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Article

agora  

Jamieson C. Donati

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek Law
  3. Greek Material Culture
In the ancient Greek city, the agora was a multifunctional venue for public administration, the buying and selling of goods, religious affairs, and other social and cultural interests. Most cities whether big or small had a designated agora, oftentimes situated at a prime locale—a sign of its fundamental importance in the community. The etymological use of the term agorē by Homer, particularly in his description of the city of the Phaeacians, shows that within the early Greek polis the agora became a daily gathering venue for citizens, often for political and military meetings, but also for religious events and athletic contests. Excavations reveal that the agora from c. the 7th to the mid-5th century bce was architecturally an unassuming place, and it did not need to be more than an open area with a scattering of administrative, commercial, and sometimes even domestic structures. In addition, its setting was frequently associated with the cult of a poliadic deity (temple) or local hero (heroon). The Athenian Agora is an exceptional case where buildings for political assemblies were erected following democratic reforms c.

Article

apodektai  

P. J. Rhodes

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek Law
Apodektai (‘receivers’), at Athens, a board of officials who received the state's revenues and, in the 5th cent. bce, paid them into the central state treasury, in the 4th, apportioned them (merizein) as directed by law among separate spending authorities. They were appointed by lot, one from each of the ten tribes or *phylai (Ath.

Article

arbitration, Greek  

Edward Harris and Anna Magnetto

Article

Publication History:

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

One of the most important decisions a litigant could make was the choice whether to submit his dispute to a private arbitrator or to go to trial. Private arbitration had several advantages because it provided a more flexible procedure and afforded the possibility of compromise solutions aimed at promoting good relations between the parties. By contrast, a trial was an all-or-nothing procedure, which created winners and losers. Nevertheless, there were disadvantages to private arbitration: the arbitrators might be reluctant to vote against a friend, or one of the parties might not agree to arbitration. Because public officials were not involved, documents might be lost. The institution of public arbitrators retained the advantages of private arbitration but avoided several of the disadvantages. Above all, it aimed to promote good relations between the parties and to avoid a bitter fight in court.

Interstate arbitration is identified by the sources as a genuine Greek tradition, attested to be from the Archaic period, that was employed and fostered by other powers, such as the Hellenistic Kings and Republican Rome. It allowed two parties in conflict to solve disputes by resorting to the judgment of a third party agreed upon by both. Its use contributed to the establishing of forms of international law, encouraging the poleis to identify a set of shared principles and rules, at least for territorial disputes, the most common kind of controversy.

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

freedmen/freedwomen, Greek  

David M. Lewis and Sara Zanovello

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
24 May 2017
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek Law
In the Greek world, manumission, which spelt the end of an individual’s life in slavery, was achieved in a variety of ways, but it often entailed legal obligations to remain (paramenein) as a free servant for a fixed period of time. In some cases, freedmen and freedwomen subject to paramone obligations were able to “buy out” of this condition (apolysis). Manumission documents, which have been found in many parts of the Greek world, particularly in northern Greece (especially Delphi), reveal the legal position of slaves and how it differed from the legal position of freedpersons. Unlike in Rome, freedpersons in the Greek world did not automatically become citizens of their ex-owner’s polis (although some freed slaves did manage to achieve naturalization in return for benefactions bestowed on the community). In Athens, they held a legal position almost identical to that of resident foreigners (metoikoi), with some minor differences. Manumission was usually a private act, but in some cases the polis manumitted privately owned slaves, and in Sparta, helots could only be manumitted by the state. The frequency of manumission in the Greek world remains a debated topic, but recent work has raised the possibility that its use as an incentive for slaves was probably targeted mainly at slaves working in skilled, “care-intensive” roles, and also for slaves (including hetairai) with whom individuals conceived sexual attachments.

Article

maritime loans  

Dominic W. Rathbone

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek Law
  3. Roman History and Historiography
  4. Roman Law
In the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, centred as they were on the Mediterranean, maritime transport was far more practical than land transport for long- and even medium-distance trade. Most ships seem to have been of medium size (around 70 tonnes burden) and to have been owned and run by a shipper who both carried goods as freight and traded on his own account. There were also many individual merchants who hired shipping as needed for their ventures. Then as now, the major expense in trading was the investment in purchasing goods; roughly, one cargo of wheat was worth as much as the ship. Hence a merchant, whether or not also a shipowner, often needed third-party finance, for which, because of the peculiar risks involved, a special type of loan was used. This was the maritime loan—nautikon daneion in Greek, nauticum faenus or mutua pecunia nautica in Latin.The maritime loan is first attested in 4th-century bce Athens, in four speeches attributed to Demosthenes, of which the most informative is the prosecution of the brother of a pair of merchants for fraudulent default on a loan (Dem.

