The Administration Of Justice From Hesiod To Solon

Excerpt from The Administration of Justice From Hesiod to Solon In the following pages an attempt has been made to reconstruct the machinery for the administration of justice in Greece for the period between Hesiod and Solon. Many of the earlier investigators in this field, failing to recognize the continuity of institutions, did not pay sufficient attention to antecedents in earlier practice and survivals in later practice. Nor did they have the benefit of Aristotle's Constitution of Athens which has been of great aid in clearing up some much disputed problems. Hence their discussions of such matters as the Areopagus, the Ephetae and the Thesmothetae are inadequate. On the basis of Aristotle's Constitution and various modern investigations it has seemed possible to bridge this gap. For the age of Homer and Hesiod I have accepted the conclusions of Professor Bonner in his two studies "Administration of Justice in the Age of Homer," (Classical Philology vi. pp. 12 ff.) and "Administration of Justice in the Age of Hesiod" (ibid. vii. pp. 17 ff.). The lawgivers and the early codes I have myself discussed in an earlier paper, "Early Greek Codes" (ibid. xvii. pp. 187 ff.). These codes, however, with the exception of the great code of Gortyn, furnish little information about procedure. Hence the discussion is largely confined to the Athenian system. The subject was suggested in a research course in Greek History under Professor Robert J. Bonner at the University of Chicago and the dissertation has been written under his direction. I have constantly availed myself of his advice and criticism and I wish here to express my gratitude for the many helpful suggestions which his thorough knowledge of Greek and Anglo-American law enabled him to give. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Friedrich Solmsen provides a new approach to Hesiod's personality in this book by distinguishing Hesiod's own contributions to Greek mythology and theology from the traditional aspects of his poetry. Hesiod's vision of a better world, expressed in religious language and imagery, pictures the savagery and brutality of the earlier days of Greece giving way to an order of justice. In this new order, however, the good aspects of the past would be preserved, giving an inner continuity and strength to the changing world. Solmsen traces the influence of Hesiod’s ideas on other Athenian poets, Aeschylus in particular. From personal political experience Aeschylus could give a deeper meaning to Hesiod's dream of an organic historical evolution and of a synthesis of old and new powers. For Aeschylus, justice became the crucial problem of the political community as well as of the divine order. Through close readings of Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days and of Aeschylus' Prometheia and Eumenides, Solmsen reinterprets the political ideas of the Greek city state and the relation between divine and human justice as seen by early Greek poets. First published in 1949, this book has long been recognized as the standard work on Hesiod's influence. For the 1995 paperback edition, G. M. Kirkwood has written a new foreword that addresses the book's reception and discusses more recent scholarship on the works Solmsen examines, including the disputed authorship of Prometheia.

Anger was the engine of justice in the ancient Greek world. It drove quests for vengeance which resulted in a variety of consequences, often harmful not only for the relevant actors but also for the wider communities in which they lived. From as early as the seventh century BCE, Greek communities had developed more or less formal means of imposing restrictions on this behaviour in the form of courts. However, this did not necessarily mean a less angry or vengeful society so much as one where anger and revenge were subject to public sanction and sometimes put to public use. By the fifth and fourth centuries, the Athenian polis had developed a considerably more sophisticated system for the administration of justice, encompassing a variety of laws, courts, and procedures. In essence, the justice it meted out was built on the same emotional foundations as that seen in Homer. Jurors gave licence to or restrained the anger of plaintiffs in private cases, and they punished according to the anger they themselves felt in public ones. The growing state in ancient Greek poleis did not bring about a transition away from angry private revenge to emotionless public punishment. Rather, anger came increasingly to move into the public sphere, the emotional driver of an early state that defended its community, and even itself, through its vengeful acts of punishment.