Athenian Law

The recent find of dozens of curse tablets in a well in the Kerameikos excavation puts the whole Athenian cursing habit into perspective: while during the fifth and fourth century BC curse tablets were mainly deposited in tombs, the bulk of finds from the Early Hellenistic periods onward comes from wells. It is proposed that this is related to the change in the necropoleis caused by the law of Demetrius of Phaleron in 3017/307 BC, who also installed an institution to control the new legislation.

The purpose of my dissertation is to analyse the negative comments concerning Pericles; the 5th Century BCE Athenian statesman and general. This will involve an assessment of both ancient and modern writers. It will include an exploration of his early career as well as the decisions he made whilst in high office. His personal life will also be examined to clarify to what extent it affected his judgement in politics. Larger themes such as Athenian Imperialism and financial greed will also be taken into account to confirm if Pericles' actions were all just simply part of the current social-political landscape of the polis of Athens. The eventual aim of my dissertation is to evaluate these various assessments and judge if there is substantial weight to them.

The paper analyses the figure of Archippe, the wife of the well known Athenian
banker Pasion. Following the clues scattered through the trials opposing Apollodoro,
son of Pasion and Archippe, and Phormio, second husband of the woman, it seems
possible to draft a portait of Archippe’s personality and of her primar role in the
family business. She seem to represent a really different model of female behaviour
compared to the usual consideration of women in Athenian democratic society.

The Athenian legal procedure of basanos has puzzled and dismayed modern commentators in equal
measure. The repeated offers and demands of litigants in the surviving legal speeches to torture each
others’ slaves to elicit witness testimony strikes many scholars as not only gratuitously cruel, but as
bizarre. But in the context of Athens's slave society, the procedure may have made sense.

It is generally recognised that this speech, composed by Demosthenes for his young client Ariston, is a masterpiece of character assassination as Ariston represents himself as the innocent victim of Konon's hybris. This essay proceeds to examine how the characterisation of both Ariston and Konon is presented, considering how successfully it is done, and then moves on to analyse the style employed in the different sections of the speech. It will be observed how the style varies in order subtly to reinforce the respective characterisations. Consideration is also given to the fundamental problem facing Ariston (and his logographer) in this prosecution, namely a lack of corroborative witness evidence, which is the principal reason why character becomes the focal point within this speech.

This chapter explores the development of ideas about legislation and legislative procedures in ancient Athens. It isolates an ideology of legislation that mistrusted legal change, and that came into conflict with democratic ideas and practices. It then discusses the creation of nomothesia procedures at the end of the fifth century BCE that reconciled the need for legal change with that for consistent and stable laws, and follows the workings of these procedures throughout the fourth century BCE.

Nessuno più di Aristotele ha studiato la democrazia ateniese. Di quella che è stata la forma storica più rilevante dell’idea democratica Aristotele ha voluto comprendere l’evoluzione, la storia: perciò ha pensato il confronto, in prospettiva diacronica, delle manifestazioni dell’idea democratica che giudicava le più significative e intellegibili della storia ateniese. A guidare la ricerca aristotelica sulla democrazia ateniese è un assunto rilevante del suo pensiero politico: ogni costituzione (politeia, nel suo linguaggio) è conoscibile attraverso la concezione che esprime riguardo a «ciò che è giusto». È l’idea (eidos) della giustizia, anzi della giustizia come uguaglianza, a definire il carattere di un regime politico. Aristotele ha cercato l’idea democratica prioritariamente nella forma di volta in volta assunta dal dispositivo della cittadinanza. Nel caso della democrazia ateniese, l’evoluzione viene seguita dalla fase dell’emergenza dell’idea di cittadinanza democratica, agli inizi del VI secolo, fino a quando le regole stabilite rispetto alla definizione del gruppo dei cittadini e delle loro spettanze hanno ricevuto una forma stabile. Un ciclo compiutosi nel corso del secolo e mezzo che separa i provvedimenti adottati in materia di cittadinanza da Solone e da Pericle.

