Ancient Greek Legal System （2）

EARLY LAWS
After the Dark Ages - About 1200-900 BC - and beginning at about 900 BC, the Ancient Greeks had no official laws or punishments.
Murders were settled by members of the victim's family, who would then go and kill the murderer.
This often began endless blood feuds.
It was not until the middle of the seventh century BC that the Greeks first began to establish official laws.
Around 620 BC Draco, the lawgiver, wrote the first known written law of Ancient Greece.
This law established exile as the penalty for homicide and was the only one of Draco's laws that Solon kept when he was appointed law giver in about 594 BC. Solon created many new laws that fit into the four basic categories of Ancient Greek law.
Tort Laws
A tort occurs when someone does harm to you or to your property
Draco and Solon wrote many of these laws.
These laws had specific penalties for specific crimes.
Most crimes involved monetary (payment) penalties.
Murder was a tort law, and the punishment was exile as set by Draco.
Under Solon's laws, fine for rape was 100 drachmas, and the penalty for theft depended on the amount stolen.
Other offenses and penalties were things like the offense of a dog bite, the penalty for which was to surrender the dog wearing a three-cubit-long wooden collar.
Solon even made laws to serve as guidelines for the spacing and placement of houses, walls, ditches, wells, beehives, and certain types of trees.
Family Laws
Solon also created many family laws, which were laws that regulated the behavior of men and women. He wrote laws on allowances in marriage and adoption, as well as laws concerning inheritances and supporting roles of parents.
Penalties for these laws were not set, but were enforced by the head of the particular family.
Linked to family laws were laws concerning women, whose role in Greek law was extremely small. This is because they were under constant supervision by their kyrios, or "official guardian."
Most often this was a girl's father, or if she were married it was her husband. Because of this supervision, women's role in law was limited to rare court appearances, where she was either presenting evidence in a homicide case, or was being displayed along with her family to try to evoke pity from the jury.