Oral law and the early Athenian democratic constitution
The way in which law is practiced can be a telling characteristic of a constitution: a tyranny in the modern sense, for example, is often signified by the abuse or absence of due legal process [1], and a true democracy is created just as much through the fair and equal practice of law as it is through the voting rights of its citizens [2]. This concept is demonstrated in the Athenian constitution itself, the original term for which may have been “ἰσονομία” [3], “equality before the law”: it was their distinctive treatment of law that created the Athenian constitution. It is worth discussing the concept of Greek law in particular because of the culture’s relationship with orality in many facets of life, which is unique among other comparable cultures such as those of the Near East or Rome.
Athens’ constitution is especially interesting to study because of its unique democratic system. For these reasons, I intend to explore how the particular oral influence on law affected the equally particular early democratic constitution in Athens. In this way, I shall argue that there was in fact a strong aristocratic element embedded in the early “democratic” constitution. This viewpoint on the period of Solon’s reforms is not original [4], but the intention of this essay is to further this discussion and widen its scope by considering the problem through the less-explored lens of law.
To begin the argument it will be important to understand what constituted law for the Athenians and what made it distinctive from other cultures. In the first section of this essay I shall explore this idea, with particular attention to avoiding the traps of modern concepts of legislation which are greatly influenced by Roman tradition. Thus, I intend to demonstrate the strength of oral tradition in Athenian law, which resulted in “unwritten law” having legal authority that we might not expect when considering it from a modern standpoint. Athens also made use of written laws: it is therefore important to discuss how the two types of law, written and unwritten, coexisted in the period of early democracy. This will be the subject of Section Two, in which it will be argued that unwritten law held a more prestigious place in the Athenian mindset. The final section will then deal with what affect such a mindset had on the early democratic constitution. Here, I intend to consider the stereotypes of certain constitutions, whether these stereotypes held any truth in reality, and where unwritten law falls in such stereotypes. In this way, this essay will argue that the early “democratic” idealisation of unwritten law points more to an aristocratic agenda for the constitution.
Section One: Unwritten law
In order to allow a profitable discussion of law and how it relates to the Athenian constitution, it is necessary to come to an understanding of what law is or can be in archaic Athens. It has on multiple occasions been pointed out that we cannot view law in Athens in the same way as we view modern law. In this section, I intend to deal with some of the fundamental issues with defining law and legal systems in Athens. These include the anachronistic view of law that is often applied to the study of Greek law: this view is largely derived from the far-reaching influence of Roman law. In addition to this, the issue of what constitutes a law code and the codification of law has been discussed frequently by scholars [5]. This question is significant for the purposes of this discussion, since the form of the legal “code” will help us to define the form of the legal system which in turn affects the constitution. In the course of the discussion here, I hope to provide adequate explanation for why I shall consider unwritten law in this essay to have the force of law, and why we should take it into account alongside written law as a legitimate, and significant, aspect of the Athenian legal system.
One of the major barriers to the study of Greek law is the influence of Roman law, especially in our modern legal systems. This has been discussed in depth by Todd and Millett [6]: it seems to be the consensus of most researchers in early Greek law that the crux of the matter is the Roman literate view of the law [7]. In the past, it has been an issue for scholars that Roman culture places far more emphasis on writing in general than Greek culture does. This is an acceptable approach in the study of Roman law, which defined law as something which may be read (“lex”). It is, however, inappropriate for Athens, the legal system of which allowed for laws to exist without necessarily being written, and for them to be created not through writing but through custom (“nomos”).
The modern understanding of law as a code can hinder the study of Greek law as much as our ideas about law itself. Once again, the concept of a code is deeply influenced by the Roman view, and therefore closely tied to writing. It is, however, important to note that a code is not simply a set of laws that has been written down: it implies a thought-out, coherent system of laws, which support each other [8]. Thus, a code can be considered a single entity, rather than a collection of laws that do not necessarily take into account the existence of the others. The Roman association of a code with writing has had an unfortunate influence on the modern period, where it is sometimes assumed that the only requirement for a code is a set of laws that is written down. The pitfalls of this attitude are well demonstrated by Eder in his 1986 article: he consistently uses the term “codification” when he is referring to the creation or writing down of laws [9]. It must be emphasised, however, that the mere action of writing does not make a set of laws cohesive and therefore codified. The codification itself comes in the arrangement of laws according to a single overarching methodology, not the writing of them.
