The Justice of the Greeks

The Justice of the Greeks
Author: Raphael Sealey
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 1994
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780472105243

A well-grounded study of the Greek contribution to law

The Greek Concept of Justice

The Greek Concept of Justice
Author: Eric Alfred Havelock
Publisher: Cambridge : Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 1978
Genre: History
ISBN:

In this book, Eric Havelock presents a challenging account of the development of the idea of justice in early Greece, and particularly of the way justice changed as Greek oral tradition gradually gave way to the written word in a literate society. He begins by examining the educational functions of poets in preliterate Greece, showing how they conserved and transmitted the traditions of society, a thesis adumbrated in his earlier book Preface to Plato. Homer, he demonstrates, has much to say about justice, but since that idea is nowhere in the epics directly stated or expressed, it must be deduced from the speech and actions of the characters. Havelock's careful reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey is original and revealing; it sheds light both on Homeric notions of justice and on the Archaic Greek society depicted in the poems. As Havelock continues his inquiry from Hesiod to Aeschylus, his findings become more complex. The oral Greek world shades into a literate one. Words lose some kinds of meanings, gain others, and steadily become more suitedto the conceptualization that Plato strove for and achieved. This evolution of language itself, Havelock shows, was one of the principal accomplishments of the Greek world. Lucidly written and forcefully argued, this book is a major contribution to our knowledge of ancient Greece--its politics, philosophy, and literature, from Homer to Plato.

Ancient Greek Law in the 21st Century

Ancient Greek Law in the 21st Century
Author: Paula Perlman
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-03-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1477315217

The ancient Greeks invented written law. Yet, in contrast to later societies in which law became a professional discipline, the Greeks treated laws as components of social and political history, reflecting the daily realities of managing society. To understand Greek law, then, requires looking into extant legal, forensic, and historical texts for evidence of the law in action. From such study has arisen the field of ancient Greek law as a scholarly discipline within classical studies, a field that has come into its own since the 1970s. This edited volume charts new directions for the study of Greek law in the twenty-first century through contributions from eleven leading scholars. The essays in the book’s first section reassess some of the central debates in the field by looking at questions about the role of law in society, the notion of “contracts,” feuding and revenge in the court system, and legal protections for slaves engaged in commerce. The second section breaks new ground by redefining substantive areas of law such as administrative law and sacred law, as well as by examining sources such as Hellenistic inscriptions that have been comparatively neglected in recent scholarship. The third section evaluates the potential of methodological approaches to the study of Greek law, including comparative studies with other cultures and with modern legal theory. The volume ends with an essay that explores pedagogy and the relevance of teaching Greek law in the twenty-first century.

Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece

Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece
Author: Vincent Farenga
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 499
Release: 2006-05-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139456784

This 2006 study examines how the ancient Greeks decided questions of justice as a key to understanding the intersection of our moral and political lives. Combining contemporary political philosophy with historical, literary and philosophical texts, it examines a series of remarkable individuals who performed 'scripts' of justice in early Iron Age, archaic and classical Greece. From the earlier periods, these include Homer's Achilles and Odysseus as heroic individuals who are also prototypical citizens, and Solon the lawgiver, writing the scripts of statute law and the jury trial. In democratic Athens, the focus turns to dialogues between a citizen's moral autonomy and political obligation in Aeschyleon tragedy, Pericles' citizenship paradigm, Antiphon's sophistic thought and forensic oratory, the political leadership of Alcibiades and Socrates' moral individualism.

From Bedroom to Courtroom

From Bedroom to Courtroom
Author: Saundra Schwartz
Publisher: Barkhuis
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2017-01-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 9492444208

From Bedroom to Courtroom argues that the fictional trial scenes in the Greek ideal romances reflect Roman legal institutions and ideas, particularly relating to family and sexuality. Given the genre's emphasis on love and chastity, the specter of adultery looms over most of the scenarios that develop into elaborate trials. Such scenes shed light on the Greek reception of the criminalization of adultery promulgated by the moral legislation during the reign of Augustus. This book focuses on three major novels whose composition coincided with the extension of Roman citizenship when access to Roman courts was granted to increasing numbers of inhabitants of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Chariton's Callirhoe is interpreted as an artifact of the generation after the implementation of the Augustan moral legislation, particularly its criminalization of adultery. Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon was created in a legally pluralistic milieu where shrewd sophists learned to navigate and exploit the interstices between the overlapping jurisdictions of imperial and local law. Finally, Heliodorus' Aethiopica, widely regarded as the masterpiece of the genre, adapts the type-scene of the trial to present a series of case studies of different types of government, culminating in the utopian kingdom of Meroe. Through the novels' melodramatic trial scenes, we can begin to see how the opening of Roman courtroom to Greek-speaking citizens of the Roman Empire stimulated dreams of a world in which universal justice under Rome was wed to Hellenism.

