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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Much has often been made of Maine's striking opening sentence to his Ancient Law, in which he states that the most celebrated system of jurisprudence in the world, the Roman law system, ‘begins, as it ends, with a code.’ It is a remark which serves well those who argue that law has evolved as a predominantly written culture. Yet, as Maine points out, the publication of the Twelve Tables (these traditionally being regarded as the foundation of Roman law) ‘is not the earliest point at which we can take up the history of law.’
1 H.S. Maine, Ancient Low: Its Connection With the Early History of Society and its Relation to Modern Ideas, 15th edn (London, John Murray, 1894; origpubl 1861) 1. Maine himself was not the most accomplished of Roman lawyers: cf. C.J. Cocks, Sir Henry Maine: A Study in Victorian Jurisprudence (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988), 23–24 and esp fn 16.
2 In a modern context, see P. Goodrich, Reading the Law: A Critical Introduction to Legal Method and Techniques(Oxford, Blackwell, (1986) 28. On Goodrich's use of Maine, see the review by B. S. Jackson (1988) 8 Legal Studies 125–131 at p 128 fn 8.
3 Maine, supra note 1, p 2. Consider also Calhoun's wholly exaggerated (not to mention misconceived) opinion that ‘the Romans were content to borrow from the Greeks and unable to extend or improve materially what they received; they were virtually destitute of native originality and incapable of giving to the world a new idea. Yet, we are asked to believe, they were miraculously endowed - possibly by way of compensation for this general poverty of genius - with a subtle power of analysing and criticising legal concepts; minds which followed dully and slavishly in other disciplines leapt to the fore when the realm of law was reached, and Jurisprudence sprang suddenly full-grown and panoplied from the brains of the jurisconsults, as Athena from the head of Zeus.’ G.M. Calhoun, ‘Greek Law and Modern Jurisprudence’ (1923) 11 California Law Review 294–312 at pp 296–97. For a far more balanced comparative estimation, see P. Vinogradoff, Outlines of Historical Jurisprudence. Volume Two: The Jurisprudence of the Greek City (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1922) 2–3; Vinogradoffs book is reviewed approvingly by Calhoun in ‘The Jurisprudence of the Greek City’ (1924) 24 Columbia Law Review 154–171.
4 On Gernet's intellectual background, see S.C. Humphreys, Anthropolog V and the Greeks(London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, (1978) 76–96; and for an appraisal of the Année sociologiqu movement in general, see S. Lukes, Émile Durkheim His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study(Harmondsworth, Penguin, (1973) 289–295.
5 L. Gernet, Recherches sur le dévelopment de la penséc juridique et morale en Gréce (étude sémantique)(Paris, Leroux, (1917).
6 cf Gernet, supra note 5, pp iv-xiii. Gernet's indebtedness in this work to Durkheimian thought is obvious from the clear similarity of its thesis to that presented by Durkheim in the Elementary Forms See E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, second English edition (tr J.W. Swain. London, Allen & Unwin, 1976) 9: ‘For a long time it has been known that the first systems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were of religious origin. … At the roots of all our judgments there are a certain number of essential ideas which dominate all our intellectual life. … They are like the solid frame which encloses all thought; this does not seem to be able to liberate itself from them without destroying itself, for it seems that we cannot think of objects that are not in time and space, which have no number etc. … Now when primitive beliefs are systematically analysed, the principal categories are naturally found. They are born in religion and of religion; they are a product of religious thought.
7 ‘Droit et prédroit en Grèce ancimne’, in L. Gernet, Anthropologie de la Grèce antique (Paris, Maspero, 1968) 175–260; English translation: The Anthropology of Ancient Greece (tr J. Hamilton and B. Nagy. Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins UP, (1981) 143–215.
8 Gernet, supra note 7, p 245 (Eng tr pp 191–92); see also Humphreys, supra note 4, p 90, 287, n 67.
9 L. Gernet, Droit et socété dam la Grèce ancienne (Paris, Sirey, (1955) 12.
10 M. Mauss, ‘Intervention’ (1935) 1, series C Annales sociologiques 72–75 at p 73.
11 G.M. Calhoun, Introduction to Greek Legal science, F. de Zulueta ed (Oxford, Clarendon, (1944) 7–8.
12 See, generally, G. Smith, ‘Early Greek Codes’ (1922) 17 Classical Philology 187–201. It should be noted from the outset that in the present work the idea of legal formalism is employed in a distinctly circumspect fashion. The advent of written law in ancient Greece must have been accompanied by - indeed, must have been largely the result of- a specific awareness of social change. This change must itself have challenged any prevailing sense of cultural continuity and cohesion; and this probably explains why, within a few years, much of what had been created as ‘formal’ law was tacitly ignored.
