Nomothets

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As nomothetai ( Greek  νομοθέται , legislators ) were in Greek antiquity in general legislature, applicants for new or existing amending laws or the elected members of a constitutional commission in Athens v of the late 5th or early 4th century. Called BC. In Kyme , Magnesia am Mäander and Korkyra they were called nomographoi . In Athens in the 7th and 6th centuries BC It was those who wrote down the customary law that had previously only been passed on orally. In Attica there had previously been a struggle for the record of the applicable law, which had previously only been passed down orally and was in the hands of the long-established families who wanted to ensure its unchanged continued existence with reference to its supposedly divine origin.

The transition from the original aristocratic state to the timocratic , i.e. wealth- related hoplite polis and from this to a democratically colored form of government - at the end of the 6th century BC. In Athens, for example - was on the one hand the result of internal social disputes, on the other hand of military necessities, which led to more and more circles being drawn into armed service. As later in republican Rome , so in Hellas the state constitution and the army order were mutually dependent.

Initial social tensions had been alleviated by colonization . Nevertheless, tensions in the Greek mother cities remained. The drastic differences in wealth, the different sources of income, the legal protection of the poor, the fear of the threat of enslavement, the struggle for the political rights of the owners of movable property against the landowners - all of these threatened to endanger state cohesion. In order to make the disputes in court more just and controllable for the poorer strata, the first step was to lay down the jurisprudence in writing.

Some of these legislators oppose us as historical figures, especially Drakon and Solon in Athens, Zaleukos in Lokri, and Charondas in Katane.

The Greek legal awareness was practiced in very different ways, but found its perfection in Attic law and from there influenced other states and also, to a limited extent, Roman law. In contrast to Rome, it was not shaped by a professional legal class, but by legal technicians and litigation practitioners.

In contrast, the early days had no public law. Rather, the father's penal power and the revenge of the injured family group dominated the family.

Drakon initiated the first legislation and its recording in Athens, but under Solon there was no punishment that would have been enforced by state organs. Only in the 6th century BC The private executive was gradually suppressed.

The only originally preserved large legal codification from the classical period is the town charter of Gortys in Crete , which is written on a public building and is accessible to everyone in 12 columns and includes personal, family, inheritance, property and obligation law.

Specifically, nomothets were in Athens in the 4th century BC. The members of a body whose laws (nomoi) at that time were differentiated from the decisions of the people's assembly (psephismata) .

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