Ancient Greek Punishment: From Draconian Laws to Hemlock in Athenian Justice

Ancient Greek punishment depended upon the crime, the location, and individuals involved in the proscribed act. The Greeks did not have a systematic law code. During the Archaic Age, the development of rules and regulations took form, allowing society to function without chaos. Originally, retribution or punishment for a crime would be imposed by clan members of the aggrieved party, often leading to internecine clan wars, especially if murder, rape, or abduction was involved. By the eighth century, cities began to realize that these continual internecine fighting would lead to wholesale destruction; they now began to enact laws and procedures to solve and prevent continual fighting by reaching accommodation for all sides, often by assigning a monetary value.

Many of the laws developed were torts, which involved someone doing harm to another or their property, and reaching a satisfactory accommodation. Dracon and Solon, early lawgivers, prescribed tort laws for murder, as well as other crimes such as rape, dog bite, and encroaching on a neighbor’s property.

Athens, and most likely most other Greek cities, took the view that trials brought before its people were generally private in nature. This meant that if someone killed another, the family or friends of the deceased would seek to bring the aggressor to trial to convict and punish him. The state, however, would prosecute certain crimes, namely patricide and arson, since these were committed by someone without honor or mentally unhinged. The crime of theft was handled by forcing the individual to return the stolen property and pay a fine of double the value of the property stolen. Certain crimes, however, such as murder (especially patricide), arson, and treason, were universally viewed as outrages against society. If a person was found guilty, the punishment was usually death. But some crimes such as homicide could be explained or rationalized, providing for possible acquittal.

Punishments could be imposed upon individuals by the gods for horrendous acts of impiety. In the Odyssey, for example, the warrior Odysseus is punished by the gods for his lack of respect for their laws. The gods punished mortals with eternal suffering. Atlas was sentenced to hold the weight of the world upon his shoulders forever, while Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans, was chained to a rock and had his liver eaten by Zeus’s eagle. Human laws punished men for committing transgressions against one another. For political discord, ostracism, or the exiling of a political prisoner, was a common way to eliminate a problematic enemy. For rape, a penalty of 100 drachmas was given to the family of the victim by the perpetrator or family. Someone who committed homicide (the killing of a person that was unintentional or in self-defense) was exiled, while committing murder (killing of a person with malice aforethought) could lead to death.

The most severe or final punishment was death. This penalty was usually reserved for the most heinous crime, the deliberate killing of a fellow citizen or some other calamity such as treason. In Athens, the procedure was formulated in the law codes and during trials. One of the earliest lawgivers was Dracon, who lived about 620 and supposedly wrote the first law codes and constitution. His laws were supposedly severe, with a later writer, Plutarch, stating that all crimes were punishable by death; but this was probably a misunderstanding or oversimplification of the reality, and became the source of the word draconian.

Serious crimes and promoting civil discord probably met with the death penalty, but most other crimes were probably punished by a fine. Solon who lived around 600 reformed the law codes, removing Dracon’s death penalty except for the crime of homicide. The Athenians reserved the death penalty for those who committed intentional homicide or another serious crime, such as arson or blasphemy against the gods. A person who committed unintentional homicide, such as manslaughter, could go into exile, and his property was not confiscated but allowed to pass to his family.

In a case where an Athenian was charged with killing another Athenian, a trial was held in which the prosecution gave a speech outlining the case against the accused. The defendant could then give a speech laying out his defense. After their speeches, and before a verdict, if the defendant “fled,” going into exile, he acknowledged his guilt and effectively saved himself from the ultimate punishment.

The jury would immediately cast its vote and if the person was found guilty, both sides could then make a speech outlining the proper punishment. For a serious crime like murder, the prosecution, usually a member of the victim’s family or a close friend, would choose death. Often, the defendant would propose a fine and possibly exile. The jurors would again vote on the penalty, and if it was for death, the sentence would be carried out, usually within a few days.

Typically, there were three forms of “execution.” The first was the ancient custom of casting someone into a well or pit known as a barathron. Probably this form had the individual being alive when cast into the pit and either the fall would kill him or he would die of his wounds, or by starvation. By the fourth century, the individual appears to have been killed first and then cast into the pit. The second type of execution, called tympanon, appears to have been done by clubbing or killing by a sword, although it could also involve the criminal being tied to a board stuck in the ground and left to die of thirst or starvation. The final type of execution involved the drinking of hemlock or poison; it was not commonly used, and never before 404.

The Athenians did not use hanging or decapitation, probably because to the Greeks, the outright killing of a person, even if justified, potentially put a religious curse on the city. The systems used by the Athenians, casting into a pit, being left to die of thirst or starvation, or suicide by poison, did not involve the direct act of the citizen body, but rather hinged on the will of the gods. If the gods desired the guilty person to live, they could ordain it. This also probably accounts for the fact that many myths had children exposed and left on a hillside rather than just simply killed. This way, the individuals died in an indirect fashion or was saved by being found by someone else.