[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
Ever since Ludwig Mitteis (1891) proposed that Greek law incorporated universal principles, legal historians have debated whether the juristic systems of Greece were unified or diversified. Moses Finley (1975: 134-146) denied unity in substantive or procedural law, except in commerce, whereas Michael Gagarin (2005: 29-40) pitted what he saw to be the unity of procedure against diversity of substance. English-speaking scholars, with some important exceptions, have placed priority on procedure over substance;[1] such methodologies are problematised by the abundance of evidence from the surviving laws that the substantive offence is regularly listed in the protasis, with the procedural remedy left to the apodosis, for example the Athenian laws covering homicide (IG I3 104) and theft or hybris (Dem. 21.47).
This volume of eleven essays, the fruit of a conference held in Münster in 2023, examines the intersection of legal practices and norms across a multiplicity of city-states in Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece. One of its chief purposes is to show that whilst parochialism was a reality, it nevertheless benefited communities to seek out commonality, especially with the emergence of federalism. Yet, unlike older methodologies which rooted discussion in common legal origin, these essays foreground localism as a galvanising force. Hans Beck opens with a chapter on Archaic Thebes. Against the view of Gerhard Thür (2006: 44), that legal unity among the Greeks reflects a Homeric heritage, Beck argues that convergence in legal thought emerged by trial and error. From inscribed texts containing the mysterious term propraxia, which Alain Bresson (2018: 289 n.11) glossed as ‘the privilege of benefiting from an immediate judicial enforcement’, and drawing upon recent work of Angelos Matthaiou (2014), Beck claims that ‘propraxia required a legal framework beyond a single city in Boeotia’ (31) and argues that disputes were resolved ‘not by means of doctrinal statements, but through a growing authority of the community…to apply its legislative action to its members in binding fashion.’(38). Beck’s Forschungsbericht is casual: for example, it states that ‘[a]lready in 2004, Lene Rubinstein and Edward Harris established that “the concept of ‘Greek Law’ has been out of fashion in mainstream scholarship for several decades”’ (16), without further explanation. Beck here refers to a volume co-edited by the aforementioned (2004) but does not detail how their work throws light on the debate. The chapter by Harris and David Lewis (2022), which shows that early law was about substance not procedure, gets no mention, nor does the vital essay of Carlo Pelloso (2013).
In a survey of public inscriptions from Lesbos, Athina Dimopoulou shows how practices of its four most important cities—Mytilene, Methymna, Antissa, and Eresos—converged around common institutions, such as a demos, boule, laws, decrees, jurisdiction, religious statutes, and the sharing of judges during the Hellenistic period. Donatella Erdas notes binding commonalities, as well as local divergences, in practices linked to the alienation of landed property. Beginning with Theophrastus (fr. 97 Szegedy-Maszak = 650 Fortenbaugh, ap. Stob. 4.2.20 Hense), she observes that legal practices varied from one locality to the next. Though aware of the recent essay of Harris (2024), Erdas might have discussed its findings in greater depth. To illustrate, at Gortyn, one party summoned the other before a judge before witnesses; the judge decided (δικάδδεν or καταδικάδδεν) with reference to witnesses or oaths, but where witnesses were not present, by substantive rules. At Athens, by contrast, the accuser was required to have two witnesses and to cite the statute that had been violated; his plaint was written and was housed in the Metroon; the case was decided by panels of 500 judges, for which there is no parallel at Gortyn. The procedural rules at Athens and Gortyn could not have been further apart, though substantively there are significant points of similarity.
