Jason Hawke. Writing Authority

Once the neglected stepchild of classical Athenian law, archaic Greek law has been witnessing a veritable renaissance with three monographs entirely or largely devoted to the subject appearing since 2008. Recent scholarship on archaic Greek law focuses on the implications of the public display of written laws, the role of literacy, the adjudication of disputes, the diffusion of legislative authority, and the socially multifaceted nature of the reception of written law. Jason Hawke's central question is why the Greeks first began to write laws. The answer is to be found in elite competition and political control in the context of the archaic Greek poleis. Laws were written at the instigation of the elites who aimed at regulating the affairs of their communities on their own terms. In this reconstruction, elite interaction with other social groups played only a secondary role in the lawmaking process. The first chapter of the book consists of a selective review of scholarship on archaic law from Sir Henry Sumner Maine to recently published work. Chapter two lays the groundwork for the main parts of the book with a discussion of a host of issues related to source criticism and the use of comparative material, especially legal anthropological literature, in the study of archaic law. Chapter three deals with the nature of Greek dispute resolution before written law. The main point here is that the Greek world portrayed by the Homeric epics and the poems of Hesiod possessed a functional legal culture. Several avenues of conflict resolution were open to the parties involved in a dispute. At this stage of Greek legal history, the role of the public was crucial. This was a legal system “that did not lend itself to abuse perpetrated by a corporate, aristocratic interest” (p. 100).

Context (archaeology) · Elite · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History · Law