It should be noted that the concept of having a code of law was not a Roman invention, as Todd and Millett imply [10]. We see the concept of a system (not set) of laws, with common methodology, in Greek works such as Plato’s Νόμοι. Here, though, it is a conscious decision to create a law code [11], not an assumption that is taken for granted. In this way, one could argue that the expectation that law exists in the form of a code is of Roman origin. For this reason, we cannot expect Athenian law to have this same systematised form. This is evident from the conceptualisation of law as nomos: tradition is something that is created over a period of time, often through many generations. This view of law is also demonstrated in Plato’s Νόμοι, where the Athenian claims that man does not make laws, but circumstance does [12]. In this belief, it is impossible to create laws as a single unit, since a single point in time does not have all the necessary circumstances to create a comprehensive system of laws. We cannot, therefore, expect the purpose or methodology behind each custom to remain constant over this time. For these reasons, it is important in this discussion not to conceptualise Athenian law as a code.
One of the most significant differences between Greek and Roman culture, already noted above, is the strength of oral culture in Greece. This pervaded many aspects of life, from the oral composition of poetry such as the Homeric poems to the dialectic format of philosophical exploration coined by Plato. One could even argue that orality was the favoured form of communication in general, in part because of the relatively small scale of polis life in comparison to the globalised worlds of the Hellenistic and Roman periods that would follow. Given the pervasiveness of orality in Greek culture, one would expect that it would have some and probably a large amount of influence on Athenian law. It should, therefore, be given adequate attention in the study of Athenian law.
One could argue that the manifestation of orality in Athenian law is the concept of custom in law: it is this tradition that would have been passed through generations by word of mouth, much like the Homeric poems. We must, therefore, establish whether these customs held the force of law in early democratic Athens. One could argue that it is likely that this was the case: orality was so embedded in the culture that the Athenians may not have distinguished between the tradition and law. Again, this is supported by the use of the term “νόμος” for law. It is also worth noting that Solon chose to record his acts in the form of poetry [13], a traditionally oral medium. Thus, it may have been expected that his reforms would be shared by word of mouth and given the force of law.
In summary, an understanding of the concept of law in Athens is critical to a discussion of its relationship to the constitution. In previous studies of this subject, the influence of Roman law on our modern view has led to scholars to place too much emphasis on writing in Athenian legislation. It also encourages the incorrect view that codification is simply the writing down of laws, which is not the case. We must instead adjust our expectations of a “legal system” to understand that Athens did not have what we could call a “law code”, but it did have a set of laws that operated in a system. An important and often forgotten aspect of this system was custom, which may also be conceptualised as oral law, since this tradition held the force of law. It is now for us to consider the dynamics of this system which included oral law, and in particular how it related to written law in Athens.
Section Two: The relationship between written and unwritten laws in Athens in the archaic period.
In the above section I have discussed how oral, “unwritten” law in Athens had a similar force to what in the modern period we would call law. If it is the case that unwritten law had some legitimacy, it now seems appropriate to discuss how this “law” related to Athens’ written law. I shall begin this discussion by a consideration of what the Athenian mentality towards this relationship appears to have been. Sophocles’ Antigone has frequently been used in the past as evidence on this subject, and, although it is from a slightly later period than that which is the topic of this essay, its influence as a source in the modern period means that it warrants at least a brief discussion, if somewhat wary. This will then lead me to a discussion of what the relationship appears to have been between oral and written law in the Athenian legal system, with specific reference to the authority and status each appears to have had. In this way I intend to suggest a plausible theory about the dynamics of the Athenian legal system, which will aid us in our understanding of its position in the Athenian constitution.
The issue of written versus unwritten laws was present in the Athenian mindset at least at some point: for example, we may consider the central conflict of law and tradition in Sophocles’ Antigone, which brings to the forefront the issue of when written law or unwritten law should have precedent:
Κρέων:
καὶ δῆτʼ ἐτόλμας τούσδʼ ὑπερβαίνειν νόμους;Ἀντιγόνη:
οὐ γάρ τί μοι Ζεὺς ἦν ὁ κηρύξας τάδε,
οὐδʼ ἡ ξύνοικος τῶν κάτω θεῶν Δίκη
τοιούσδʼ ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ὥρισεν νόμους.
