Legal language is harsh and convoluted for most people, a sentiment that law students who have to memorize laws would surely agree with. Would it be easier if these laws were written in verse? This was the belief of Charondas, a legislator from Antiquity, who applied it to the legal corpus he created for the Greek poleis of southern Italy.

We must situate ourselves in the 6th century BCE, when much of the southern coast of the Italian Peninsula, including Sicily, was dotted with Greek settlements, forming what was known as Magna Graecia. These were colonies established to expand the trade networks of the Hellenic metropolises across the Mediterranean in an expansion that was primarily economic, reaching as far as the Spanish Levant.

The present-day cities of Naples, Sybaris, Syracuse, Agrigento, Tarentum, Selinunte, Locri, Reggio di Calabria, Croton, Thurii, Elea, Messina, Taormina, and Himera were born from these settlements, as were French cities like Marseille, Antibes, and Nice, or Spanish ones like Málaga, Denia, and Empúries, to name just a few examples.

Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia. Credit: Rowanwindwhistler / Wikimedia Commons

The first settlement founded in Magna Graecia was Cumae, around the year 1050 BCE. The rest have uncertain dates, though most date to the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. In any case, they prospered so greatly that they quickly became proverbially wealthy poleis, and some even joined together to form strategic alliances, often with the aim of combating others, as was the case with the league of Croton, Sybaris, and Metapontum against Siris. But the great moment of Magna Graecia came during the time of Pythagoras, the famous philosopher and mathematician, who was a native of the island of Samos but traveled widely across the eastern Mediterranean. During one of these journeys, he was captured by the Persians and sent to Babylon. When he finally gained his freedom, he decided to put land (and sea) between himself and his captors and settled in the Calabrian city of Croton.

His arrival and teachings led to the formation of a group of followers characterized by an aspiration for ethical purity, of an ascetic and secretive nature: the Pythagorean Brotherhood, whose members were popularly known as mathematikoi because their master’s doctrine endowed nature with an order based on mathematics. The emergence of this movement disrupted the existing peace, resulting in coups and counter-coups for power. However, one of his disciples tried to bring order by enacting a legislative corpus. This was the aforementioned Charondas, a native of Catania.

Catania was part of the Chalcidian colonies, those founded by Chalcis, a polis on the Aegean island of Euboea, which at that time was experiencing a period of splendor, as demonstrated by these colonial possessions… which ultimately led to its downfall when it aroused Athens’ greed in the early 6th century BCE. But before that end, there was time for Charondas to go down in history with his famous laws. In reality, they were not entirely his own, as they were based on those created by Zaleucus, a legislator of disputed historicity, allegedly born in the Calabrian town of Locri Epizephyrii (modern Locri), a colony of the Greek region of Locris, hence this body of law is known as the Locrian Code.

Zaleucus Laws
The Justice of Zaleucus (Perino del Vaga). Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

The Locrian was the first written legal code in the history of Greek civilization, and it favored the aristoi (aristocrats) without marginalizing others. It also linked punishments to the cause of the crime and involved the citizenry—through the Council—in any attempt at reform (something that had to be proposed with a noose around one’s neck, which would be used to hang the individual if not approved, ensuring a degree of legal stability).

Only fourteen fragments of Zaleucus’s code survive, each one quite curious: gouging out adulterers’ eyes, execution of a patient who drank wine against a doctor’s orders, the death penalty for thieves, attempting reconciliation between parties before starting a trial, the requirement for women to wear white clothing and always be accompanied by servants and a maid, etc.

One of the most significant laws relevant to our topic was the one prohibiting entry to the Assembly with weapons. Zaleucus himself was once forced to break this rule when he rushed in, requesting help to quell a street disturbance, and, when reprimanded, surrendered his sword in the name of social order. We mentioned “relevant to our topic” because this story is also often attributed to Charondas, who, in addition to being a follower of Pythagoras, was also considered a successor to Zaleucus’s legislative work. The Locrian Code was applied not only in Locri Epizephyrii but also in Rhegium, Sybaris, and Croton, indicating it likely influenced nearby colonies.

