> <i>"Another approach to the speech would be to take its rhetorical and performative features as evidence for the view that Athenian trials are essentially rhetorical struggles between opposing litigants for a status-based supremacy, and are generally unconcerned with the strict applicability of the law to the relevant facts."</i><p>There are two things worth highlighting that the author doesn't really go into.<p>First, as Richard Posner put it in The Problems of Jurisprudence," <i>"Natural Law had more bite in Greek thought than it has in ours."</i> In other words, the law was primarily a manner of sublimating the instincts for revenge and for fair play. It would be quite correct to say that Greek law <i>was</i> Natural Law, and that they would not allow codes or precedents to twist the administration of the law into something unjust. This is a point in their favor.<p>Second -- and this is seen throughout the Greek world, including very famously in the Iliad and in the trial of Socrates -- passing judgment was an extension of the sovereign's right to govern, and virtually all sovereigns believed that the judgments they pass <i>should be popular with the people.</i> Even if a matter of Natural Law is clear, they might not prosecute it if it is unpopular -- or, conversely, they might use the sovereign right to administer the law to pursue unjust but popular ends. (Though this was uncommon and the practice of ostracism may have grown to soften this urge.) This is a point against the Greeks.<p>So: A legal system not beholden to black-letter law, but very sensitive to popular sentiment. Of course stories had an awful lot of power. Much more than they have today.<p>In the film Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) there is a "pirate code" -- but at certain points the pirates just break the code. The excuse Captain Hector Barbossa (Barbarossa) gives to his snooty and respectable prisoners is that "The code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules." That is the essence of Greek Law.