οὐδὲ σθένειν τοσοῦτον ᾠόμην τὰ σὰ
κηρύγμαθʼ ὥστʼ ἄγραπτα κἀσφαλῆ θεῶν
νόμιμα δύνασθαι θνητὸν ὄνθʼ ὑπερδραμεῖν.
οὐ γάρ τι νῦν γε κἀχθές, ἀλλʼ ἀεί ποτε
ζῇ ταῦτα, κοὐδεὶς οἶδεν ἐξ ὅτου ʼφάνη.Creon:
Indeed you even dared to transgress these laws?Antigone:
Yes, for it was not. Zeus who was the herald of these orders for me, nor did Justice who dwells with the gods below mark out such laws among men. Nor did I think that your edicts, being mortal, had such force that. they could surpass the unwritten. and stable laws of the gods. For these laws do not live now and yesterday, but for all time, and no one knows from what time they appeared. [14]
This passage provides us with much information relevant to our subject. The focus throughout is that tradition is associated with the permanent (“ἀεί”) versus the impermanent (“νῦν”) that is represented by Creon’s laws. This is partly due to the association of tradition with the divine (“Ζεὺς”; “Δίκη”), making it superior to the law in Antigone’s mind, since not only is law unequal to tradition, but it is not capable (“δύνασθαι”) of being equal. The closeness of the distinction, however, may be illustrated by the use of the νομ- root words in this passage: “νόμος” for the law of Creon; “τὰ νόμιμα” for the customs. It is true that νόμος has a closer association with “man-made” law than the adjective νόμιμος [15], but through Sophocles’ juxtaposition of these two similar terms we see that, despite Antigone’s hair-splitting, they are ultimately cut from the same cloth.
Tradition – that is, unwritten law – and written law have the same objectives: to place boundaries of human behaviour [16]. It is then our task to consider in what different ways they achieve this objective. If we consider again the above passage, it is important to notice the difference between the “living” customs (“ζῇ”), which are “stable” (“ἀσφαλῆ”) and therefore do not need to be written. Antigone’s implied sneer is that Creon’s laws are not stable enough that they can be kept “alive” without writing. For her, written laws are of a quality that requires contact with writing to keep them in force.
The idea above has been discussed in depth in the work of Rosalind Thomas. Thomas has argued that laws were inscribed on tablets in order to give them monumentality and therefore the weight of divine protection that is associated with such monuments [17]. This argument is highly convincing and would provide an explanation for the specific nature of inscribed laws that has often been noted by scholars [18]: the more minor laws required contact with writing in order to give them the same force as the basic, traditional ones. In this way, it was because they were specific that the laws needed to be written down.
On the subject of the dynamic between different sets of laws, Hölkeskamp seems fair in his argument against Osborne’s idea that Athenian law can be collected to reveal a single code [19]: it is unlikely from what we know of Athenian history that their laws would have been conceived as a unit with a single methodology [20], which seems a fair requirement to distinguish a code from a collection of laws, as explained above [21]. To completely reject the concept of a legal system, however, and to say that individual written laws should be considered entirely isolated from each other or from other forms of law is an extreme position to take. Rather, it seems more reasonable to argue, like Hölkeskamp [22] that the written and oral laws, while not conceived as a single coherent entity in the form of a code, were intended to relate to one another, with oral law being linked to certain statements made in written law, but not necessarily linking different pieces of written law to each other.
What, then, is the difference in quality between the written and unwritten laws which have been given equal authority through monumentalisation? The apparent lower status of the written laws provides us with some insight into the relationship. The laws do seem to be related to one another if we take into account the significance of oral law, which Hölkeskamp fails to do. One could suggest a structure where the inscribed laws act as supplementary to the greater oral laws, which also have a broader scope. While apparently not linked to each other, the written laws each feed into the wider tradition which includes oral law. Thus, the Athenians would have a legal system created from the relationship between the two types of law. It is important to note that this should not be defined as a law code, as it is not a single unit, but equally the collection of laws should not be viewed as entirely oblivious to each other and to the fact that they sit within a general system. This theory would also provide a solution to the issue faced by both Osborne and Hölkeskamp: the specific nature of the written laws [23]. In the system suggested above, the laws are specific because they provide a balance to the general oral laws and because they are intended as a supplement to these laws.
