The Justice of the Greeks / RAPHAEL SEALEY

Some notes from the text:

• p. 44. The Athenians distinguishes between laws of two kinds: those that regulate relations between citizens AND those that regulate the relation of each citizen to the community. This is the distinction between private and public law. Most of the changes scrutinized in studies of Athenian constitutional history belonged to public law. Likewise most of the known decrees passed by the Athenians in the fifth-century dealt with policy of the state. Little direct information about changes in private law; one notices the measure of 451/0 b.c. restricting citizenship to children whose parents were both citizens. The sharp growth of population and prosperity in the period of the Delian League must have raised plentiful new questions in relations between persons, that is, it must have created a need for enlarging the body of private law; one cannot tell how that need was met. 
• p. 92. But suppose that there are no courts. Philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thought that such a condition had one existed; they called it the "the state of nature." Whether that condition had ever existed is a question that need not be pursued here. It may still be profitable to imagine a state of nature in order to discover the essential character of a court. Homer comes to the aid of the imigination. He describes a dispute between Menelaos and Antilochos for the second prize in the chariot race, which was among the competitions held at the funeral of Patroklos. The dispute was resolved without violence. 
• p. 92-93. Il. 23.441 "without an oath," evidently Menelaos and the Greek audience listening to the Iliad could expect a dispute and a resolution of the dispute by means of an oath. When Achilles assigned the mare to Antiolochos, Menelaos complained in a speech of moderate length (23.570-85). Early in the speech he invited the leaders of the Argives to provide dike (dikassate 574)
• "But come, I myself will provide a dike, and I maintain that no other of the Danaans will find fault with me. For my dike will be straight." (Il. 23.579-80).
• From these utterances it follows that dike is not a judgment such as can only be given by a third person wielding authority. The dike desired by Meneloas may be provided by a third person or by one of the parties, such as Meneloas himself. But although dike is not judgment, it brings the dispute nearer to resolution. So far one cannot tell whether a dike is a settlement or a step toward settlement. 
• In short, Menelaos undertook to provide a dike, and following up this undertaking he formulated an oath that he invited Antilochos to swear.But Antilochos did not swear an oath. 
• Menelaos said that his dike would be straight. In archaic Greek a good dike is commonly said to be straight and a bad one is crooked. 
• In Homeric society relative age is among the factors enabling a man to win a following in his community. 
• p. 95. Many oaths are sworn in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and they sometimes plan a part in major public events, such as the reconciliation of Agamemnon and Achilles.
• What is a an oath; what about a Greek oath?
• Greek treaties of the classical period exemplify oaths consisting of THREE elements:
• Invocation: the person swearing the oath names some gods
• Content: the person swearing says that he will observe the treaty
• Imprecation: 
• it is not necessarily to be assumed that Homeric oaths will conform to the pattern known from classical treaties. 
• p. 100 DIKE as a MODE of PROOF
• The audiences who listened to the Iliad at the Greater Panathenaia understood the force of the word "(not) voluntarily" and the nature of Homeric oaths, when they heard the account of the dispute between Menelaos and Antilochos. After saying that he would provide a dike, Menelaos invited Antilochos to swear in terms that Menelaos had formulated. Three conclusions are to be drawn from the outcome of that dispute
• A dike is not a judgment.
• The dike uttered by Menelaos was not an assertion that the mare belonged to him or that it belonged to Antilochos. 
• It was not a settlement of the dispute but a proposed mode of bringing the dispute to a settlement without violence.
• No judge takes part in settling the dispute between Meneloas and Antilochos; bystanders are present but they are passaive. The dike provided by Meneloas serves as a mode of proof because Antilochos yields to his challenge. 
• A dike, mode of proof, can be the formulation of an oath that one party is invited to swear. 
• This does not exclude the possibility that other modes of proof were known to Homeric thought. 
• Dike as a mode of bringing a dispute to an end without violence is recognizes in the Works and Days of Hesiod
• The son of Kronos has laid down this law for men, that it is for firsh and animals and flying birds to eat one another, since there is no dike among them. But to men he has given dike, which proves to be far the best. 
• Also to note, that the administration of justice must ascertain the truth about the the facts leading to the dispute. Perhaps sometimes ascertain the truth may help toward resolving a dispute, but it is no necessary part of dike. A procedure qualifies as dike, or as law in the most rudimentary sense, provided that it brings about a solution without bloodshed. Again, Hesiod does not insist that the dispute must be resolved by application of an acknowledge law, or to put the matter another way, that the solution reached must be just. Perhaps sometimes a dispute can be resolved more readily if a rule acknolwedged to be just is applied. But the function of dike at its basic level is no the exalted one of applying an idea rule. The essential function of dike is the humbler one of resolving a dispute without violence. Hesiod and later authorities are right in endorsing dike/ It is usually better for men to go to law than to eat one another.
• 18.497-508 (trial scene in the Iliad)
• See 101-105 for more analysis on dike. 
• The dike was the oldest way of proceeding at law in Athens. <p.127>. Only the person whose interests were harmed could inittate a dike, and therefore this suit is sometimes called "the private action."
• DIKASTAI: listened to the uninterrupted speeches of the two parties and then cast their votes on the basis of the impression made on them by the presentation as a whole; within the courtroom there was no stage at which particular issues could be argued back and forth. <137>
• HOMERIC DIKE AGAIN
• Think of dike in a procedural sense. It was a mode of proof. 
• For as has been seen, the Iliad portrays procedures for the peaceful settlement of disputes, but the poems have no knowledge of written laws. Without the fixity of writing substantive rights are likely to be fluid. 
• Yet dike in the Homeric poems can have a substantive sense. At many points in the Odyssey someone's behavoir is reported and an explanation is added by saying that such is the dike of people of a specified kind. Expressions employing the word dike  in this manner may be distinguished into three types:
• The dike may be a right
• When Odysseus finds his elderly father laboring in the orchard, he expresses surprise. As he says, Laertes looks like a man who could well sleep on a soft bed after washing and eating; "for that is the dike of old men" (Ody. 24.254-55). 
• Other forms of dike in Ody
• 4.690-92
• 19.42-43
• The dike may be a duty
• Only one passage suggests this sense.
• Ody. 18-275.80
• The dike may be an actual condition
• Ody. 14.59-61; 19.168-70; 11.216-22.
• In all three types of dike is the behavior or condition of people of a specified kind, whether they be old men, serfs, suitors, or the dead.People of every kind have a proper place in the order of the universe, that is, in society of men and gods. 
• Dike in the semantic field: see pg 140-41
• Homeric time, p. 142-43
• Each man's time is his inherent quality. It reflects his descent and it is refelcted in his deeds and in the esteem that people accord him. 
• If one man takes what belongs to another, he disregards the latter's time. Retaliation is an attempt to recover time. 
• Homeric time  is the sum of a man's rights. Moreover each man's time is distinctive. It inheres in him in consequence of his own quality, in which descent is one among several factors. Society is imagined in the Homeric poems consists not of classes but of single persons, each one differing from the next. etc etc.
• Artistotle on justice
• Ethics, 5.1129a3-37a30
• Aristotle recognized that justice has to do with apportioning things and with rectifying wrongful apportionment.