Anyone know anything about civil law in ancient cities? I don't know why I was thinking about this. But I wonder if there were restrictive laws in, say, ancient Rome, or Athens, or whereever... I guess I was thinking about how we have zoning laws and other stuff like that, because with so many people living together there has to be rules nowadays. Of course, ancient cities were no different, though they were relatively smaller. Still a lot of people living very close together. Anyways, I just wondered if there were a bunch of laws back then. Did people get arrested for things other than stealing, killing, and other obvious crimes?
Murder, theft, dissension (including monetary), and infidelity (on the woman's part mostly) seem to be the only widely accepted "crimes." Most commonly the punishment was death.
i rember an old roman law that prevented cart traffic in the main road ways of the city except for the virgins of the flame so the first of traffic laws really, used to keep the streets of rome rut free!
it really depends on what ancient city at what time in antiquity and what social class you were in... impiety was a big thing though...that's what socrates was killed for, his apparent impiety and corruption of the youth.
i think there was some fellow in the middle east a while back (think 3/4 thousand years) years ago who had carved in stone the first parking laws. anyone who parked on the kings main road really annoyed the king, the penalty a slow torturous death
Read Plato's republic and you'll see that he wanted to bring in all kinds of restrictions in the utopian society envisioned. Even some types of music were to be banned, along with 'lascivious' stories about the gods. Generally though, both Greek and Roman socities were stratified into aristos, plebians and slaves. Many restrictions applied to slaves which would be unthinkable now.
LOL oh thats great IronGoth. I enjoy picking on the Irish too =P The Scots variety of tap dancing is much better, it involves swords.
