Starting in the seventh century b. c.e., the Greeks put their laws into writing. The evidence for this is both literary and epigraphic. Our earliest epigraphic evidence comes from the city of Dreros on Crete, dating to 650-625 b. c.e. The laws are only partially preserved, but the most intact shows concern for legal procedure and city administration: "May God be kind. The city has thus decided: When a man has been kosmos, the same man shall not be kosmos again for ten years. If he does act as kosmos, whatever judgments he gives, he shall owe double, and he shall lose his rights to office, as long as he lives, and whatever he does as kosmos shall be nothing. The swearers shall be the kosmos and the damioi and the twenty of the city" (translation by Meiggs and Lewis 1992, 2).
The kosmos appears to have been some manner of judge who decided cases, clearly a rotating function to be held by any citizen for only one year, once per decade. The presence of anxiety that someone would try to hold the office more frequently may indicate that financial gain was to be had from this duty, and the citizens of Dreros were concerned with avoiding abuses of power in their legal proceedings.
Another early law is the homicide law of Drakon, the early Athenian lawgiver (see above). The original version of this law, composed around 620 b. c.e., no longer survives, but it was copied verbatim in 409/408, and thus the text remains:
Even if someone kills someone without premeditation, he shall be exiled. The Basileis are to adjudge responsible for the homicide either... or the one who instigated the killing. The Ephetai are to give verdict. Pardon is to be granted, if there is a father or brother or sons, by all, or the one who opposes it shall prevail. And if these do not exist, pardon is to be granted by those as far as the degree of cousin's son and cousin, if all are willing to grant it; the one who opposes it shall prevail. And if there is not even one of these alive, and the killer did it unintentionally, and the Fifty-One,
The Ephetai, decide that he did it unintentionally, then let ten members of the phratry admit him to the country, if they are willing. Let the Fifty-One choose these men according to their rank. And let also those who killed previously be bound by this ordinance. A proclamation is to be made against the killer in the agora by relatives as far as the degree of cousin's son and cousin. The prosecution is to be shared by cousins, sons of cousins, sons-in-law, fathers-in-law, and members of the phratry. . . responsible for homicide. . . the Fifty-One. . . . If someone kills the slayer or is responsible for his being killed while he is avoiding a frontier market, games, and Amphictionic rites, he shall be treated on the same basis as one who kills an Athenian. The Ephetai shall bring in the verdict. . . one who is the aggressor.. . slays the aggressor. .. the Ephetai bring in the verdict... he is a free man. .. . And if a man immediately defends himself against someone who is unjustly and forcibly carrying away his property and kills him, the dead man shall receive no recompense. . . . (Translation by Stroud 1968, 6-7. Used with kind permission)
Essentially, this law states the legal procedure for dealing with homicides. The accused murderer had to leave Athens and was banned from the markets at the edges of Attica and the peripheral religious ceremonies. While he was gone, judges worked with the victims' families to determine if the slaying was accidental, in self-defense, or actual murder. If self-defense, the killer was acquitted. In the other cases, the family to the degrees specified had the option of accepting money as recompense for their loss. Until the case was settled, no one was allowed to harm the accused (provided he kept out of the forbidden areas); if someone did, then he was accused of murder. Thus, the law provided for the safety of the accused, gave a step-by-step procedure for dealing with the problem, and made allowances for issues of self-defense.
Other early law codes come from Chios, Eretria, and possibly Gortyn in Crete (a code that may be older than its fifth-century writing). With the possible exception of Dreros (so little remains that it is difficult to say anything definite about it), the early written codes seem to represent entirely new sets of laws created in the seventh and sixth centuries b. c.e., rather than the eventual recording in writing of old laws. The majority of these new laws were procedural: They dealt with the carrying out of legal functions rather than establishing what people could or could not do. One must assume that the Greeks already had a number of traditional notions of right and wrong to which they adhered. It would appear that starting in the seventh century, though, the poleis came to need new means of arbitrating disputes among citizens, probably resulting from the growth of the cities in the eighth century and the rising power of the middle classes. This was especially the case with the colonies, where a new sense of egalitarianism met with a break from the traditions of the mother city/cities: The colonists had to come up with new means of resolving conflicts.
Perhaps this is why the earliest literary evidence for the early lawmakers concerns the colonies. According to tradition, the earliest man to draw up a full set of new, written laws was Zaleukos, for the colony at Epizephyrian Lokris in Italy in 662 b. c.e. (Gagarin 1989, 52). According to Aristotle (fr. 548
Rose), "When the Lokrians asked the oracle how they might find relief from the turmoil they were experiencing, the oracle responded that they should have laws enacted for themselves, whereupon a certain shepherd named Za-leukos ventured to propose to the citizens many excellent laws. When they learned of these and asked him where he had found them, he replied that Athena had come to him in a dream. As a result of this he was freed and appointed law-giver" (translation by Gagarin 1989, 58).