It seems that the relationship between written law and tradition is a complex one which is mindful of two criteria: the authority of the law and the status of the law. It should follow that laws of a lower status have lesser authority, but through the monumentalisation of the written laws, the Athenians have been able to create a more equal balance in the power of their written and oral laws. It is, however, still the case that written laws have a lower status than the oral laws. This is due to the more specific nature of the written laws, since they are conceived as a supplement to the “obvious”, more simple laws created through tradition. It is in the written laws that we find the caveats and particular limitations of the general laws. These laws are written because they are more complex and therefore more difficult to remember than the oral laws. It is not writing which makes them inferior, but the fact that they are inferior in status that requires them to be written. Though they have the same authority, written laws in the archaic period have a lower, supplementary status to tradition in the Athenian system of law.
Section Three: Orality and the Athenian Constitution
It would seem that there is a distinction between the status of written law and unwritten laws, which stand for tradition. The nature of law was believed, at least in the Periclean and post-Periclean Athenian sources, to have a significant impact on the nature of a constitution. For example, Aristotle claims that through the creation of laws, Solon “ὀλιγαρχίαν τε γὰρ καταλῦσαι λίαν ἄκρατον οὖσαν” [24], and thus ultimately changed the constitution within which these laws were placed. Plato also demonstrates this belief in the power of the laws when he chooses to build a constitution around a code of laws in his Νόμοι. It therefore appears that it would be profitable to analyse what effect the authority of unwritten law discussed above would have on the constitution of sixth-century Athens.
The status of unwritten law was not only different from but greater than the status of written law in early Athenian democracy. Above I have used Sophocles’ Antigone as an example of the mentality towards this issue, but it is of course important to remember the qualifications required in making points based on Antigone: it is later than the period we are considering; it is drama, and the point of Antigone’s character is that she stands against Creon’s law; and Antigone, as an eccentric and fallible tragic character, is hardly a reliable source for the general view of tradition versus law. It does, however, seem that many of the views expressed in Antigone support the epigraphic evidence as discussed in Thomas (1995). This evidence together would suggest that laws are written in order for them to have the same authority that is afforded to oral law, and, importantly, not vice versa. One can therefore infer that, since written laws are “playing catch up” to the authority of oral laws, Athens of the period of Solon considers oral law not only as having a higher status, but moreover holds it as their ideal in their legal system. Written laws, by comparison, are the necessary practical solution when orality is not an option.
It is now necessary to consider how oral and written law differ in their relationships with constitutions. Arguably, they each are associated with different types of regime. It is a frequent comment that in the classical period the Athenians viewed written law as linked to democracy [25]. This idea is supported by many written sources: for example, Solon was said to have “δημοκρατίαν καταστῆσαι τὴν πάτριον” [26] in large part because he “τὰ δικαστήρια ποιήσας ἐκ πάντων” [27] and made the laws available to those citizens through his written θεσμοί. The concept that writing can provide the “freedom of information” that is considered essential to democracy links the written, accessible law time and again to a constitution that gives power to the masses.
The case for unwritten law is not quite as clear, but it seems likely that tradition would be associated with oligarchy or aristocracy. Plato, for example, appears to champion aristocracy in his Πολιτικός by hoping to have the laws managed by a legislator who does not have to rely on the rigidity of written law [28]. Herodotus also demonstrates in the Persian constitutional debate a concern that a tyrant can “νόμαιά… κινέει” [29], perhaps in part because there is nothing written down which allows him to be called to account. It has been suggested that the writing of laws may have been encouraged in Athens by the aristocratic families as a way in which to stabilise the traditional laws so that they would not be changed [30]. This may well be the case, but there is a reason that this is an “unconventional hypothesis” as Eder himself calls it: regardless of what they in fact did, the aristocracy tends to be conservative, and when oral law is based on tradition, the expectation would be that the stereotypical aristocrat would support what is traditional. Thus, the argument could be made that unwritten law was considered un-democratic and in particular characteristic of an aristocratic regime.
Thomas has commented that the post-oligarchic Athens of 403 B.C.E. saw a new frenzy for written legislation [31], and, moreover, this legislation was created to be available for reference and therefore prevent arbitrary interpretation of the laws (see image above)[32]. This may have us question what the difference was in this new democracy that caused it to rely on and, more importantly, value written law more than its predecessor. Given the distinction made between written and oral law in the previous paragraph, it would seem likely that the difference was the Athenian backlash from the oligarchic regime of the Thirty Tyrants. The oligarchy caused a new, frantic and upscaled dedication to the values of democracy, one of which being the accessibility and immutability of the laws: if we consider the new value of written law, it seems that the Athens after the Thirty Tyrants was more democratic in its values than it had been in the past.
