Stasis and Reconciliation: Politics and Law in Fourth-Century Greece

Abstract

How did a Greek city leave stasis behind and return to normality? The evidence now demands that we emphasize law – legal machinery and juridical process – over and against politics, or even the creation of a new supra-factional ideological consensus. In the new Dikaia reconciliation text, the main focus is on procedural constraints for the pursuit of justice in cases related to the stasis. A long oath is also to be sworn by Dikaia’s citizenry, giving the agreements the formal character of a διαλλαγή settlement contract in private law but constellated across the entire citizen body. In conjunction with a consideration of other cases of reconciliation, cognate genres of inscriptions, and recent scholarship, the Dikaia text is used to argue that law as enmeshed in citizen interactions and society is more important than strictly political considerations in understanding the function of peace and normality in the fourthcentury polis.

Keywords:
Stasis – reconciliation – public law – private law – oath – settlement contract – Athenaion Politeia – Oxyrhynchus Historian – Dikaia