The next three essays turn to the economy. Challenging the old theory of Robert Cook (1958), that coinage responded to military exigencies, Bresson in an impressive essay emphasises the plurality and variety of coinage use from the Archaic to the Hellenistic ages. In his discussion of the law of Epicrates (95-98), Bresson might have noted that the verbs καταλλάττειν (Plut. Arat. 8.12) or διαλλάσσειν (OGIS 484 line 11) or the cognate καταλλαγή ([Arist.] Oec. 2.2.1346b24–6) denote exchange of coins of one denomination for another, as shown recently by Harris (2022: 71-75), and discussed more the essay of Colin Kraay (1964), which claimed that early coinage was in larger denominations, an idea since demolished in numerous publications by John Kroll. Dorothea Rohde distinguishes Greek from Near Eastern (especially Jewish) attitudes to debt relief on the basis that whereas under the Near Eastern legal systems, debt relief was built into the fabric of the state, in the case of the Greek polis, debt relief was treated as an emergency measure and, as with the notorious cases of Agis and Cleomenes of Sparta in the third century, tended to be used for political purposes. In a study of an inscribed fragment from early third-century Achaea relating to the regulation of debts in the nascent Achaean League (Rizakis, Achaïke III no.1, 36-37), Ruben Post presents an analysis of the ad hoc nature of the relationship between the federal body and its member states and maintains that the Dyme inscription belongs to intervening years during which no formal charter existed, but the Achaean League was required to make separate arrangements with member states.
The next two chapters focus on Greek cultural history. Zinon Papakonstantinou studies regulatory enactments connected with athletic festivals. He traces some of the prevailing norms and rules that governed athletic events throughout the Greek world and then examines the way in which local authorities channelled and adapted them at the epichoric level. Several test cases support this suggestion, including an inscribed decree from Rhodes, analysed in detail by Luca Moretti (1956). Papakonstantinou does not deny the existence of laws that belong to private bodies. One of the best examples is IG II2 1237, which refers to the ‘laws of the Demotionidai’, and which could have anchored a livelier discussion of unity and diversity by pointing to common and idiosyncratic features of enrolment in cultic bodies (Joyce 2021, not referenced). Laura Gawlinski examines the intersection of unity and diversity at the level of dress code. Gawlinski argues for commonality between a Middle Assyrian law dating from c. 1076 BCE and a bronze inscription from sixth-century Arcadia (IPArk 20), insofar as the focus is on women, punishment for non-compliance, and penalties for male officials who do not exact penalties, but in the case of Greek laws, the unifying context seems to be religious.
The next two essays address the interaction between Greek and extraneous traditions. Examining treaties between Rome and the Greek poleis, Lina Girdvainyte argues that Rome was perceived as the highest recognised authority in settling local disputes. Patrick Sänger re-evaluates the methodologies of Hans Julius Wolff (2002) and Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski (2014), who, in distinctive ways, viewed the Hellenistic world as a ‘juridical koine’ (228). Sänger argues from P.Elaph. 1 that the notion of a juridical koine is unhelpful, because it does injustice to those elements of pre-Hellenistic law which Hellenistic kingdoms, notably Egypt under the Ptolemaic rulers, incorporated. Sänger holds that whereas Ptolemaic law made use of witnesses and written contracts, the contractual law of the Greeks was chiefly oral. His understanding is informed by Fritz Pringsheim (1950), whose views of contract are now widely discredited (see below). The idea that Greece became more document-minded only in the fourth century is an older view of Rosalind Thomas (1989) that has since been successfully challenged by James Sickinger (1999) and Michele Faraguna (2015), who show that the habit of keeping written records in Greece was much older than the fourth century, even though the volume of inscriptions does not pick up significantly at Athens and elsewhere until after 403. Written lease arrangements from the demes Aixone (IG II2 1292), Piraeus (IG II2 2496 and 2498), Prasiai (IG II2 2497), and Eleusis (IG II2 2500) imply that by the late fourth century, inscribed records of land ownership were common, but this should not imply that written record itself was new.