13 cf. G. Glotz, ‘Solon’ (1934) 14 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences 254–255 It has been suggested that Solon generally tended, to integrate elements from other systems of law. See Gernet, ‘Droit et ville dans l'antiquité grecque’, in supra note 7, pp 371–381 at p 378 (Eng tr pp 312–321 at p 316).
14 cf K.M.T. Atkinson, ‘Athenian Legislative Procedure and Revision of laws’ (1939) 23 Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 107–150 MacDowell makes an interesting, if wholly speculative comparison between the legislative efforts of Solon and those Lykourgos during the fifth and fourth centuries BC. See D.M. MacDowell, Spartan Law(Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press, (1986) 1–5.
15 Smith, supra note 12, p 192.
16 Gernet, supra note 7, p 185(Eng tr pp 150–51 modified); cf also Durkheim, supra note 6, p 83: ‘All myths, even those which we find the most unreasonable, have been believed.
17 Gernet, supra note 7, p 186 (Eng tr p 152). Note also Vernant's important observation that the fundamental role, function and meaning of myth are not immediately apparent to those who make use of it; these things do not, essentially, lie at the surface level of the stories. A myth like those of ancient Greece is not a dogma with a form strictly fixed once and for all because ‘it represents the basis for an obligatory belief. [Rather], myth is the canvas upon which both oral narrative and written literature depict their message …’ J.-P. Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece (tr J. Lloyd. Sussex, Harvester, 1980) 205.
18 L. Bréhier, ‘La Royauté Homérique: Les origines de l'étal en Grèce’ (1904) 84 Revue Historique 1–32; (1904) 85 Revue Historique 1–23, part I, p 2.
19 Bréhier, supra note 18, I, pp 4–5. Though of course this is to conceive of ‘barbarism’ in a distinctly modern sense, anthropologically distanced from Homeric Greek life See generally M. Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (Volume I: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785–1985) (London, Free Association Books, (1987).
20 G. Sautel, ‘Les preuves dans le droit Grec archaïgue’ (1964) 16 Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin 117–160 at p 119.
21 ‘A vrai dire, dans un état comme l ‘état “homérique,” le droit n'est pas nécessairement à part: en un sens, le droit pcut être partout .’ Gernet, supra note 9, p 18.
22 Gernet, ‘Les temps dans les formes archaïques du droit’, in supra note 7, pp 261–287 at p 265 (Eng tr pp 216–239 at p 219 modified).
23 Gernet, supra note 7, p 251 (Eng tr p 196). Sautel (supra note 20, p 118) suggests, rather confusingly, that prelaw constitutes ‘un ordre juridique préétabli’.
24 P. Huvelin, ‘Magie et droit indviduel’ (1905–06) 10 L'année sociologique 1–147 at p 38; cf Gernet, supra note 7, p258 (Eng trp201): ‘Nothing is more revealing, in fact, than what we might call the weaknesses or gropings of nascent law. Law had to construct its notions; it had to organise a new system, one with its own categories and one in which causality and time take on new meanings. Moreover, the solutions differ from one law to another: the notion of subjective law, the administration of proof, and the formation of the contractual bond are not the same in Greece and in Rome’.
25 Huvelin, supra note 24, p 25.
26 Huvelin, supra note 24, p 34.
27 Huvelin, supra note 24, p 25. Huvelin continues (loc cit): ‘But its influence has been preponderant, exclusive even, upon another branch of legal technique: the art of creating and extinguishing obligatory conventions. The conclusion of contracts and extinguishing of their effects was originally ensured only through magical forces.
28 L. Gernet, ‘Observations sur la loi de Gortyne’ (1916) 29 Revue des études grecques 383–403 at p 402; see also V. Ehrenberg, The Greek Stale 2nd edn(London, Methuen, (1969) 10–11.
29 cf Huvelin, supra note 24, pp 56: ‘The elementary social form is the family. The first social law is interfamilial law. Under this designation I include all those legal relationships which might exist, not only between immediate family members, but also between large family groupings (hordes, clans, tribes) which one encounters in early civilizations. The internal law of each horde, family or clan boils down to a certain number of positive ritual obligations and taboos; the family carries, therefore, a religious imprint.
30 Huvelin, supra note 24, p 39.
31 Huvelin, supra note 24, pp 24, 31–32; see also G. Glotz, La solidarité de la famille duns le droit criminel en Grèce(Paris, Fontemoing, (1904) 83–84.
32 On the family in the Homeric poems, see Bréhier, supra note 18, I, p 24et seq. More generally, cf. H. Arendt, The Human Condition(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, (1958) 28–37 It should also be noted that the family arrangements of kings, particularly as portrayed in myth, cannot be taken necessarily to represent general social structures. The fact that kings often had several wives and many more concubines does not mean that this was typical of the population as a whole.