Charondas Laws
Plato and Aristotle in Raphael’s painting The School of Athens. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

We do not have an original copy of Charondas’s laws; we know of them through various sources, including references in Aristotle’s Politics (where he praised Charondas for being more specific than Zaleucus) and Stobaeus’s Anthology of Extracts, Sayings, and Precepts, written a millennium later. These laws had a democratic nature, based on the concept of democracy at that time, when only citizens were allowed to vote, excluding most of the population: slaves, women, minors, and businesspeople—that is, those without leisure time, or non-otium (those who had to work to live).

This corpus was intended to favor or, at the very least, provide legal equality for the middle class relative to the nobility, which is interesting since Charondas was socioeconomically situated between the two. However, Aristotle and Diodorus Siculus—who are not always reliable—credit him with a particular focus on what we now call family law. Though his laws were not as harsh as Draco’s, they were still quite severe by the standards of the time.

It is believed that the episode where he entered the Assembly armed and, upon being reprimanded, committed suicide, is merely a legend promoted as true by Aristotle and Diodorus Siculus, as a similar story was told of Zaleucus and Diocles of Syracuse. Nevertheless, it serves to illustrate the character’s integrity.

Charondas Laws
Eighteenth-century version of the suicide of Charondas. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Incidentally, Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus, and Stobaeus attributed laws to him that were much later in origin, meaning he could never have written them. Therefore, there is some doubt about the accuracy—or at least the complete accuracy—of what they claim about his code. Some of the known laws, as mentioned, focused particularly on family matters.

For example, the property of orphans was to be managed by the relatives of the deceased father, while the child’s physical care was entrusted to the mother’s side; a female heir could demand to marry her closest male relative or receive compensation from him; the state was responsible for the education of young people with public funds; and children of widowers who remarried were protected from potential mistreatment by their stepmothers.

Aside from family matters, Charondas also legislated on other subjects. For instance, in public life, he established popular courts and imposed punishments for slander and perjury in an unusual way: the offender would be paraded in front of everyone with a crown of leaves on their head. Humiliation extended to deserters, though more severely, as they were displayed in the Agora for three days dressed as women. Those who refused jury duty were fined, as were those who raped enslaved women or started fires, each infraction carrying different fines. Moreover, merchants were allowed to sell their products only in the market, and payments had to be in cash—a rule later echoed by Plato two centuries later in his work The Laws.

Charondas Laws
Bust of Charondas in Villa Bellini (Sicily). Credit: IgorMerlini / Wikimedia Commons

It wasn’t only the famous Athenian philosopher who took inspiration from Charondas. The Byzantine Stobaeus, cited earlier as a source, also left a series of precepts in the fifth century A.D. based on the Greek legislator, according to experts. These were less specific and more akin to moral advice; broadly speaking: to be guided by the gods, to secure their favor by avoiding evil deeds, to avoid disrespecting them, as well as one’s parents and magistrates; to strive for strength to do what is right; not to aid criminals to avoid contamination but, on the contrary, to denounce them; to practice virtue for integrity; to honor the dead without exaggerating grief; to welcome any unjustly oppressed foreigner; to set a good example for young people by rewarding the good and punishing the bad; to ensure public, state-run education for citizens’ children; and to aim to be more prudent than wise.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Charondas’s legislative work is that he wrote it in verse, as mentioned, believing that this way it could be sung even after banquets and would be easier for everyone to learn, remember, and consequently respect.

The Athenian playwright Hermippus, a contemporary of Aristophanes and Plato and an opponent of Pericles (he formally accused Pericles’s wife Aspasia of impiety), attested to this in his work On Lawmakers. All of which reinforces historians’ view of Charondas as the only firmly historical lawmaker of Greek Sicily.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on September 13, 2019: Las leyes de Caronda, el legislador greco-siciliano que las escribía en verso

SOURCES

Aristóteles, Política

Ioannis Stobæi, Anthologion

Diodoro Sículo, Biblioteca histórica

Luca Cerchiai, Lorena Jannelli, Fausto Longo, The greek cities of Magna Graecia and Sicily

Walter Kirkpatrick Lacey, The family in Classical Greece

Thomas Taylor, trad., Political fragments of Archytas, Charondas, Zaleucus, and other ancient pythagoreans

Wikipedia, Carondas

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