When we consider the apparent higher status of unwritten laws in archaic Athens, we see that the archaic legal mindset leans towards tradition and therefore unwritten law as the ideal. This would suggest that the legal system of Athens in this period supported at least some aristocratic values: the priority of tradition is often seen as a characteristic of an aristocratic regime. By contrast, the democratic priority of the written legislation does not come to the fore until after the oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants at the end of the fifth century. Thus, by considering the relationship between law and the values of certain types of institution, we can see that Athens at the time of Solon was less democratic in its mindset than would be suggested by the common trope of dubbing Solon “the founder of democracy” [33]. Instead, it seems that the Athenian constitution still held traditional and aristocratic views right until the resurgence of democracy after the Peloponnesian War.
Conclusions
To conclude, in this essay I have considered the nature of law in Athens in the archaic period and how this affects the political values that underly Athens’ constitution. An understanding of what constitutes law in archaic period is key to this discussion, as it gives us an understanding of the legal mindset in Athens more generally. From the argument in Section One it seems that, importantly, we must consider tradition as a kind of law with the same authority as written law: for this reason I have referred to it from Section Two onwards interchangeably as unwritten law as well as tradition. This differs critically from the Roman view of law, which is why we must be particularly wary of modern legal scholarship, which is largely influenced by Roman law over Greek, the former having a stronger basis in written tradition.
The presence of oral law in Athenian culture has us consider how it relates to written law. In Section Two I have discussed the two aspects of the “power” for law: “authority”, which refers to the legitimacy of the law, and “status”, which refers to the reverence afforded to the law by public opinion. In this section I found that, while the two forms of law have similar authority, the status of oral law is higher than that of written law. I propose, in line with Thomas, that it was the more minor nature of the written laws that resulted in them having a lower status, not the writing that reduced it. In fact, it seems that writing was a way in which to bolster the strength of the laws and therefore lend these minor laws the same authority as oral laws.
In the third section I discussed what the status of unwritten law in archaic Athens may tell us about the nature of the early “democratic”constitution. This section noted that it was in fact the later Athenian constitution which placed emphasis on stereotypically democratic values such as written law. By contrast, tradition is stereotypically an aristocratic trait for a constitution. For this reason it seems that the idealisation of oral law in the early Athenian democracy demonstrates a strong aristocratic element to this “democratic” constitution.
References
1. Hdt. 3.80.
2. Cartledge (2009), p. 131–132.
3. Although there is much discussion of whether isonomia can be called “the early name for democracy” (see, for example, Vlastos (1953) and Ehrenberg (1950)), it is clear that there is a strong link between the term and the concept of democracy opposed to monarchic or aristocratic rule (Pleket, 1972, p.64).
4. For example, Foxhall (1997) has attempted to demonstrate the elitist nature of Solon’s reforms by examining the property classes he created.
5. Major works on this issue include Gagarin (1986); Hölkeskamp (1992; 2005); Thomas (1995); Osborne (1997).
6. Todd and Millett (1990).
7. For example, Todd and Millett (1990); Hölkeskamp (2005) p. 287: we see codification appearing in Roman culture as early as the 5th century in the form of the Twelve Tables.
8. Hölkeskamp (2005), p.283; for a good overview of the issues surrounding the definition of law codes and law itself in Greek culture, see Todd and Millett (1990).
9. Eder (1986) p. 240: I would like to highlight here that Eder makes a number of interesting observations in this paper, some of which will be referenced in the argument below. The issue which I am referring to here is one of terminology, not of quality.
