The Greeks believed that their first lawgivers were King Minos of Knossos and his brother Rhadamanthys. These men were so successful in their art that they went on to be judges of the dead in Hades. Beyond the "laws of Minos," however, we know very little about law and legal practices in the Bronze Age Aegean. Some Linear B tablets record disputes over landholdings, such as between the damos and the priestess Erita, and we may assume that one purpose of the Linear B documents was to keep legal records.
The earliest evidence we have for legal procedure comes from Homer and Hesiod. The references in Hesiod have already been discussed above in the section on Dark Age kingship, wherein kings, for better or worse, decided legal judgments for their people. The evidence in Homer comes from Book 18 of the Iliad (ll. 497-508), where Homer describes the scenes of civilized life that Hephaistos—the smithy god—wrought on the shield of Achilles:
But the people were assembled in the agora where a contention
Emerged, and two men fought over the blood-money
Of a murdered man, the one swore to have paid it all
Declaring this to the demos, but the other man refused to accept anything.
Both put the issue before a judge, hoping to win.
The people chattered about them both, favorable to both sides.
The herald held back the people; the old men sat on polished stones in a sacred circle
Holding in their hands the scepter of the loud-voiced heralds.
Then they sprang up, giving judgments in turn.
In their midst lay two talents of gold,
To be given to him who among them spoke the straightest judgment.
The picture derived from portrayals like this is that early Greek law was a matter of voluntary arbitration, wherein aggrieved parties came together, picked a judge or judges (possibly the basileus/eis, as per Hesiod), and had that judge decide a resolution to the problem. If we are to trust Homer, it is possible that several judges offered advice and that a prize (court fees, perhaps) went to the judge who suggested the best course of action (Gagarin 1989, 42-43). Such a course must have proved the most pleasing to both parties, soothing feathers for all involved. This was certainly preferable to a Hatfield-and-McCoy-style long-term family vendetta, which, if we are to trust Homer, was the other major form of justice in the Dark Age and Early Archaic Age.
World History