The law of hybris cited in classical Athenian texts and attributed to the lawgiver Solon was indeed a genuine Solonian law, rather than a classical enactment, and it was this law which introduced the system of third-party/volunteer prosecution and the appeal to the popular court which are amongst Solon's most celebrated reforms

Lawcourts are often portrayed as a check upon legislatures. That interpretative paradigm is visible within the scholarship on classical Athenian democracy, in the claim that certain legal reforms of the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC that enhanced the role of the popular courts in law-making were intended to check hasty decision-making by assembly-goers. This article argues that, on the contrary, those reforms were intended to help secure the political supremacy of the demos (“assembly,” “collective common people”) over the political elite (office-holders and political leaders). The relative poverty and age of judges, random selection, restrictions on speech, the secret ballot, the openly self-regarding quality of demotic justice, and judges’ role in disciplining politicians made the courts an excellent guarantor of popular rule, better in some respects than the assembly. Assembly-goers and judges delivered a “one-two punch” that preserved demokratia by keeping the political elite in its place.

This paper aims to critically analyse the testimonies concerning Athenian impiety trials of the classical period. First, it reaffirms the arguments that some of them must have been an invention of Hellenistic and later authors. Second, it presents a likely political background behind the historical cases. Third, it discusses a number of legal issues, along with new arguments concerning the procedures employed. Finally, it examines some less well-known material from the fourth century BCE. Overall, it seeks to provide a possibly coherent and comprehensive framework of Athenian impiety trials based on their shared characteristics.

Athens was a city of the written word. The public bodies of Athens and Attica and individual residents inscribed more words on stone than the citizens of any other Greek city. There are well over 20,000 Attic inscriptions on stone, and the production is continuous from the archaic period through to the end of antiquity. The sheer quantity of the material endows the epigraphical record with historical potential of a character distinctly different from any other Greek city. Together with the rich literary record — a disproportionate quantity of the literary evidence for ancient Greece, especially of the classical period, was produced by Athenians or Athenian residents — it enables the history of Athens to be written across a span of time and in a depth and detail that is unique in the Greek world and otherwise usually possible only for more modern polities. [A revised version of this chapter was posted on academia.edu on 25 Nov. 2019]

Whether or not the trial of Socrates was political in the partisan sense, there can be no doubt that this was a political trial in the sense of being a formal legal procedure involving political disputes of social significance and reflecting and constituting power relations in the Athenian polity. I will argue that, although the prosecutor may have intended it as a destructive trial, and the defendant, Socrates, may have intended it as a didactic trial, it actually performed the social function of a decisive political trial: The trial decided whether the definition of what is dangerous public speech was in the control of the speaker, the immediate audience, or the community as a whole. Given the importance of public speech in Athens, the trial of Socrates was decisive in setting the boundary between the democratic citizen’s right to free expression, and his duty to take responsibility for the results of that expression

the article is available at https://www.ledonline.it/index.php/Erga-Logoi/article/view/2055/1506

ABSTRACT: This article offers an analysis of the legal arguments that Demosthenes uses in his speech Against Meidias, concerning the punch, to prove that Meidias is guilty of hybris and that he (Demosthenes) deserves adequate (i.e. public) reparation for the outrage suffered. Demosthenes claims his right to a punishment (timoria) capable of repairing the collective, more than individual, damage. This claim appears to allow him, on the one hand, to legitimise, with effective legal argumentation, all the choices made in the aftermath of the episode of the punch, and on the other, to give a strong legal basis for requesting the death penalty for Meidias. The paragraphs 2-3 of the article deal with the choices Demosthenes made after the episode of the punch. Here I intend to show that Demosthenes is able to demonstrate to the judges the relevance of the procedural choices and to qualify them as ‘choices’ precisely because they were moti- vated and considered at length. In the following paragraphs of the article I discuss the legal argumentation that Demosthenes uses with regard to the ‘measure’ of the penalty required (the death penalty). The aim is to understand what roles the principle accord- ing to which Meidias’s hybristic conduct must be assessed from an overall view and the principle of justice as reciprocity play in this argument. The latter must take into account the merit of the epieikes Demosthenes as compared to the hybristes Meidias.

