Analysis: Excerpts from the Law Code of Gortyn, Ancient Crete

Date: c. 450 BCE

Geographic Region: Crete (part of present-day Greece)

Author: Unknown

Summary Overview

The oldest surviving European law code, the Law Code of Gortyn was a collection of laws codified in about the mid-fifth century BCE, but likely in place for up to two centuries prior to that time. Gortyn, a sizable city on the island of Crete, traced its roots back centuries before the creation of its law code. Thus, its traditions are seen as reflective of the broader Greek culture that spread throughout the region during the time that it flourished. Large portions of the code were preserved mostly intact, providing a view on Hellenic practices including marriage, divorce, inheritance, social stratification, and women's rights. Therefore, the code is central to the modern understanding of Cretan society and culture. Historians also recognize the Gortyn Code as an important influence on the laws later practiced by Athens and Sparta, the leading Hellenic powers during the classical era that followed.

Defining Moment

By the mid-fifth century BCE, the city-state of Gortyn was the leading economic and social power on the island of Crete, a landmass of more than three thousand square miles lying some one hundred miles from the coast of the Greek mainland. Classical accounts disagree on the time of the city's founding; some traditions dated it from the time of the semilegendary King Minos, ruler of the Minoan civilization that flourished at about 2000 BCE, while others placed its founding, by traders from mainland Greece, some eight centuries later. The city certainly existed by the time of the Greek poet Homer, who mentioned it in the Iliad (c. 750 BCE) and Odyssey (c. 725 BCE). Regardless of its origins, the city first rose to prominence after about 1000 BCE as a center of the Hellenic Dorian civilization, and it eventually became the capital of Mesara, the region encompassing southern Crete. The city benefitted from its position on trade routes, and it was prosperous and well-regarded by contemporary thinkers, such as Aristotle. At its height, Gortyn's population may have numbered as many as 300,000.

The Law Code of Gortyn dates from more than a century before the time of the city's greatest flourishing in the Hellenistic era but is nevertheless the work of an advanced society. Tradition asserts that the laws came down from Zeus through the hand of King Minos, although no historical evidence supports this claim. Certainly, however, the code is a reflection of a long Cretan history of law making; somewhat unusually for the Hellenic world, ancient Cretans exhibited a relative fascination with the law that was sufficient enough to allow for the survival of almost entirely legal inscriptions, rather than economic or cultural ones, as the physical evidence of their civilization. In contrast, mainland Greek city-states tended to avoid the codification of traditions and unwritten law into a formal inscribed code. Some historians have pointed to the Athenian practice of pure democracy as a cause for this divide, as the electoral nature of the system rewarded those who appealed to voters rather than those who made an intense study of law and government. The Gortyn Code is by far the most complete collection of Hellenic laws to come down to modern times, and it is an important tool for historians to contextualize the society, culture, and family relations of these long-ago people.

Document Information

Historians believe that the Law Code of Gortyn was written in about 450 BCE, but no record of its authorship or creation survives. Archeologists first began to discover fragments of the code in the 1850s, but the bulk of the extant text of the code comes from a large inscription discovered by archeologists Federigo Halbherr, Ernst Fabricius, and Domenico Comparetti, who conducted excavations on the island of Crete during the mid-1880s. Researchers discovered a dozen massive columns and a substantial portion of a wall, which archeologists believe may have originally been part of a civic hall or court and were later reused as part of a Roman-era structure. The inscriptions were well-preserved, and historians have been able to reconstruct the laws they contained with a minimum of fragmentary interruptions; however, the excavated portion of the code is believed to represent only a portion of the complete legal code in place on Crete at the time.

Document Analysis

The excerpts collected here reflect the Gortyn Code's overall focus on clarifying family relations and social status stemming from those relations. Surviving portions of the code deal almost exclusively with this topic, including laws relating to marriage, divorce, rape, adultery, inheritance, and other property matters. As such, historians have looked to the code primarily to understand Cretan familial and social practices, particularly those connected to social movement, social class rights, and the status of women.

As was common in Greek antiquity, the code treats social elites more gently than it does serfs and the lower classes. In the case of rape, for example, punishments for crimes committed against free citizens were substantially higher than those enacted for crimes against slaves, which were considerably less. For example, the fine for the rape of a free citizen was one hundred staters (unit of currency). However, for the same crime against a serf, it was five staters if committed by another serf and a mere five drachmas if committed by a free man. Against a fully enslaved person, the fine was even less, yet the crime committed by an enslaved person against a free man or woman carried a doubled fine. Similarly, a free man who committed adultery with a free woman was subject to a much greater fine than a free man who committed adultery with a lower-class woman; an enslaved man who committed adultery with a free woman faced a doubled fine. Because homosexual relations were broadly accepted in ancient Greek societies, rape laws treat the crime against men and women in the same way.

However, many laws in the code addressed the rights of women specifically. If a man decided to divorce his wife, she had the right to whatever property she had held upon entry into the marriage, as well as a portion of “whatever she has woven” for the marriage; Greek aristocratic women dedicated much of their time to the weaving of fabric and other cloth goods. Widowed women had a right to inherit, although not the right to claim the inheritance due to any children issued from the union. Daughters had inheritance rights, and women could receive property as a gift from their fathers, husbands, or sons up to a given amount. Children took their free or unfree status from the status and dwelling place of their father. Thus, a free woman married to a free man birthed free children, but a free woman married willingly to a serf and living in his house birthed serf children. A free woman married to a serf who lived in her home birthed free children, however.

The code does, ultimately, affirm the supremacy of men in Greek society—particularly that of free men. Some of the rights granted women, such as the right to raise or expose (abandon to death) a child, came only after the man had made his own decision on the matter. Men had the right to decide, without penalty, whether to marry the widowed heiress of his deceased brother, but women could not reject such a marriage without a substantial loss of wealth. Men also had the right to legally adopt children, which was denied to women.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Pomeroy, Sarah. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. 1975. New York: Pantheon, 1995. Print.

Ring, Trudy, Noelle Watson, & Paul Schellinger, eds. Southern Europe: International Dictionary of Historic Places. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print.

Willets, R. F. The Civilization of Ancient Crete. Berkeley: U of California P, 1977. Print.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Law Code of Gortyn. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967. Print.