Law, Violence, and Community in Classical Athens

The theme of this book is the legal regulation of violence and the role of litigation in Athenian society. Using comparative anthropological and historical perspectives, David Cohen challenges traditional evolutionary and functionalist accounts of the development of legal process. Examining Athenian theories of social conflict and the rule of law, as well as actual litigation involving the regulation of violence, he emphasizes the way in which the judicial process operates in an agonistic social field. In this light, it appears that judges and litigants alike view the courts as a competitive arena where ongoing conflicts are played out, continued, and exacerbated according to a logic characteristic of feuding societies. A sustained account of Athenian litigation places this subject in a new theoretical perspective and offers a new interpretation of the social and political dimensions of legal process. This book will be of interest to a broad audience of students and scholars in classics, history, anthropology, sociology, law, and political science.