Este libro explora la capacidad decisoria del pueblo (dêmos) en la asamblea ateniense y el modo en que esta subjetivación política des-inviste de autoridad a todo poder que no sea el de la propia reunión de la multitud ciudadana indiferenciada. La convicción que lo guía radica en asumir positivamente la anarquía de la democracia en tanto que efecto de la soberanía del pueblo como sujeto político. El análisis que se realiza intenta dar cuenta de la singularidad de esta actuación política del  pueblo ateniense.
El recorrido que proponemos no puede desplegarse más que en el cruce de las miradas de los antiguos con las ideas contemporáneas sobre la política y el sujeto, y, en este contexto, las posibles coincidencias entre demokratía y populismo como modos anárquicos de acción popular. No es ajena a la época actual la interrogación sobre qué es lo que da legitimidad a un sistema político. Se habla, por ejemplo, de democracia institucional o constitucional o de democracia plebiscitaria o populista. ¿Qué pueblo es el que da legitimidad a una o a otra? ¿Uno se apega a la ley mientras que el otro se configura en su articulación con un líder? La cuestión estriba en la magnífica polisemia del término pueblo, que denomina tanto a la totalidad de la comunidad como a la parte plebeya de la misma. La democracia deviene anárquica en la medida en que el pueblo como sujeto político opera sobre este entresijo, poniendo de relieve su capacidad igualitaria como fuerza no controlada ni dominada, de manera que la parte plebeya se funde con la totalidad comunitaria. La democracia es el acto soberano del pueblo, que puede reconfigurarla con cada decisión en que manifiesta su  fuerza. Tal es el argumento que este libro quiere invitar a pensar, reivindicando lo que el análisis histórico de la política antigua tiene de pensamiento político en el presente.

This book explores the decision-making capacity of the people (dēmos) in the Athenian assembly and the way in which this political subjectivation cut off the authority to all power other than that of the very meeting of the undifferentiated citizen crowd. The conviction that guides it lies in positively assuming the anarchy of democracy as an effect of the sovereignty of the people as a political subject. The analysis attempts to account for the uniqueness of this political action of the Athenian people.
The agenda we propose cannot be displayed except in the crossroads of the ancient political imaginary with contemporary views about politics and the subject, and, in this framework, the possible coincidences between dēmokratia and populism as anarchic modes of popular action. The question of what gives legitimacy to a political system is a crucial point at present. For example, it is talked about institutional/constitutional democracy or about plebiscitary/populist democracy. What people give legitimacy to one or the other? Does one adhere to the law while the other is configured in its relation to a leader? The question lies in the magnificent polysemy of the term “people”, which designates both the totality of the community and the plebeian part of it. Democracy becomes anarchic to the extent that the people as a political subject operate on this intricacy, highlighting the egalitarian capacity as a force neither controlled nor dominated, so that the plebeian part merges with the entire community. Democracy is the sovereign act of the people, which can reconfigure it with every decision in which the people expresses its strength. Such is the argument that this book wants to invite to think, claiming what the historical analysis of ancient politics has to offer to political thinkers in present times.

In Aristotle’s political thought, innovation is “acceptable” when it is achieved in the name of the common good and when the benefit is great. Against the notion that political and legal innovation may be either absolutely beneficial or absolutely harmful, Aristotle discusses concrete instances such as the size of the benefit the innovation produces, the aim of whoever proposes the new action and the need to exercise political control over every innovation. The lexical and conceptual dyad represented by the verbs kainotomein (to seek the new) and kinein (to change radically) allows us to follow Aristotle’s thinking and to identify the univocal result it reaches, both when it addresses theoretical proposals for innovation as well as examples of innovation that have already been implemented.

UPDATED: 28 February 2024 ***OBSOLETE*** (See AYP Vol. II: Apatouria, Pt. III for the corrected timeline.

Corrected numerous typos.  Edited content, rewrote ENTIRE conclusion.  Added two Appendices:  the first addresses the dates of the Apatouria in detail and the second highlights Gorgias the Rhetor and suggests why the Dramatic Date becomes important.
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Monograph unlocks the exact timeline behind one of the most infamous trials in Ancient Greek History: The Generals, who fought at the largest naval battle during the Peloponnesian War.  Also explores uncovers exactly the role played by the philosopher Socrates in the Boule and Assembly. 