Finally, Philipp Scheibelreiter argues that the term ὁμολογία did not mean a contract or create an actionable obligation, but reinforced preexisting agreements. This he contrasts with nuncupatio, which in Roman law was ‘part of a ritual that followed certain formalisms’ (256). Scheibelreiter does not engage with the arguments of Douglas North (1990: 121-122), that third-party enforcement of contracts is essential for market-growth. Reference should also have been made to the work of Isabel Pernin (2014), who has collected inscriptions from twenty separate city-states on agricultural leases, which problematise ideas of homology that come from Pringsheim (1950) and Wolff (1957).[2] Wolff took Pringsheim’s views of cash sale a step further by arguing that ὁμολογία was not consensus ad idem. According to Wolff, in Greek law liability was created by non-fulfilment of conditions undertaken at the time of execution. In another important essay, not referenced, Harris (2020: 25-29) levels seven objections and shows from two laws (IG II2 2499; XII 9, 207) that liabilities arose from failure to discharge promises. Scheibelreiter ignores Alberto Maffi’s essay (2018), disproving Wolff’s idea of Vertragsrecht, and cites Edward Cohen (2006) without engaging with the arguments (242).
In sum, this volume suffers from a tendency to posit polarities between ‘unity’ and ‘diversity’ without specifying in which spheres of law those operate. The essays rightly focus on local initiatives and impetuses to mobilise the law in ways that are fitting and idiosyncratic to local communities, but there should have been a much more rigorous discussion of how unity and diversity operate in different facets (substantive and procedural) of the law.
Works cited
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Carey, C. 1998. ‘The Shape of Athenian Laws’, CQ 48, 93–109.
Cohen, E.E. 2006. ‘Consensual contracts at Athens’, in H.A. Rupprecht (ed.), Symposion 2003: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistichen Rechtsgeschichte. Vienna, 73–81.
Cook, R.M. 1958. ‘Speculations on the Origins of Coinage’, Historia 7, 257–262.
Faraguna, M. 2015. ‘Citizen-registers in archaic Greece: The evidence reconsidered’, in A. Matthaiou, N. Papazarkadas (eds), ΑΞΩΝ. Studies in Honour of Ronald S. Stroud, II. Athens, pp. 649-667.
Finley, M.I. 1975. The Use and Abuse of History. London, 134–146.
Gagarin, M. 2005. ‘The Unity of Greek Law,’ in Michael Gagarin and David Cohen (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law. Cambridge, 29–40.
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Table of Contents
Hans Beck and Kaja Harter-Uibopuu, ‘Preface.’
Hans Beck, ‘Land and law in Archaic Thebes.’
Athina A. Dimopoulou, ‘Diversity and unity of public institutions and sanctions. The case of the cities of Lesbos (Archaic to Hellenistic times).’
Donatella Erdas, ‘Selling land and houses in the ancient Greek poleis. Some notes on procedure, liabilities, and parties involved.’
Alain Bresson, ‘Ancient Greek monetary laws and regulations.’
Dorothea Rohde, ‘Exceptions that prove the rule. The local conditionality of debt cancellations.’
Ruben Post, ‘A unique federal fiscal and legal institution from early Hellenistic Achaea.’
Zinon Papakonstantinou, ‘Greek legal pluralism. The case of sport and festivals.’
Laura Gawlinksi, ‘Personal, local, global. Greek dress in ritual norms.’
Lina Girdvainyte, ‘Roman legal enactments in mainland Greece in the 2nd century BCE. A source of unity in the face of fragmentation?’
Patrick Sänger, ‘P. Eleph.1. A document and its origin. Some thoughts on the methodology of Hans Julius Wolff and Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski.’
Philipp Scheibelreiter, ‘Common concepts in Athens and Rome? A comparative legal perspective on the homologia.’
Notes
[1] See, for example, Osborne 1986: 40-58; Millett and Todd 1990: 1-20; Todd 1993; Carey 1998; Lanni 2006; contra Harris 2013: 138-174, 359-378; Hansen 2016: 465-466.
[2] Wolff’s ideas have been accepted by Mirhady 2004, Carawan 2006 and Thür 2013.