An Introduction to the History of the Development of Law Book

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CHAPTER V LAW IN ANCIENT GREECE 1. Crete and Rhodes—Minos. Let us pass over from Asia to Europe, from the Persians to their inveterate antagonists, the Greeks. The transition is not unnatural. Like to the sun at noonday was the Civilization of Ancient Greece among the civilizations of the world. Never before and never since has there existed on this earth a people more energetic, more enterprising, more versatile, more ingenious, more artistic, more literary, more philosophical, more cultured in all the departments of human knowledge, than the Greeks of classical story, more properly designated by themselves in their own language by the name of Hellenes. And from this comparison I do not except any nation even of the nineteenth or twentieth century. Never before and never since have there arisen such poets as Homer, Pindar, Sappho, and Aeschylus, with whom only Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe of the more modern world may be associated.Never before and never since have there been such orators as Domesthenes, and Aeschines, such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle, such historians as Herodotus and Thucydides, such leaders of men as Pericles and Epam- inondas, such brilliant women as Aspasia and Hypatia, such sculptors as Phidias and Lysippus, such painters as Apelles and Parrhasius, such scholars as Aristarchus and Demetrius Phalereus, such physicians as Hippocrates and Galen, so many men illustrious in all departments of intellectual activity. The intellectual accomplishment of the Hellenes, and especially of that most illustrious of all the Hellenic States, the commonwealth of Athens, has never been equalled, much less surpassed by any community either of ancient or modern times. The Augustan age of Rome, the glory of Elizabethan England, the splendor of France under Lou...