At the same time, the study uncovers the dramatic date of Plato's dialogue Gorgias (which stood the ultimate goal).
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Please Note: The book assumes familiarity with The Athenian Year Primer and further serves as a field test of the hypotheses put forth.

This version is a DRAFT.  It undoubtedly (still) has a few formatting errors and typos.  Hopefully, I caught most of them by now.

Lacks the bibliography, but full citations reside in the footnotes.

***OBSOLETE***

Egalitarianism was inherent to the Greek polis. However, the egalitarian substratum did not inhibit the existence of social, economic and political differences. The cases of Athens and Sparta show how a different understanding of the idea of equality could lead to completely different political systems.
The democratic equality in Athens was an equality of the unequal and it was limited to the political sphere, while social inequalities persisted. This discordance inevitably led to the separation between political and social realm in both theory and practice. Since for democrats the social sphere came second to the political, the demos could permit itself a wide extent of freedom in private life. The direct connection between equality and the rule of law guaranteed the political freedom of the people, because the law was perceived as an instrument of self-discipline of the demos and disciplining those who might endanger its supremacy. Thus in Athens equality became one of the principal sources of freedom in private and public sphere.
Several peculiarities of the Spartan constitution (relative simple structure, causal relationship between the social and political order, identification with immutability and association of its genesis with the divine sphere) caused that in Sparta equality at no time was perceived as the outcome of a political process and was never restricted to the political sphere. Consequently, the homoios-ideal, was perceived as something above the homoioi. Since this equality of the equal (similar) at the same time covered all aspects of the Spartan way of life, it was rather a source of constraint than of freedom. In relation to the other groups in Sparta the homoioi were the ruling class, but in relation to the Spartan constitution they were “slaves”.
The democratic or isotēs kind of equality can easily be identified with arithmetical equality, since in it, all citizens, whatever their value, enjoy the same equality. However the subject of Spartan or homoiotēs type of equality is not so straightforward. Spartan equality was not considered to be proportional, due to the intra-homoioi equality. Since the homoioi were identified with highest possible level of virtue, the Spartans never intended to differentiate within this group. Accordingly, the real reason behind the identification of Sparta with proportional equality is the hierarchical nature of relations among all groups in Sparta.

"The last two decades have witnessed a shift in how we perceive Xenophon the Athenian. Having fallen into neglect in the twentieth century, scholars now attempt to resuscitate and ultimately ‘rehabilitate’ Xenophon. The present thesis proposes that the initial decline in interest and the continued debate over how he ought to be studied rests in part with an increased emphasis on contemporary democracy and misunderstandings of Xenophon’s ideology in its intellectual context. To this end, traditional narratives of Xenophon’s life and earlier scholarship concerned with Xenophon’s thought are outlined and deconstructed. Suppositional evidence supporting this received opinion is demonstrated to rely on uncertain reconstructions of biography and background that in reality ought to be rejected as inadequate foundations for analysing Xenophon’s oeuvre or situating Xenophon’s thought along our modern political spectrum.

The present thesis employs a contextualist approach to examine key themes present across Xenophon’s works and asks how an idealised fourth-century Athenian democrat could have understood Xenophon’s thought in light of democratic ideology. By privileging the period in which he was educated, lived, and ultimately wrote, rather than the successive ages in which his works were appropriated for decidedly separate ends by other political thinkers, it is demonstrated that Xenophon presented himself as advising and enhancing fourth-century Athenian democracy. Contrary to views that Xenophon favoured monarchic, autocratic, or oligarchic constitutions over democracy, it is argued that nothing in Xenophon’s corpus necessitates the rejection of democracy or the tenets of democratic ideology. Rather, Xenophon offers paradigms inspired by, and compatible with, Athenian democratic ideals. It also argues that Xenophon wrote specifically to realign the Athenian élite - whom he rebukes for undermining the overall standing, prosperity, and welfare of Athens and its democracy - with democratic expectations. In doing so, his works express a desire to help the fourth-century democracy realise its geo-political aspirations while living up to is professed ideals.
"

