Rosalind Thomas

Writing, Law, and Written Law

Athenians of the classical period so venerated their ancient law-giver, Solon, that the laws of Solon still formed the basis of Athenian law in the radical democracy. Even after they revised the law code in the late fifth century, Athenians still referred to Athenian laws as “the laws of Solon,” confusingly mingling new and old laws under this one description. Yet we are told, even these laws were flawed. Some critics are mentioned by the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens ( Ath. Pol . 9.2): Solons laws, they claimed, suffered from lack of clarity, which created disputes, and “some think this was deliberately to put the demos in charge ( kyrios ) of the trials.” This example brings out several of the themes of this chapter: the role of early Greek laws and law-givers like Solon, the perceived and actual importance of writing down the law, the problems that arose even when the laws were recorded in writing, and the intimate connection between written laws and the bodies which put them into action.

Thucydides’ Intellectual Milieu and the Plague

Thucydides hoped his History would be useful for those wishing “to have a clear picture of what had happened in the past and of similar events that may be expected—given human nature (katå tÚ ényr≈pinon)—to happen in the future” (1.22.4). Such a statement about human nature as a universal constant places Thucydides immediately in connection with the sophistic movement and the development of medicine in the latter half of the fifth century. Both stressed the human and the generic, the constants, and the larger general rules behind the observable world. In placing “human nature” at the center of history so emphatically, he also implicitly rejected any idea that the divine might play a part in either individual actions, or the larger patterns of history. The History is also much indebted to the techniques of epic, and possibly tragedy;1 and recently Thucydides’ relationship with Pindar and the world of epinician poetry has been explored.2 He knew the Histories of Herodotus, and much could be said about how far he was influenced by them, either in emulation or in reaction.3 Herodotus had set the pattern for a narrative history with speeches as vehicles of analysis of individual character, motivation, moral lessons, and contrasts of national character. But this too brings us back to the developing techniques of argument and persuasion of the latter part of the fifth century. Herodotus’ awareness of the new and evolving techniques of argument and proof, of the effective use of evidence and deductions from that evidence, show some relation to developments that are more usually labeled