Early Greece. Oswyn Murray

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СКАЧАТЬ Troy; the other elders must oppose this in assembly. Nestor speaks in favour, and the councillors proceed to the assembly, which is controlled by nine heralds. After the people are seated, Agamemnon takes his skēptron or staff of office and addresses them standing. His proposal is so popular that it starts a rush for the ships, and the meeting looks like breaking up in chaos. But Odysseus takes the skēptron as a badge of authority and intercepts the flight, using persuasion on the nobles and ordering the troops. When the assembly has returned and settled down, there is one recalcitrant man of the people, Thersites, lovingly described as the archetypal agitator, ‘the ugliest man who came to Troy, bandy legged and lame in one foot, his two shoulders rounded over a hollow chest; his head above was misshapen and sprouted a scanty stubble’. He proceeds to abuse Agamemnon, until Odysseus threatens him, and hits him with the skēptron; whereupon the people mutter their approval of the best thing that Odysseus has ever done. Athene disguised as a herald secures silence, and Odysseus and Nestor in turn persuade the army to stay and fight; Agamemnon ostensibly gives way, and dismisses the Achaeans to prepare for battle.

      From this and other accounts the essentials of procedure are clear. Business was normally first discussed in the council of elders and then presented to the Gathering of the people: on both occasions there was debate, and disagreement was possible. But only elders were expected to speak: the assembly’s role was as much to hear the decision of the council as to ratify it. On the other hand the assembly had to be held for major decisions; and the importance and power of public opinion was recognized. It is the dēmos who gives geras to the nobles (Odyssey 7.150); in Odysseus’ Cretan story it was the dēmos who forced him to sail to Troy (Odyssey 14.239); and even though Telemachus hoped in vain to appeal to the people of Ithaca against his fellow aristocrats the suitors, he did at least force them to justify their position in open assembly (Odyssey 2). There was a regular place of assembly even in the Achaean camp before Troy, ‘where the meeting and law (themis) was, and the altars of the gods were set up’ (Iliad 11.807f); the rituals and procedures essential for the orderly conduct of mass meetings were well established, and show remarkable similarities with the highly complex rituals surrounding the only later assemblies whose workings are known in detail, those of democratic Athens. Continuity and development are both present in the growth of the machinery of government from the primitive warrior assemblies of Homer to the classical city-state.

      Outside the political and military spheres, the most important function of the basilēes was the regulation of disputes between individuals, in ways which are especially important, because they were the basis of the subsequent development of Greek law and legal procedure. Beyond a group of primitive tabus and customs, there was no conception of crime or system of justice in the modern sense, with laws written or unwritten of divine or human origin, and punishments inflicted by the community. The essential characteristic of Greek law is that it was originally a human system of public arbitration to settle the compensation due for injury.

      In Homer the vocabulary is concrete, and refers to individual cases and specific rules: the actual decisions (dikai) are ‘straight’ or ‘crooked’ according to the extent to which they conform to the customs (themistes), the unwritten rules and precedents which justify decisions. The singular dikē is used in its later abstract sense of justice only twice in Homer, the singular themis only in the rather doubtful case quoted above (Iliad 11.807). The relation of these specifìc decisions and customs to the general order of the universe is expressed by the claim that the official staff (skēptron) and the themistes are a gift from Zeus: ‘the men who give dikai carry the skēptron in their hands, those who guard the themistes for Zeus’ (Iliad 1.238f); Zeus has given the basileus the skēptron and the themistes that he may take counsel for the people (Iliad 2.205f; 9.98f.), and ‘he is angry with men who in assembly judge with crooked themistes and drive out justice, not caring for the eye of the gods’ (Iliad 16.386ff: this is the only case in the Iliad of dikē in an abstract sense; the other example is Odyssey 14.84).

      Two forms of procedure are known. The first is a primitive oath-taking test: Menelaus formally takes the skēptron in a dispute and demands that Antilochus swear a public oath by Poseidon that he did not cheat him in the chariot race; Antilochus refuses the challenge and offers compensation (Iliad 23.565ff). More complex is the procedure described as a scene on the shield of Achilles:

      But the people were gathered in assembly. There a dispute had arisen and two men were quarrelling over the price of a dead man. One claimed to pay the full amount, addressing the people, the other refused to accept anything. Both were eager to accept a solution from an expert; the people were cheering both, supporting each side, and the heralds were restraining the people. But the elders sat on polished stones in a sacred circle, and held the sceptres in their hands. Then they rose before them, and in turn gave judgement. And in the middle lay two talents of gold to give to him who among them spoke judgement most straightly.

      (Iliad 18.497ff)

      This describes a formal arbitration. The proceedings are public, with all the ceremonies appropriate to a full assembly. The elders act as individual mediators not as judges; no decision can be enforced: rather the solution must be acceptable to both sides, and the elder whose opinion is accepted receives the mediation fee offered by one or both parties in the arbitration. The only sanction available to produce a solution is the pressure of public opinion, which at present is equally divided.

      There are also a number of unusual features. Murder or homicide must always impose a strain on systems of arbitration, since the alternative to settlement is the commencement of a blood feud detrimental to the community. Public opinion will therefore be in favour of a settlement, but the blood price demanded may be too high for the murderer to pay, or the relatives may refuse compensation altogether; in either case the murderer must go into exile. The main reason given in Homer for being an exile is that one has killed a man, an action that carries no moral blame, and can indeed serve as an introduction to the best circles. Ajax, in trying to persuade Achilles to accept the compensation offered by Agamemnon, argues, ‘a man has accepted recompense from the murderer of his brother or his son; and the murderer may remain at home among the people, having paid a great price; while the heart and noble anger of the other is appeased by the recompense he has received’ (Iliad 9.632ff); the implication is that a man may also refuse compensation or stand out for more than the other possesses. The case on the shield of Achilles has a further twist: the amount of blood price is not in dispute, but the aggrieved relative wishes to refuse it and so force the murderer into exile; the case has actually been brought by the murderer in order to put public pressure on the other to accept a blood price. The issue is therefore a complex one, for it is almost exactly on the borderline in the development of a system of arbitration towards a code of law involving public sanctions.

      The basileus has a duty to mediate in disputes, but they are also a source of profìt: the mediator whose verdict is accepted receives the mediation fee; so Agamemnon tempts Achilles by offering him seven citadels inhabited by wealthy men ‘who will honour him like a god with gifts and perform fat themistes under his skēptron’ (Iliad 9.156ff); in other words he is likely to gain considerable profìt from mediation fees.

      It was this system which galled Hesiod: as he warned his brother, the only people likely to derive profìt from their dispute were the ‘gift-eating basilēes’. Hesiod was clearly not referring to bribery: these gifts are the right of a mediator, and it is not suggested that they will make any direct difference to the verdict; on the other hand there was considerable doubt in Hesiod’s mind whether the verdict, the dikē, would be straight. In Boeotia the system seems to have developed far enough to have legal force.

      So Hesiod took the decisive step in political thought of warning the rulers that there is such a thing as Justice.

      She is the virgin Dikē born of Zeus, glorious and honoured by the gods who dwell СКАЧАТЬ