If ancient history is particularly susceptible to a top-down approach, due to the nature of our evidence and its traditional exploitation by modern scholars, another ancient history-'from below'-is actually possible. This volume examines the possibilities and challenges involved in writing it. Despite undeniable advances in recent decades, 'our slowness to reconstruct plausible visions of almost any aspect of society beyond the topmost strata of wealth, power or status' (as Nicholas Purcell has put it) remains a persistent feature of the field. Therefore, this book concerns a historical field and social groups that are still today neglected by modern scholarship. However, writing ancient history 'from below' means much more than taking into account the anonymous masses, the subaltern classes and the non-elites. Our task is also, in the felicitous expression coined by Walter Benjamin, 'to brush history against the grain,' to rescue the viewpoint of the subordinated, the traditions of the oppressed. In other words, we should understand the bulk of ancient populations in light of their own experience and their own reactions to that experience. But, how do we do such a history? What sources can we use? What methods and approaches can we employ? What concepts are required to this endeavour? The contributions mainly engage with questions of theory and methodology, but they also constitute inspiring case studies in their own right, ranging from classical Greece to the late antique world. This book is aimed not only at readers working on classical Greece, Republican and imperial Rome and late antiquity but at anyone interested in 'bottom-up' history and social and population history in general. Although the book is primarily intended for scholars, it will also appeal to graduate and undergraduate students of history, archaeology and classical studies.

In this paper I investigate the legal and institutional reforms or innovations
that were introduced in the period 307-301 BC, a period recorded as the restoration
of democracy, the rationale behind them and the tensions that developed when
royals were involved in the day-to-day administration of public affairs in an
independent, autonomous polis

Looking into the heated discussions developed around Antiphon’s Tetralogies, one of the most controversial yet fascinating aspects concerns “the law forbidding just as well as unjust killing”, the prohibition  of «μήτε δικαίως μήτε ἀδίκως ἀποκτείνειν», which is mentioned four times in the second and third tetralogy. The prohibition is seemingly incompatible with the Athenian juridical system of the classical period, for it counted certain cases in which killing was considered lawful, therefore unworthy of punishment. This explains why some scholar has even got to deny that the trials depicted by Antiphon took place in Athens, as well as the juridical significance of the Tetralogies. This study, after an accurate analysis of the most authoritative opinions regarding the subject, suggests a personal new interpretation of the “law forbidding just as well as unjust killing”.

Epistemic defences of democracy are typically advanced on philosophical grounds, but the ancient Greeks are said to provide historical support. This chapter challenges that claim. It argues, first, that the ancient evidence does not suggest that the ancient Greeks stressed the role of knowledge in decision-making, the crux of the epistemic view. Next, it examines the distinction between knowledge (epistēmē), understood as information that exists independently of our will, and judgment (gnomē or krisis), understood as a view produced by and inextricably linked to particular willing agents, and shows that the ancient Greeks consistently conceived of political decision-making in terms of the latter rather than the former. Finally, taking Athens’ relations with the Melians and the rise of Macedon as examples of significant political problems, it suggests that the ancient Greek view shows a better grasp of the inherently creative character of political action.

[Email the author for a full copy of the article]
This article discusses the rationale of adeia (immunity) in the fifth-century Athenian legal system. It argues that adeia was designed to grant a temporary suspension of the effect of a law in exceptional circumstances without allowing for any permanent legal change. This article explores the origin of adeia and the relevant ideology underpinning the legal procedure. It provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the legal procedure and analyses the extensive use of adeia for collecting information during the investigation of the profanation of the Mysteries and the mutilation of the herms in 415 BC. This article also discusses the implications of the use of adeia for public investigation and emergency powers in Classical Athens.

**OBSOLETE** Regardless, the author analyzes in detail the two (2) separate settings provided by Platon in his staging of the Symposium (the date of the gathering itself vs. the date of its recollection) and argues that the date of recollection has a profound and significant impact on our understanding of Sokrates' trial and, further, that a student of the dialogue should read the Symposium in the shadow of that trial.

DRAFT: Please do not cite. I remain (a bit) displeased with the final two sections of the paper (especially the clumsy transition to Sokrates' Trial), and the End Notes have grown ridiculously complex and labyrinthine -- so much so, that even I get a headache cross checking them (and I wrote the damn thing). Will soon be replaced.