Gortyn code

The Gortyn code of law (also called the Great Code ["I. Cret." IV.72] ) was the codification of the civil law of the ancient Greek city state of Gortyn, southern Crete. Our sole source of knowledge of the code is the fragmentary boustrophedon inscription [The terms "Gortyn code" and "Great Code" may be used interchangeably for the text and the inscription.] on the circular walls of what might have been a bouleuterion or other public civic building in the agora of Gortyn. The original building was 100 feet in diameter, the 12 columns of text which survive are 30 feet in length and 5 feet in height and contain some 600 lines of text. In addition, some further broken texts survive; the so-called second text. ["I. Cret." IV 41-50] It is the largest continuous piece of Greek extant epigraphy, and evidence suggests it is the work of a single sculptor. The inscription has been dated to the first half of the 5th century BCE. The code deals with such matters as disputed ownership of slaves, rape and adultery, the rights of a wife when divorced or a widow, the custody of children born after divorce, inheritance, sale and mortgaging of property, ransom, children of mixed (slave, free and foreign) marriages, and adoption. [For a full discussion of the text see John Davies: "The Gortyn Laws" in "The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law", pp. 305-327.]

The first fragment of the code was discovered in the 1850s. Italian archaeologist Federico Halbherr found a further four columns of the text while excavating a site near a local mill in 1884. Since this was evidently part of a larger text he, Ernest Fabricius and a team obtained permission to excavate the rest of the site, revealing 8 more text columns whose stones had been reused as part of the foundations of a Roman Odeion from the 1st century BCE. The wall bearing the Code has now been partially reconstructed.

The Great Code is written in the Dorian dialect and is one of a number of legal inscriptions found scattered across Crete, though curiously very few non-legal texts from ancient Crete survive. [See J. Whitley "The Archaeology of Ancient Greece" p. 248 for a statisical analysis.] The Code stands with a tradition of Cretan law which taken as a totality represents the only substantial corpus of law from antiquity found outside Athens. The whole corpus of Cretan law may be divided into three broad categories: the earliest ("I. Cret." IV 1-40., ca. 600 BCE to ca. 525 BCE) was inscribed on the steps and walls of the temple of Apollo Pythios, the next a sequence including the Great Code written on the walls in or near the agora between ca. 525 and 400 BCE ("I. Cret." IV 41-140), followed by the laws ("I. Cret." IV 141-159) which contain Ionian characters and so are dated to the 4th century.

Though all the texts are fragmentary they show evidence of a continuous amendment of the law, [See J. Davies:"Deconstructing Gortyn: When is a CODE a Code?", in "Greek Law in its Political Setting" L Foxhall, ADE Lewis (eds).] it has been possible to trace the development of the law from Archaic proscriptions onwards, notably the diminishing rights of women and the increasing rights of slaves, and also allows us to infer some aspects of public law. The high importance of the Great Code in illuminating pre-Hellenistic law and society has led some classicists in poeticising moments to refer to it as the “Queen of inscriptions”.

Notes

References

*"Inscriptiones Creticae", M. Guarducci, 1935-1950.
*R. F. Willetts, "The Law Code of Gortyn", 1967.
*Michael Gagarin, David J. Cohen (eds), "Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law", 2005.
*J. Whitley, "Cretan Laws and Cretan Literacy", Am. J. Archaeol. 101(4). 1997.

External links

* [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/450-gortyn.html The Law Code of Gortyn (Crete), c. 450 BCE] from [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/asbook.html Ancient History Sourcebook]
* [http://epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/oi?ikey=200508 PHI 200508] The Packard Humanities Institute (full Greek text after Willetts 1967).