Gustav Meyer’s Griechische Grammatik (nothing on accent or syntax),
which did excellent pioneer work when it first appeared in 1880, was
hardly brought up to date in its 3rd edition (1896), but is still useful
for the dialect and bibliographical material collected. See also
H. Hirt, Handbuch der griech. Laut- und Formenlehre (1902). Of
smaller grammars in English perhaps the most complete is that of
J. Thompson (London, 1902). The grammar of Homer was handled
by D. B. Monro (2nd ed., Oxford, 1891). The syntax has been treated
in many special works, amongst which may be mentioned W. W.
Goodwin, Syntax of the Greek Moods and Tenses (new ed., 1889);
B. L. Gildersleeve and C. W. E. Miller, Syntax of Classical Greek from
Homer to Demosthenes, pt. i. (New York, 1901—and following);
J. M. Stahl, Kritisch-historische Syntax des griechischen Verbums
(1907); F. E. Thompson, Attic Greek Syntax (1907). (ii.) The
relations between Greek and the other I.E. languages are very well
brought out in P. Kretschmer’s Einleitung in die Geschichte der
griechischen Sprache (Göttingen, 1896). For comparative grammar
see K. Brugmann and B. Delbrück, Grundriss der vergleichenden
Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (the 2nd ed., begun 1897,
is still incomplete) and Brugmann’s Kurze vergleichende Grammatik
(1902–1903); A. Meillet, Introduction à l’étude comparative des langues
indo-européennes (2nd ed., 1908). Greek compared with Latin and
English: P. Giles, A Short Manual of Comparative Philology for Classical
Students (2nd ed., 1901, with an appendix containing a brief account
and specimens of the dialects); Riemann and Goelzer, Grammaire
comparative du Grec et du Latin (1901), a parallel grammar in 2 vols.,
specially valuable for syntax. (iii.) For the dialects two works have
recently appeared, both covering in brief space the whole field:
A. Thumb, Handbuch der griechischen Dialekte (with bibliographies
for each dialect, 1909); C. D. Buck, Introduction to the Study of the
Greek Dialects, Grammar, Selected Inscriptions, Glossary (Boston,
1910). Works on a larger scale have been undertaken by R. Meister,
by O. Hoffmann and by H. W. Smyth. For the κοινή may be
specially mentioned A. Thumb, Die griech. Sprache in Zeitalter des
Hellenismus (1901); E. Mayser, Grammatik der griechischen Papyri
aus der Ptolemäerzeit: Laut- und Wortlehre (1906); H. St J. Thackeray,
A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek, vol. i. (1909); Blass,
Grammar of New Testament Greek, trans. by Thackeray (1898); J. H.
Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament Greek. I. Prolegomena (3rd
ed., 1906). (iv.) For the development from the κοινή to modern
Greek: A. N. Jannaris, An Historical Greek Grammar, chiefly of the
Attic Dialect, as written and spoken from Classical Antiquity down
to the Present Time (1901); G. N. Hatzidakis, Einleitung in die
neugriechische Grammatik (1892); A. Thumb, Handbuch der neugriechischen
Volkssprache (2nd ed. 1910). (v.) The inscriptions are
collected in Inscriptiones Graecae in the course of publication by
the Berlin Academy, those important for dialect in the Sammlung
der griech. Dialektinschriften, edited by Collitz and Bechtel. The
earlier parts of this collection are to some extent superseded by
later volumes of the Inscr. Graecae, containing better readings and
new inscriptions. A good selection (too brief) is Solmsen’s Inscriptiones
Graecae ad inlustrandas dialectos selectae (3rd ed., 1910). A
serviceable lexicon for dialect words is van Herwerden’s Lexicon
Graecum suppletorium et dialecticum (2nd ed., much enlarged, 2 vols.
1910). (vi.) The historical basis for the distribution of the Greek
dialects is discussed at length in the histories of E. Meyer (Geschichte
des Altertums, ii.) and G. Busolt (Griechische Geschichte, i.); by Professor
Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, i. (1901), and P. Kretschmer
in Glotta, i. 9 ff. See also A. Fick, Die vorgriechischen Ortsnamen
(1905). (vii.) Bibliographies containing the new publications on
Greek, with some account of their contents, appear from time
to time in Indogermanische Forschungen: Anzeiger (Strassburg,
Trübner), annually in Glotta (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck und
Ruprecht), and The Year’s Work in Classical Studies (London,
Murray).
(P. Gi.)
GREEK LAW. Ancient Greek law is a branch of comparative jurisprudence the importance of which has been long ignored. Jurists have commonly left its study to scholars, who have generally refrained from comparing the institutions of the Greeks with those of other nations. Greek Greek law and comparative jurisprudence. law has, however, been partially compared with Roman law, and has been incidentally illustrated with the aid of the primitive institutions of the Germanic nations. It may now be studied in its earlier stages in the laws of Gortyn; its influence may be traced in legal documents preserved in Egyptian papyri; and it may be recognized as a consistent whole in its ultimate relations to Roman law in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire.
