INTRODUCTION

The past two decades have seen a dramatic increase in scholarly research on aspects of the prosecution of crime in ancient Greece, and in particular in Athens. Scholarship has focused on the process of prosecution, the history and workings of courts such as the Areopagus, as well as specific crimes like homicide, adultery, theft, sycophancy, and hubris. Such research has enhanced our understanding of the procedures used in criminal prosecution and the substantive law of particular crimes. What has received far less attention, however, is the way in which Athenians conceptualized the category of “crime” and the laws enacted to deal with it. Did the Athenians in fact have conceptions of something like our notions of “crime” and “criminal,” as distinct from other types of wrongs and wrongdoers? Did they think of the methods of prosecuting and punishing criminal offenses as a separate legal category from other sorts of proceedings? Did they have a distinctive conception of punishment as opposed to other kinds of legal remedies? What did they believe were the distinguishing features of this area of the law and its relation to the larger framework of Athenian litigation and government? These are large and complex questions that could only be comprehensively answered in a book-length study.