Gortyn code

Our sole source of knowledge of the code is the fragmentary boustrophedon inscription[2] on the circular walls of what might have been a bouleuterion or other public civic building in the agora of Gortyn.

Italian archaeologist Federico Halbherr found a further four columns of the text while excavating a site near a local mill in 1884.

Since this was evidently part of a larger text, he, with Ernst Fabricius and a team, obtained permission to excavate the rest of the site, revealing 8 more text columns whose stones had been reused as part of the foundations of a Roman Odeion from the 1st century BCE.

[5] The Dorian language was then pervasive among Cretan cities such as Knossos, Lyttos, Axos and various other areas of central Crete.

The code deals with such matters as disputed ownership of slaves, rape and adultery, the rights of a wife when divorced or a widow, the custody of children born after divorce, inheritance, sale and mortgaging of property, ransom, children of mixed (slave, free and foreign) marriages and adoption.

A free man convicted of raping a serf or a slave would receive the lowest fine; a slave convicted of raping a free man or woman would warrant the highest fine.

Adultery is punished similarly to rape under the code but also takes into consideration the location of the crime.

The code dictates higher fines for adultery committed within the household of the female's father, husband or brother, as opposed to another location.

The Gortyn law code grants a modicum of property rights to women in the case of divorce.

If the wife dies, the husband becomes the trustee to her property and may take no action on it without the consent of her children.