There are some interesting aspects to this story. First, the lawmaker was a slave. Second, the laws were not only officially ordained by an oracle, but were, technically, dictated by a goddess—Athena. These aspects are significant because they fall in line with several other stories about the origins of the early law codes. Typically, the laws arose during periods of turmoil within the individual poleis. The lawmaker was either an outsider, from a liminal class within the city, or a god. Additionally, several traditional lawmakers either killed themselves or left the city after the implementation of their laws, so that they would not have to hear any complaints and could not be forced to amend their decisions.
Many of these motifs come together in the (semi-)mythical persona of Diok-les, who supposedly wrote the laws of Syracuse. Pinning down this individual is quite a challenge. According to Diodorus (and supported by the author of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter), Diokles was originally from Eleusis in Attica, from where he migrated to Megara. Here, he invented the law code adopted by the Corinthians, and then he moved to Syracuse, where the Syracusans established a cult in honor of Diokles the Lawgiver. According to Aristotle, Diok-les's tomb lay in Thebes, where he traveled with his lover Philolaos ("Lover of the People"). According to Diodorus, Diokles killed himself after accidentally breaking one of his own laws. It seems he forbade anyone to bring weapons into the agora on pain of death. During a period of military strife, Diokles rushed out with his weapons when a disturbance in the agora caught his attention. Entering, he was reprimanded for contravening his own law. Claiming in all honesty that he was actually fulfilling the laws, he killed himself with his sword (Sealey 1994, 24).
The presence of the Diokles cult in Syracuse and the possible Hero cult (see chapter 8) in Thebes suggests that Diokles may have been a local hero, if not a minor deity, to whom the Syracusans later attributed their laws (thus the divine connection). Likewise, the legend of his suicide in fulfillment of his own laws echoes the motif mentioned above of the lawgiver who disappears after the instigation of the new code. Kharandas, who was responsible for many of the law codes in Magna Graecia, died a similar death, adding to the mythic quality of such stories (Sealey 1994, 24).
By the dawn of the fifth century b. c.e., there were considerable changes in Greek legal practice from what Homer recorded in Book 18 of the Iliad. Many laws were written down into codes, rather than being at the discretion of arbitrator-judges. Furthermore, mutual agreement was no longer an aspect of the law, either for seeking arbitration or for rendering judgments. In Athens, starting with the laws of Solon, new legal categories came into being that allowed
Citizens to prosecute each other without mutual consent. The simplest was the dike (literally "justice"), or private suit, which occurred between two individuals. Above this was the graphe (literally "writing"), which was a public suit whereby any person could demand justice for an offense against anyone else. Thus, if a man were murdered, leaving only female relatives (who were ineligible to enact court actions), any male citizen could bring suit against the alleged murderer. The ultimate embodiment of this sentiment was the eisan-gelia, whereby any male citizen could bring someone up on charges of antistate activities. This would be the only way, for example, to arrest someone on charges of establishing a tyranny, which was forbidden by the laws of Solon (Gagarin 1989, 79).
Solon gave the Athenians several other legal tools in the pursuit of justice. The ephesis allowed a party to appeal a ruling of the jurors, much like the modern appeals process. Also aware of problems of perjury, Solon instituted the episkepsis, whereby a party at a trial could formally announce his intention to sue a witness for perjury after the trial was over. Two other types of lawsuit were the dike exoules and the apagoge. The first was a standard suit brought against a party who had been previously found guilty but who refused to pay the penalty established by the courts. The latter, in a similar vein, called the city officials to enforce a verdict if the guilty party refused to comply. Thus, in all ways, justice was removed from the hands of individuals and placed in the hands of the city. Arbitration turned into written laws prescribing certain penalties for specific crimes, with definitive procedures for handling the unhappy lawsuit loser who refused to comply with the courts' will (Gagarin 1989, 79). Similar laws existed in other poleis, including fines set not only for those who refused to comply with court mandates, but for the governmental officials who refused to enforce court decisions. So a law from the great code at Gortyn reads, "He is to pay fifty cauldrons in each case. If the kosmos in charge [of the case] does not exact full payment, he shall owe the penalty himself, and the titas, if he does not exact full payment, [shall himself pay?]" (translation by Gagarin 1989, 93).
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