33 cf Glotz, supra note 31, p 32.
34 On this point, and its relationship to subsequent developments in classical Athens, see H.J. Wolff, ‘The Origin of Judicial Litigation Among the Greeks’ (1946) 4 Traditio 31–87 at p 61; Sautel, supra note 20, p 127; Bréhier, supra note 18, I, p 32, II, p 19,22; Gernet, supra note 9, p 25.
35 Glotz, supra note 31, p 17.0.
36 Bréhier, Supra note 18, I, p 36.
37 G. Glotz, Études sociales et juridiques sur l'antiquité grecque(Paris, Hachette, (1906) 234.
38 Though there appear to be certain crude similarities between the ancient Greek familial model and the mafiosi as it evolved in Sicily in the late nineteenth century, on which see A. Blok, The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, 1860–1960 (Oxford, Blackwell, (1974).
39 Sautel, supra note 20, p 139.
40 On the importance of the concept of individual responsibility to the evolution of the court system during the later, classical period in Athens, see A.P. Dorjahn and J.F. Cronin, ‘Outside Influence on Athenian Courts’ (1938) 17 Philological Quarterly 18–25; and, more generally, S. Humphreys, ‘Social relations on stage: Witnesses in Classical Athens’ (1985) 1 History and Anthropology 313–369.
41 Bréhier, Supra note 18, I, p 24.
42 cf Humphreys, supra note 4, p 201; and see the excellent discussion by Gernet, supra note 5, pp 279–301.
43 cf Gernet, supra note 7, p 188(Eng trp 153); and cf M. Mauss, ‘Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques’ 1923–24) ns l L'annéc sociologique 30–186 at p 90: ‘The potlatch … is really nothing other than gift-exchange.’ English translation: The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (tr I Cunnison. London, Cohen & West, (1954) 33.
44 Mauss, supra note 43, p 99 (Eng tr p 36 modified).
45 Mauss, supra note 43, p 100et seg (Eng tr p 37 et seq); see also C.A. Gregory, Gifts and Commodities(London, Academic Press, (1982) 112–209.
46 cf Gernet on the early Greek notion of eranos, supra note 7, p 191 (Eng tr p 155).
47 cf A.R.W. Harrison, The Law of Athens. Vol. I: The Family and Property(Oxford, Clarendon, (1968) 244–248 esp at p 245.
48 Gernet, supra note 7, p 187 (Eng tr p 152 modified).
49 See M. Mauss, ‘Une forme ancienne de contrat chez les Thraces’ (1921) 34 Revue des études grecques 388–397 at p 395.
50 See generally Gernet, ‘La notion mythique de la valeur en Grèce’, supra note 7, pp 93–137 (Eng tr pp 73–111).
51 Eth Nic viii. 13; 1162b 25–27.
52 Ibid 1162b 31–37. Finley remarks that ‘[t]he judgment of antiquity about wealth was fundamentally unequivocal and uncomplicated. Wealth was necessary and it was good; it was an absolute requisite for the good life; and on the whole that was all there was to it.’ M.I. Finley, The Ancient Economy, 2nd edn(London, Hogarth Press, (1985) 35–36.
53 Gernet, supra note 7, p 277 (Eng tr p 228).
54 Gernet, supra note 7, p 277 (Eng tr p 228 modified).
55 For details, see Gernet, supra note 9, p 64fn 5.
56 Sautel, supra note 20, p 128.
57 E. Benveniste, ‘L'expression du serment dans la Crèce ancienne’ (1948) 134 Revue de l'Histoire des Religions 81–94 at p 82.
58 For a discussion of this theme as it appears in early Greek literature, see Glotz, supra note 31, pp 251–52.
59 cf for example, Sophocles, Electra, 111–121 (‘Here at my father's door …’).
60 The Laws of the Twelve Tables, 11, 3: Where anyone is deprived of the evidence of a witness let him call him with a loud voice in front of his house, on three market days.
61 For an excellent, general discussion of this theme, see Glotz, supra note 31, pp 47–93.
62 Calhoun, supra note 11, p 13.
63 P. Gewirtz, ‘Aeschylus' Law’ (1988) 101 Harvard Law Review 1043–1055 at p 10%.
64 cf Gernet, supra note 7, p 230 (Eng tr p 181).
65 cf Glotz, supra note 31, pp 83–84; Wolff, supra note 34, p 37 See also Sautel, supra note 20, p 120 (Refers to blood-vengeance as ‘un devoir moral’).
