans (see Megalopolis). While exiled in Athens after c.265 bce they were followers of the *Academic*Arcesilaus (1). Politically active and hostile to tyrants, they helped *Aratus (2) liberate *Sicyon (251) and organized the putsch in which Aristodemus of *Megalopolis was murdered (about the same time).