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The Oikos in Athenian Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Douglas M. Macdowell
Douglas M. Macdowell
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
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Extract

If you look up οἶκος in Liddell and Scott, you find the instances classified in three main divisions: first those meaning a house, or sometimes other kinds of building; secondly ‘one's household goods, substance’, for which I shall generally say ‘property’, though Liddell and Scott do not actually use that word; and thirdly ‘family’. This threefold distinction is sound, and I shall adhere to it here. Admittedly one sometimes finds an instance where it is not easy to decide which sense the word has. Two of the senses, occasionally even all three, may overlap. But in the great majority of instances it is clear which sense is meant.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , May 1989 , pp. 10 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1989

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References

1 I discussed the oikos briefly in The Law in Classical Athens (London, 1978), pp. 84–6Google Scholar. I now consider that discussion unsatisfactory, because I failed there to distinguish the different senses of the word. On the concept in general see Lacey, W. K., The Family in Classical Greece (London, 1968)Google Scholar; Karabelias, E., ‘Le contenu de l'oikos en droit grec ancien’, in μν⋯μη A. Πεωργ⋯ον λ Πετροπο⋯λου (ed. Dimakis, P. D., Athens, 1984), i. 441–54Google Scholar.

2 I leave aside here a fourth division, which is given only in the supplement to LSJ (1968) and seems to occur in no surviving Attic text except IG ii2.1237: there the oikos of the Dekeleians is either the whole or some part of a phratry.

3 I do not know whether Thucydides here gives us a literal translation from the Persian, or merely the substance of the letter in his own words. But in either case it is clear that he expects his Athenian readers at the end of the fifth century to understand oikos as meaning persons, not property.

4 See Harrison, A. R. W., The Law of Athens i (Oxford, 1968), pp. 105–7, 293 6Google Scholar.

5 Paoli, U. E., Studi di diritto attico (Firenze, 1930), pp. 166–9Google Scholar.

6 Finley, M. I., Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens (New Brunswick, NJ, 1951), pp. 40–1Google Scholar.

7 Wolff, H. J. in Festschrift Hans Lewald (Basel, 1953), p. 205 n. 23Google Scholar, and in Festschrift für Ernst Rabel ii (Tübingen, 1954), pp. 301–3, 320–2Google Scholar.

8 It is a disputed question whether, if a man died leaving no children and his father was still alive, his father was his heir. Dem. 44.33 implies that he was. See Harrison, , The Law of Athens i. 138–41Google Scholar for the evidence and references to other discussions; Harrison himself evidently could not make up his mind, and his presentation is not self-consistent. But the problem hardly affects the present discussion, since, even if the view be taken that Euktemon was not the legal heir of his sons, it is clear that their property was in his hands and had not yet been claimed by any other relative at the time when the two boys were put forward for posthumous adoption.

9 On ⋯ροι and ⋯ποτιμ⋯ματα in general see Fine, J. V. A., Horoi (Hesperia suppl. 9, 1951)Google Scholar; Finley, Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens; Harrison, , The Law of Athens i. 253–304Google Scholar.

10 Cf. Harrison, , The Law of Athens i. 295 n. 1Google Scholar.

11 Wyse, W., The Speeches of lsaeus (Cambridge, 1904), p. 484Google Scholar asserts that Euktemon's son Philoktemon possessed no separate estate of his own. It is certainly possible that Euktemon and Philoktemon lived together and controlled their property jointly; but in principle each of them must have been the owner of substantial property, since both performed liturgies (Isai. 6.38). We are not told how Philoktemon acquired his wealth; it may have been by trade, manufacturing, or other activities.

12 Isai. 6.35 κα⋯ τελευτ⋯σαντος ⋯κε⋯νου implies that Androkles and Antidoros already controlled the property before Euktemon's death. The reason why they were able to do so is probably that they were friends of the woman with whom Euktemon was living.

13 Cf. Isai. 6.37 εἰ δ’ ἔλαθεν, ⋯πολώλει ἄν ἄπασα ⋯ οὐσ⋯α.

14 Wolff, , in Festschrift für E. Rabel ii. 302Google Scholar, writes as if the boys were put forward as κληρον⋯μοι of Euktemon while Euktemon was alive. But the speaker does not allege that Androkles and Antidoros pretended that Euktemon was dead.

15 Cf. Asheri, D., ‘L’ οȋκος ἔρημος nel diritto successorio attico”, Archivio Giuridico 28 (1960), 7–24Google Scholar.

16 For a more detailed account of the law of adoption see Harrison, , The Law of Athens i. 82–96Google Scholar.

17 It no longer seems necessary to discuss Paoli's strange theory that the oikos had a law of its own, separate from the law of Athens. It is rightly rejected by Wolff, H. J., Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 20 (1952), 6–7 n. 19Google Scholar, and by Karabélias, E. in μν⋯μηГА. Πεωργ⋯ον i. 451–2Google Scholar.

18 For more details of inheritance law see Harrison, , The Law of Athens i. 122–62Google Scholar; MacDowell, , The Law in Classical Athens, pp. 92–108Google Scholar.

19 For a commentary on these speeches see Thompson, W. E., De Hagniae Hereditate (Mnemosyne suppl. 44, 1976)Google Scholar. A summary of the whole dispute is given by MacDowell, , The Law in Classical Athens, pp. 103–8Google Scholar.

20 Philagros too, as it happened, was descended from Bouselos, but through a different son of Bouselos (Dem. 43.24), and we have already seen that each of the sons of Bouselos established a separate oikos (Dem. 43.19).

21 Bianchetti, S., SIFC 54 (1982), 129–65Google Scholar.

22 Rhodes, P. J., A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1981), pp. 633–4Google Scholar, implies that this function of the arkhon existed ‘in archaic Athens’, and points out differences between the terminology of the law and normal fourth-century terminology.

23 Wolff, H. J., Traditio 2 (1944), 93Google Scholar.

24 Ibid. 50.