The foregoing text was inscribed on a humble block of schist limestone some time in the second half of the seventh century bce. It was laid out in boustrophedon (‘as the ox ploughs’) style, back and forth across the stone. It has a good claim to constituting the oldest extant inscribed law from Greece, as old almost as the laws ascribed to the earliest lawgivers that are attested by (usually much later) literary sources. One of those lawgivers reputedly came from Crete: an entirely plausible claim, insofar as a large number of the earliest physically attested laws do also. The text we have quoted is from Drerus in eastern Crete.

Drerus was never any great shakes in the larger picture of ancient Greek history, never a major player on any big or bigger stage. The presence in this early text, therefore, of three words (kosmos, polis; the third is Damioi, from damos = ‘people’) with deep significance for the development of Greek political thinking and practice tells its own story.