The existence of certain panhellenic principles of law is implied by the custom of settling a difference between two Greek states, or between members of a single state, by resorting to external arbitration. The general unity of Greek law is mainly to be seen in the laws of inheritance and adoption, in laws of commerce and contract, and in the publicity uniformly given to legal agreements.
No systematic collection of Greek laws has come down to us. Our knowledge of some of the earliest notions of the subject is derived from the Homeric poems. For the details of Attic law we have to depend on ex parte statements in the speeches of the Attic orators, and we are sometimes Original authorities. enabled to check those statements by the trustworthy, but often imperfect, aid of inscriptions. Incidental illustrations of the laws of Athens may be found in the Laws of Plato, who deals with the theory of the subject without exercising any influence on actual practice. The Laws of Plato are criticized in the Politics of Aristotle, who, besides discussing laws in their relation to constitutions, reviews the work of certain early Greek lawgivers. The treatise on the Constitution of Athens includes an account of the jurisdiction of the various public officials and of the machinery of the law courts, and thus enables us to dispense with the second-hand testimony of grammarians and scholiasts who derived their information from that treatise (see Constitution of Athens). The works of Theophrastus On the Laws, which included a recapitulation of the laws of various barbaric as well as Grecian states, are now represented by only a few fragments (Nos. 97-106, ed. Wimmer).
Our earliest evidence is to be sought in the Homeric poems. In the primitive society of the heroic age (as noticed by Plato) written laws were necessarily unknown; for, “in that early period, they had no letters; they lived by habit and by the customs of their ancestors” (Laws, Law in Homer. 680 A). We find a survival from a still more primitive time in the savage Cyclops, who is “unfamiliar with dooms of law, or rules of right” (οὔτε δικας εὖ εἰδότα οὔτε θέμιστας, Od. ix. 215 and 112 f.).
Dikē (δίκη), assigned by Curtius (Etym. 134) to the same root as δείκνυμι, primarily means a “way pointed out,” a “course prescribed by usage,” hence “way” or “fashion,” “manner” Dikē. or “precedent.” In the Homeric poems it sometimes signifies a “doom” of law, a legal “right,” a “lawsuit”; while it is rarely synonymous with “justice,” as in Od. xiv. 84, where “the gods honour justice,” τίουσι δίκην.
Various senses of “right” are expressed in the same poems by themis (θἐμις), a term assigned (ib. 254) to the same root as τίθημι. In its primary sense themis is that which “has been laid down”; hence a particular decision or “doom.” The Themis. plural themistes implies a body of such precedents, “rules of right,” which the king receives from Zeus with his sceptre (Il. ix. 99). Themis and dikē have sometimes been compared with the Roman fas and jus respectively, the former being regarded as of divine, the latter of human origin; and this is more satisfactory than the latest view (that of Hirzel), which makes “counsel” the primary meaning of themis.
Thesmos (θεσμός), an ordinance (from the same root as themis), is not found in “Homer,” except in the last line of the original form of the Odyssey (xxiii. 296), where it probably refers to the “ordinance” of wedlock. The common Thesmos. Nomos. term for law, νόμος, is first found in Hesiod, but not in a specially legal sense (e.g. Op. 276).
A trial for homicide is one of the scenes represented on the shield of Achilles (Il. xviii. 497-508). The folk are here to be seen thronging the market-place, where a strife has arisen between two men as to the price of a man that The trial scene. has been slain. The slayer vows that he has paid all (εὔχετο πάντ᾽ ἀποδοῦναι), the kinsman of the slain protests that he has received nothing (ἀναίνετο μηδὲν ἑλέσθαι); both are eager to join issue before an umpire, and both are favoured by their friends among the folk, who are kept back by the heralds. The cause is tried by the elders, who are seated on polished stones in a sacred circle, and in the midst there lie two talents of gold, “to give to him who, among them all, sets forth the cause most rightly” (τῷ δόμεν ὃς μετὰ τοῖσι δίκην ἰθύντατα εἴποι).
The discussions of the above passage have chiefly turned on two points: (1) the legal questions at issue; and (2) the destination of the “two talents.” (1) In the ordinary view (a), it is solely a question whether the fine or blood-money, corresponding to the Wergeld (see Wergeld, Teutonic Peoples, Britain: Anglo-Saxon) of the old Germanic law (Grimm, Rechtsalterthümer, 661 f.), has been paid or not. (This is accepted by Thonissen, Lipsius, Sidgwick and Ridgeway.) In the other view (b), it is held that the slayer “claimed to pay” the fine, and the kinsman of the slain “refused to accept any compensation” (so Passow and Leaf, approved by Pollock). (2) The “two talents” (shown by Ridgeway to be a small sum, equal in
