law and procedure, Athenian
law and procedure, Athenian1. Legislation
Greeks used the same word (nomos) for both custom and law, and the beginning of law is hard to define. One reasonable view is that an unwritten rule should be regarded as a law if the community or the ruler approves it and imposes or authorizes punishment for infringement of it. In this sense laws forbidding some offences (e.g. murder, theft, bigamy) must have existed since primitive times. An alternative view is that only rules stated in writing are really laws. The transition from oral to written law began in the 7th cent. bc, but was not completed until the end of the 5th cent. in Athens (and later in other cities). See literacy; orality.The first written laws in any Greek city are said to have been drawn up by Zaleucus for the city of Locri Epizephyrii in south Italy. The first written laws in Athens are attributed to Draco in the year when...
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