Abstract
The unique system of Greek city-states created a political situation necessary for international law, named a set of relationships between different independent political units. There were treaties at least as far back as the fourteenth century B. C. between the Egyptian Pharaohs and the neighboring kings, but their agreements covered only the relationships between the countries concerned and were not extended to a group of states1. The Indian code of Manu of about 500 B. C. was the first written attempt of which records are known to prescribe rules for the conduct of war, but its provisions dealt with only some of the technicalities of practicing warfare2. The Hellenic world provides, from what we have record, the first clear example of international law defining relationships between sovereign political units bound together by a common culture and religion.
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Notes
Cf. J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1906), III, 163 ff.
Cf. A. K. Burnell and E. W. Hopkins, The Ordinances of Manu (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Tübner & Co., 1891), Lecture VII.
Cf. E. Barker, Greek Political Theory (2d ed.; London: Methuen & Co., 1925).
A. Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth (4th ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924).
A. E. R. Boak, “Greek Interstate Associations and the League of Nations”, Am. Journal International Law. XV (1921), 375–383.
F. Laurent, Histoire du Droit des Gens et des Relations Internationales (Gand: L. Hebbelynck, 1850-70), II, 3
cf. W. S. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913), pp. 1–35.
C. PJiillipson, The International Law and Custom of Ancient Greece and Rome (London: Macmillian & Co., 1911), I, 40–1.
Mauritius Müller-Jochmus, Geschichte des Völkerrechts im Alterthum (Leipzig: E. Keil & Comp., 1848), p. 119.
Cf. G. Busolt, Griechische Staatskunde (München: Beck, 1926), II, 1260. “Dieses [Krieg-und Beuterecht] gebot die formliche Ankündigung des Krieges durch einen Herold (Keryx) vor dem Beginne der Feindseligkeiten. Übertretungen dieser Vorschrift sind allerdings vorgekommen aber in der Regel hat man sie beobachtet”.
Phillipson, op. cit., II, 179. For an interesting example of the alleging of a definite cause of war, cf. the discussion between the Melians and the Athenians in B. Jowett, trans., Thucyaides (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900), II, 168–9.
W. E. Caldwell, Hellenic Conceptions of Peace (New York: Columbia University, 1919), p. 44.
F. E. Adcock, “Some Aspects of Ancient Greek Diplomacy”, Proceedings of Classical Association of England and Wales, XXI (1924), 96.
Cf. Sir Paul Vinagradoff, Outlines of Historical Jurisprudence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1929).
“We will not destroy any Amphictyonic town nor cut it off from running water, in war or peace. If any one shall do this we will march against him and destroy his city. If any one shall plunder the property of the god, or shall take treacherous counsel against the things in his temple at Delphi, we will punish him with foot and hand and voice, and by every means in our power”. Quoted in G. G. Wilson, International Law (8th ed.; New York: Silver, Burdett & Co., 1922), p. 16.
Baron S. A. Korff, “An Introduction to the History of International Law”, AJIL, XVIII (1924), 252.
Cf. C. Phillipson, The International Law and Custom of Ancient Greece and Rome (London: Macmillan & Co., 1911), II, 195–6.
T. Frank, “The Import of the Fetial Institution”, Classical Philology, VII (1912), 335
T. Frank, Roman Imperialism (New York: Macmillan Co., 1914).
D. J. Hill, A History of Diplomacy in International Development of Europe (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1905), I, 9; Baron Korff, “An Introduction to the History of International Law”, op. cit., p. 252.
J. A. O. Larsen, “Was Greece Free between 196 and 146 B. C.?” Classical Philology, XXX (1935), 194–7.
F. Laurent, Histoire du Droit des Gens et des Relations Internationales (Gand: L. Hebbelynck, 1850–70), III, 15–19; C. Phillipson, op. cit., II, 315.
T. A. Walker, A History of the Law of Nations (Cambridge: University Press, 1899), I, 9.
H. Wehberg, The Outlawry of War (Washington, D. C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1931), p. 1.
A. Weiss, “Le Droit Fétial et les Fétiaux à Rome”, La France Judiciaire (Paris: G. Pedone-Lauriel, 1883).
Laurent, op. cit., III, 17; J. Marquardt, Romische Staatsverwaltung (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1885), III, 427; Phillipson, op. cit., II, 180, and footnote 3 on same page; Baviera, “II dir. inter, dei Rom.”, Archivio giuridico (Modena, 1898), Nuova Serie, I and II, 494.
Hill, op. cit., I, 9. T. Frank, “The Import of the Fetial Institution”, Classical Philology, VII (1912), 335–42: “Of late, to be sure, the general attitude toward the fetial institution has been to hold that its work was not very extensive. Laurent in his influential Histoire du droit des gens, III, propounded the theory that the word justum was here as in several other legal formulae merely a technical term referring only to the correctness with which the priests performed the necessary formalities at the opening of a war, that in fact any war which had been opened in the prescribed manner was called a helium justum, even though the demands were inequitable. The passage on which he based this claim was Cic. De rep. ii 31: ‘Our fathers thought no war justum unless due request for restitution was first made and the war formally proclaimed’. It is clear that this conclusion rests upon a fallacy of the undistributed middle, furthermore, that it cannot possibly fit in the part of the formula wherein the enemy is charged with having been injustum (ego vos testor populum ilium injustum esse neque jus persolvere, Livy, loc. cit. [i, 32. 7–10]). Yet Laurent’s view has constantly gained ground and is now very widely accepted”. Miiller-Jochmus, op. cit., p. 155. Weiss, op. cit., p. 478.
Cf. W. L. Newman, Politics of Ayistotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887), I, 328.
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Ballis, W. (1937). Ancient Times. In: The Legal Position of War: Changes in its Practice and Theory from Plato to Vattel. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-5948-9_2
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