Talk:Ancient Greek law

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[edit] Triage

This article still needs some attention. I have done a quick adding of headers and subheaders, but I don't know enough about the subject to say whether the divisions make sense. The material certainly didn't belong under references, though, so this is an improvement in any case...

Ionesco 20:05, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I do know a fair amount about this subject. It's my belief that, unfortunately, the majority of the content in this page is misleading or wrong. It seems to represent a sort of schoolboy view of ancient law of the sort taught cursorily in comparative law courses in law schools many decades ago -- look at all the false analogies to modern common-law concepts, for instance, like "tort". Worse, it even gets details wrong that are rather clearly discussed in 19th-Century sources such as Maine. As a third major flaw, this article freely mixes mythological or literary details about Greek law, particularly about the lawgivers, who may never (with the probable exception of Solon) have even existed, with the empirical evidence offered by scholarly research in archaeology and ancient studies.

The present contents of this article should probably be completely discarded. The standard contemporary work on this topic is "The Law in Classical Athens" by MacDowell (which discusses other Greek systems to the extent that actual evidence exists); someone (perhaps me, when I have the time) should reread the introductory chapters of that book and rewrite this article from scratch. For the moment, we should add prominent caveats about the most obvious howlers in each section, at the very least. I've begun by adding one to the ridiculous "torts" section.

Tls 00:06, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Upon reflection, here's what I think we should do: this article should be reverted to its very first revision, which was from the 1911 Brittanica. Though brief, that version of the article does not contain the wealth of misinformation, speculation, mythology masquerading as history, etc. that the later revisions do.

That would be an acceptable starting point upon which to expand. The newer versions of this article are... garbage.

Tls 00:26, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Back to Square One

Zot! First step done -- we're back to where we were. I'll try to steal some time this weekend to refresh myself with the MacDowell and add back some more correct details on this topic; but at least we're not spreading this particular misinformation any more. I wonder what those "Ethan Flint Notes" the bogus text cited were, as well as whether the text "citing" them wasn't actually an unauthorized cut-and-paste -- but for sure they aren't doing anyone any good.  :-)