"Lawmaking and Adjudication in Archaic Greece" re-evaluates central aspects of the genesis and application of laws in the communities of archaic Greece, including the structure and function of legislative bodies, the composition of the courts, the administration of justice and the use and abuse of legal norms and procedures by litigants in the courts and everyday settings. Combining a detailed analysis of epigraphical and literary evidence and the application of a model of interpretation borrowed from cultural analyses of law, this book argues that far from being monolithic creations of archaic polities that unilaterally informed social life, archaic legal systems can be more appropriately viewed as ideologically polyvalent and socially complex.It includes legal norms and the administration of justice articulated associations with divine and secular authority but also incorporated, mainly in their reception and application by average citizens, discourses of utility and resistance that actively contributed in the composition of social relations.

This volume explores the ways in which law integrated with other aspects of life in ancient Greece. The papers collected here reveal a number of different pathways between law and political, social, and economic life in Greek societies. Emanating from several scholarly traditions, they offer a range of contrasting but complementary insights rarely collected together. What emerges clearly is that law in Greece only takes on its full meaning in a broadly political context. Dynamic tensions govern the relationships between this semi-autonomous legal arena and other spheres of life. An ideology of equality before the law was juxtaposed with a practical reality of individuals' unequal abilities to cope with it. It is hard to draw firm lines between the settlement of cases in court and the spill-over of legal actions into the agora, the streets, the fields, and the houses. Hence it is hardly surprising if justice can all too easily give way to justification.

How successful were the Greeks in bringing about the rule of law? What did the Greeks recognise as law both in the polis and internationally? This collection of essays sets out to answer these questions.

Ilias Arnaoutoglou explores the significance of legislation in ancient Greece, the differences and similarities between ancient Greek legislation and legislators and their modern counterparts.

In Writing Authority, Hawke argues that the rapidly changing political and economic landscape of early Greece prompted elites to begin committing laws to written form. The emergence of the polis and its institutions, the demographic growth of Greece, the development of market forces, and the commoditization of wealth all presented new challenges and difficulties for the Greeks of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E. Hawke contends that no one felt the attendant anxieties of these changes more acutely than the leading members of early Greek communities—they confronted regulating their intense competition for status and power in an environment where traditional sources of authority, such as Homeric epic, offered no ready solutions for problems arising from the transformation of Greek society. Greek elites enshrined in writing rules aimed at stabilizing their relationships with one another and, by extension, their communities. Challenging both established and emerging orthodoxies about the appearance of written law in ancient Greece, Writing Authority questions the importance of a popular or communal role in the earliest Greek legislation. Approaches from anthropology, legal studies, and sociology are used to situate the emergence of Greek law in the broader context of Greek legal culture in the eighth through early sixth centuries B.C.E. as Hawke describes in rich detail the legal culture of Homer's world, considers the impact of literacy on Greek attitudes about law and authority and its practical consequences for the governing of the Greek polis, and examines the effects of the tumultuous changes in Archaic Greece on the leading members of Greek communities. The result is a compelling monograph that provides an exhaustive and nuanced history of earliest Greek law and the motivations of the elites that brought it into being. It will be of interest to scholars of Greek history, classicists, and early legal historians.

This book opens the world of the ancient Greeks to all readers through easily accessible entries on topics essential to understanding Greek high culture and daily life. The ancient Greeks provided the foundation for Western civilization. They made significant advances in science, mathematics, philosophy, literature, and government. While many readers might have heard of Plato and Aristotle, however, or be familiar with the classic works of Greek tragedy, most people know significantly less about daily life in the ancient Greek world. This encyclopedia opens the world of the ancient Greeks, spanning Greek history from the Bronze Age through Roman times, with an emphasis on the Classical and Hellenistic Eras. The encyclopedia provides roughly 270 easily accessible entries on topics essential to understanding everything from Greek high culture to daily life. These entries are grouped in topical sections on the arts, science and technology, politics and government, domestic life, and other subjects. Sidebars on particularly noteworthy people, places, and concepts provide related information, while primary documents allow readers to delve into the mindset and feelings of the ancient Greeks themselves. Extensive bibliographic references give curious readers direction for further research.