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When Literature Becomes Law: An Example From Ancient Greece, Mark J. Sundahl

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The subject of this paper is the peculiar Athenian law, generally referred to as the Testamentary Law, which permitted a will to be invalidated if a jury determined that the testator composed the will while "under the influence of a woman" (in the original Greek, gunaiki peithomenos). While scholars have long argued that the progressive ideas of the archaic poets of ancient Greece inspired political change - such as the emergence of democracy in Athens - this paper makes an even stronger claim regarding the connection between law and literature in ancient Greece. This paper proposes that Solon, the famous …