10. Todd and Millett (1990) p. 2.
11. Plato, Νόμοι IV. 722c-723b.
12. Plato, Νόμοι IV. 709a-b.
13. A claim made in Plutarch, Life of Solon, 3.4; Solon himself describes the seisachtheia in fr. 36. 8–22.
14. Sophocles, Antigone, lines 449 – 457. All translations used in this essay are my own.
15. LSJ, νόμος, A. I. d.: statute, ordinance made by authority.
16. Consider the verb νέμω as the root for both: LSJ, νέμω: distribute, allot, assign.
17. Thomas (1995), p. 72–3.
18. For example, Osborne (1997), p.41; Hölkeskamp (2005), p. 290.
19. Hölkeskamp (2005), p.291; Osborne (1997), p. 40.
20. Hölkeskamp (2005), p. 285.
21. See n. 8.
22. Hölkeskamp (2005), p. 287.
23. See n.18.
24. Ar. Πολιτικά, II. 1273b35: “put down an oligarchy which was too untempered”.
25. For example, this is the premise for the argument in Hedrick (1994), p. 157.
26. Ar. Πολιτικά, II. 1273b35: “set up the ancestral democracy”.
27. Ar. Πολιτικά, II. 1274a… : “made the law-courts out of all citizens”.
28. Thomas (1994), p. 125; Plato, Πολιτικός, 294a-295c.
29. Hdt. ‘Ιστορία 3.80: “disturb what is customary”.
30. Eder (1986), p. 240.
31. Thomas (1995) comments that the use of unwritten laws was banned for magistrates, p. 61; this idea is supported by the number of times orators, such as Demosthenes, reference written laws in their speeches.
32. Thomas (1994), p. 73; this is also demonstrated by the frequency of reference to written laws in the orators (n. 31).
33. See n. 26.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Aristotle, Πολιτικά in Politica ed. W.D. Ross (Clarendon Press, 1957).
Herodotus, Ιστορία in Herodoti Historiae ed. N.G. Nelson (Clarendon Press, 2015).
Plato, Πολιτικός in Plato: Statesman; Philebus; Ion ed. J. Henderson with translation by H.N. Fowler (Loeb Classical Library, 2014).
Plato, Νόμοι in Plato: Laws, Volume I: Books 1–6 ed. J. Henderson with translation by R.G. Bury (Loeb Classical Library, 1926).
Plutarch, Life of Solon in Plutarch: Lives, Volume I ed. J. Henderson with translation by B. Perrin (Loeb Classical Library, 2014).
Solon, Fragments in Greek Elegiac Poetry: From the seventh to the fifth centuries B.C. ed. J. Henderson with translation by D. E. Gerber (Loeb Classical Library, 2014).
Sophocles, Αντιγόνη in Sophocles: Antigone ed. M. Griffith (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Secondary Literature
Cartledge, P. Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Eder, W. “The political significance of the codification of law in archaic societies: an unconventional hypothesis” in K. Raaflaub (ed.) Social Struggles in Archaic Rome (Los Angeles, 1986), pp. 262–300.
Ehrenberg, V. “Origins of Democracy” in Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, vol. 1, n. 4 (1950), pp. 515–548.
Foxhall, L. “A view from the top: evaluation Solonian property classes” in The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece, eds. L. Mitchell and P.J. Rhodes (Routledge, 1997), pp. 61–74.
Gagarin, M. Early Greek Law (University of California Press, 1986).
Hedrick, C. W. “Writing, Reading, and Democracy” in Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis, eds. R. Osborne and S. Hornblower (Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 157–174.
Hölkeskamp, K.-J. “Written Law in Archaic Greece” in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, No. 38. (1992), pp. 87–117.
— “What’s in a Code? Solon’s Laws between Complexity, Compilation and Contingency” in Hermes, vol. 133 (2005), pp. 280–293.
Osborne, R. “Law and Laws: how do we join up the dots?” in The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece, eds. L. Mitchell and P.J. Rhodes (Routledge, 1997), pp. 39–43.
Pleket, H. W.”Isonomia and Cleisthenes: a note” in Talanta, vol. 4 (1972), pp. 63–81.
Thomas, R. “Law and the Lawgiver in the Athenian Democracy” in Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis, eds. R. Osborne and S. Hornblower (Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 120–133.
— “Written in Stone? Liberty, Equality, Orality and the Codification of Law” in The Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, vol. 40 (1995), pp. 59–74.
Todd, S. and Millett, P. “Law, Society and Athens” in Nomos: Essays in Athenian Law eds. P. Cartledge, P. Millett and S. Todd (Cambridge University Press, 1990) pp. 1–18.
Vlastos, G. “Isonomia” in The American Journal of Philology, vol. 74, n. 4 (1953) pp. 337–366.
Do you have a suggestion for a future topic? Do you have an idea to share with your friends? Send us a message and follow the Durham University Classics Society on Twitter (@DUClassSoc) and Facebook (@DUClassics Society) to keep up with this blog and our other adventures!