Article

metics  

David Whitehead

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek Law
As the Greek *polis evolved it sought to differentiate, amongst its inhabitants, between insiders and outsiders. Insiders par excellence were its own members, the citizens; palpable outsiders were its slaves, indigenous or imported (see slavery); but this simple dichotomy would have sufficed only for communities like *Sparta which discouraged immigration. Elsewhere it was necessary to recognize free persons who lived, temporarily or permanently, in the polis without becoming its citizens. Several-oikos words are attested of such persons, with metoikos (‘metic’) most common. The precise nature and complexity of metic-status doubtless varied from place to place; evidence approaches adequacy only for Athens, atypical in its allure and, consequently, the numbers of those who succumbed thereto (half the size of the (reduced) citizen body of c.313 bce (Ath. 272c); perhaps proportionately larger in the 5th cent. bce (R. Duncan-Jones, Chiron 1980, 101 ff.)). With *Solon having created only indirect incentives to immigration, Athenian metic-status probably owes its formal origins to *Cleisthenes (2), after whom the presence of metics was recognized in law and could develop in its details at both city and local (*deme) level.

Article

symmoria  

Friedrich M. Heichelheim and P. J. Rhodes

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek Law
Symmoria (‘partnership’), in Athens a group of men liable for payment of the tax called *eisphora or for the *liturgy of the *trierarchy. In 378/7 bce all payers of eisphora were organized in 100symmoriai, for administrative convenience: each member continued to be taxed on his own property, but from a later date the three richest members of each symmoria could be made to advance the sum due from the whole symmoria as a proeisphora. In 357/6 a law of Periander extended this system to the trierarchy: the 1,200 richest citizens were grouped in 20symmoriai (probably independent of the symmoriai for eisphora, but this has been doubted), and through the symmoriai the total cost of the trierarchy each year was divided equally among all of the 1,200 except those who could claim exemption. Reforms in the trierarchic symmories were proposed by *Demosthenes (2) in 354 and made by him in 340; further changes were made later.

Article

thētes  

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

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek Law
Thētes, hired labourers, the lowest class of free men in a Greek state. At Athens, after *Solon, the lowest of the four property classes, said (perhaps by false analogy with *pentakosiomedimnoi) to comprise men who did not own land yielding as much as 200 medimnoi of corn or the equivalent in other produce. (The others classes were *zeugitai, *hippeis). Solon admitted them to the assembly (*ekklēsia) and *ēliaia (indeed, probably they had never been formally excluded from the assembly), but not to magistracies (see magistracy, greek) or, presumably, the council (*boulē) (Arist. Ath. pol. 7. 3–8. 1). This limitation was never formally abolished, but by the second half of the 4th cent. it was being ignored in practice. Because they could not afford the armour, thētes did not fight as *hoplites, but when Athens became mainly a naval power they acquired an important role as oarsmen in the fleet; they may also have served in such bodies as the archers. Whether they were included among the *ephēboi (‘cadets’) as reorganized in the 330s is disputed.

Article

zeugitai  

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

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek Law

Zeugitai (from zeugos, ‘yoke’), at Athens, Solon's third property class, said (perhaps by false analogy with *pentakosiomedimnoi) to comprise men whose land yielded between 200 and 300 medimnoi of corn or the equivalent in other produce (the other three classes were *pentakosiomedimnoi, *hippeis, *thētes). The name identifies them as those who served in the army in close ranks (cf. Plut.Pel.23), i.e. as *hoplites, or, less probably, as those rich enough to own a yoke of oxen. Despite recent doubts, this class probably included many of the farmers and craftsmen of *Attica, and provided the bulk of the hoplite army. Under Solon's constitution the zeugitai enjoyed full citizen rights except that they were not admitted to the highest magistracies (see magistracy, greek). The archon-ships (see archontes) were opened to them from 457/6.