66 R.J. Bonner, ‘Administration of Justice in the Age of Homer’ (1911) 6 Classical Philology 12–36 at p 16; see also his ‘Administration of Justice in the Age of Hesoid’ (1912) 7 Classical Philology 17–23 at p 21.
67 cf Bréhier, Supra note 18, 11, pp 13–14, 21.
68 cf Gernet, supra note 7, p 231 (Eng tr p 182).
69 cf Huvelin, supra note 24, p 24, 39.
70 AS. Diamond, Primitive Law, 2nd edn(London, Watts & Co, (1950) 150, also 154, 156, 157.
71 Gernet, ‘Sur l exécution capitale: A propos d'un ouvrage récent’, supra note 7, pp 302–329 at p 326 (Eng tr pp 252–276 at pp 265–66 modified).
72 cf Bonner, ‘Administration of Justice in the Age of Homer’, supra note 66, pp 18–19. Note also Smith's comment that ‘[t]he motives which induced relatives to accept blood money cannot be determined. There is no hint that society urged them to do so in order to avoid a blood feud. Nor is there any indication that they took account of the circumstances under which the homicide was committed for there was as yet no distinction between different kinds of homicide.’ G. Smith, The Administration of Justice From Hesoid to Solon, PhD thesis, University of chicago, 1924, p 5.
73 cf Gernet, supra note 9, p 11.
74 For a comparable use of seizure in ancient Irish law, see Gernet, supra note 7, p 230 (Eng trp 182).
75 cf Wolff, supra note 34, p 45, 81.
76 See L. Cabral deMoncada, ‘O duelo na vida do direito’ (1925) 2 Anuario de Historia dc Derecho Español 213–223; (1926) 3 Anuario de Historia de Derecho Español 69–88.
77 See W. Nippel, “‘Reading the Riot Act”: The discourse of law-enforcement in 18th century England’ (1985) 1 History and Anthropology 401–426 at pp 413–14, 418–19.
78 Wolff, supra note 34, p 47.
79 loc cit..
80 E. Weiss, ‘Vergleichende zivilprozesswissenschaft’ (1921) 11 Rheinische zeitschriyt für zivilund prozessrecht 1–49 at p 27.
81 Wolff, supra note 34, p 33.
82 Wolff, supra note 34, p 59.
83 L. Gernet, ‘Sur la notion du jugement en droit grec’ (1937) 1 Archives d'histoire du droit Oriental 111–144 at p 113.
84 Sautel, supra note 20, p 141; see also Gernet, supra note 83, p 125: ‘la notion du jugement continue d'obéir à un esprit ancien’.
85 cf Gernet, supra note 22, pp 265–66 (Eng tr pp 219–20). Originally, the purpose of diké was to bring about a decision as to the rectitude or otherwise of the actions of self-help undertaken or intended by a claimant. For discussions in English, see E.A. Havelock, ‘Dikaiosune: An Essay in Greek Intellectual History’ (1969) 23 Phoenix 49–70; V.A. Rodgers, ‘Some thoughts on Dik&ebar;’ (1971) ns 21 Classical Quarterly 289–301; M. Gagarin, ‘Dik&ebar; in the Works and Days’ (1973) 68 Classical Philology 81–94; ‘Dik∓ebar; in Archaic Greek Thought’ (1974) 69 Classical Philology 186–197; M.W. Dickie, ‘Dik&ebar; as a Moral Term in Homer and Hesiod’ (1978) 73 Classical Philology 91–101.
86 Gernet, supra note 7, p 248 (Eng tr p 194 modified).
87 R. Pound, ‘Introduction’, in G.M. Calhoun and C. Delamere, A Working Bibliography of Greek Law(Amsterdam, Grüner, (1968) xiii; see also R. Dareste, La science du droit en Grèce: Platon, Aristote, Théophraste (Paris, Larose & Forcel, 1893) 315.
88 A. Hägerström, Inquiries Into the Nature of law and Morals, K. Olivecrona ed (tr C.D. Broad. Stockholm, Almqvist and Wiksell, (1953) 15.
89 loc cit..
90 P. Dauchy, ‘Essai d'application de la méthode structurale à l'étude du contrat’, PhD thesis, Université de Droit, d'Économie, et de Sciences Sociales de Paris II, 1979, p 257. For a discussion of Dauchy's thesis in relation to certain other trends in modern French legal philosophy, see my ‘Juridicity as a Theme in French Legal Philosophy’ (1989) II/4 International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 85–95.
91 Or, as Dauchy (loc cit) puts it, ‘la guerre de tous contre tous’.
92 Jackson has made this point extremely well with regard to Roman law: see B.S. Jackson, ‘From Dharma to Law’ (1975) 23 American Journal of comparative Law 490–512 at p 506.
93 Huvelin, supra note 24, pp 8–9.