Periclean Athens - Law Courts (1 Viewer)

[butterflybird]

Right, for my trial short answer society questions for Greece in the time of Pericles... the last one was about the law courts, with the klepsydra as the piece of evidence. I took one look at it and went *hmm no* and consequently HAD to pick the other society for the short answer. Fortunately this didn't go too badly... however...
What WOULD one say about the law courts? All I could think of was ostracism, or maybe trials.... does democracy count in all of this? That could provide some room for waffle...

Anyway hope u can understand my thought process up there ^.

 

[Magister]

Re Athenian Law Courts (dikasteria)

You need to know:
*how the juries work
*how trials were conducted
*numbers on juries
*how jurors were selected
*types of punishment
*the allotment machines and how they worked (ballots, how they were cast...)
*the water clock to time speeches
*examples of trials
These are just some examples of things to look at. The list of resources below are worth checking out.


Some useful resources are:
Aristophanes, The Wasps
Plato, The Trial of Socrates
Speeches of Lysias
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1984/2/84.02.08.x.html#b (re Athenian Law Courts)
Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution (1984)Raphael Sealey, The Athenian Republic: Democracy or Rule of Law? (1987)
I.F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates (1989)

http://www.curriculum.edu.au/democracy/ddunits/guide/g3a_lawrights.htm

Hope this helps!
Magister

 

[butterflybird]

hey that's some good stuff, thanks for your help

 

[Carnivour]

Archons

Hey, this is sorta relevant to this thread, so I thought I'd ask it here.

Was the Areopagus (the court that deals with homicide) made up of Archons? Is that all the Archons did - presided as magistrates over homicide cases? Because I have read several times that the Areopagus was made up of ex-archons, so if they were ex-archons, what were their actual proffesion?

Also, before democracy, Athens was ruled by an oligarchy, right? Which was in essence the Areopagus. Am I right in saying that? And if the Areopagus was primarily a law institutions, that means that the oligarchy was maintainted through an aristocratic monopoly of the judicial system. Am I right?