The Greek Search for Wisdom

The Greek Search for Wisdom
Author: Michael K. Kellogg
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2012-07-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1616145765

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said that all of Western philosophy was "but a series of footnotes to Plato." By the same token, one could argue that all of Western civilization is but an extension of the ancient Greek cultural legacy. The Greeks invented tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, philosophy, and democracy. They also made remarkable advances in science, medicine, and mathematics. In the author’s view, what ties this wide-ranging intellectual ferment together is a restless search for wisdom. The author looks at ten outstanding examples of Greek wisdom, offering fresh and engaging portraits of the epic poets (Homer, Hesiod); dramatists (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes); historians (Herodotus, Thucydides); and philosophers (Plato, Aristotle) against the background of Greek history. In each case he asks what the author has to tell us— regardless of genre—about our place in the world and how we should live our lives. By surveying some of the highest peaks of ancient civilization, the author argues that we gain perspective on the historical terrain that lies below. This book presents an eloquent and convincing case that a study of the Greek classics, as Gustave Flaubert explained, makes us "greater, wiser, purer."

The Law and the Courts in Ancient Greece

The Law and the Courts in Ancient Greece
Author: Edward Harris
Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2004-03-18
Genre: History
ISBN:

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.

Early Greek Lawgivers

Early Greek Lawgivers
Author: John Lewis
Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2007-07-09
Genre: History
ISBN:

Examines the men who brought laws to the early Greek city states, as an introduction both to the development of law and to the basic issues in early legal practice. This book is an introduction to the establishment of law in ancient Greece. It is written for late school and early university students.

The Soul of the Greeks

The Soul of the Greeks
Author: Michael Davis
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2011-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226137961

The understanding of the soul in the West has been profoundly shaped by Christianity, and its influence can be seen in certain assumptions often made about the soul: that, for example, if it does exist, it is separable from the body, free, immortal, and potentially pure. The ancient Greeks, however, conceived of the soul quite differently. In this ambitious new work, Michael Davis analyzes works by Homer, Herodotus, Euripides, Plato, and Aristotle to reveal how the ancient Greeks portrayed and understood what he calls “the fully human soul.” Beginning with Homer’s Iliad, Davis lays out the tension within the soul of Achilles between immortality and life. He then turns to Aristotle’s De Anima and Nicomachean Ethics to explore the consequences of the problem of Achilles across the whole range of the soul’s activity. Moving to Herodotus and Euripides, Davis considers the former’s portrayal of the two extremes of culture—one rooted in stability and tradition, the other in freedom and motion—and explores how they mark the limits of character. Davis then shows how Helen and Iphigeneia among the Taurians serve to provide dramatic examples of Herodotus’s extreme cultures and their consequences for the soul. The book returns to philosophy in the final part, plumbing several Platonic dialogues—the Republic, Cleitophon, Hipparchus, Phaedrus, Euthyphro, and Symposium—to understand the soul’s imperfection in relation to law, justice, tyranny, eros, the gods, and philosophy itself. Davis concludes with Plato’s presentation of the soul of Socrates as self-aware and nontragic, even if it is necessarily alienated and divided against itself. The Soul of the Greeks thus begins with the imperfect soul as it is manifested in Achilles’ heroic, but tragic, longing and concludes with its nontragic and fuller philosophic expression in the soul of Socrates. But, far from being a historical survey, it is instead a brilliant meditation on what lies at the heart of being human.

Philosophy before the Greeks

Philosophy before the Greeks
Author: Marc Van De Mieroop
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2017-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691176353

There is a growing recognition that philosophy isn't unique to the West, that it didn't begin only with the classical Greeks, and that Greek philosophy was influenced by Near Eastern traditions. Yet even today there is a widespread assumption that what came before the Greeks was "before philosophy." In Philosophy before the Greeks, Marc Van De Mieroop, an acclaimed historian of the ancient Near East, presents a groundbreaking argument that, for three millennia before the Greeks, one Near Eastern people had a rich and sophisticated tradition of philosophy fully worthy of the name. In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. Showing the justice of Diodorus's comment, this is the first book to argue that there were Babylonian philosophers and that they studied knowledge systematically using a coherent system of logic rooted in the practices of cuneiform script. Van De Mieroop uncovers Babylonian approaches to knowledge in three areas: the study of language, which in its analysis of the written word formed the basis of all logic; the art of divination, which interpreted communications between gods and humans; and the rules of law, which confirmed that royal justice was founded on truth. The result is an innovative intellectual history of the ancient Near Eastern world during the many centuries in which Babylonian philosophers inspired scholars throughout the region—until the first millennium BC, when the breakdown of this cosmopolitan system enabled others, including the Greeks, to develop alternative methods of philosophical reasoning.