Description

This course will examine the body of evidence for law in the ancient Greek world as a means of understanding the legal, political, and social history of the Greek poleis. In particular we will focus our attention on the large corpus of forensic speeches form Classical Athens with an eye to understanding the ways in which the Athenian city governed itself and resolved conflict within the poleis. Due to the nature of these speeches and the evidence for Greek legal practices, we will also be examining various aspects of Greek social and economic history within a legal context, including gender, slavery, property law, and citizenship.