| Finished report - Ian stands before the ancient law code looking rather triumphant after his finished report |
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The Law Code of Gortyn
- James Whitley in his article "Cretan Laws and Cretan Literacy" posits a roughly Near Eastern scribal tradition level of literacy on Crete in the 5th C
when the code was written. From Whitley's perspective, the monumental quality of the Great Code is more important than whether the average Gortynian
could read it.
- Whitley basis his judgment on a comparative study of quantity of graphiti and other non-state sponsored writing at Sparta, Athens, and Crete.
- According to Herodotus and Aristotle, Lykourgos visited Crete before reforming the Spartan laws (Hdt. 1.65.4; Politics 2.10 1271b24-30)
- The Right to Choose - Apparently a woman who had a child out of wedlock had the right to infanticide:
"If a wife who is separated (by divorce) should bear a child, (they) are to bring it to the husband at his house
in the presence of three witnesses; and if he should not receive it, the child shall be in the mother's power either to rear or to expose;
and the relatives and witnesses shall have preference in the oath as to whether they brought it" (Willets 3.44-52)
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