Denise
DEMETRIOU Law and Order: A Legal Document from
a Greek emporion in Thrace
In
1990, archaeologists in Vetren, Bulgaria, discovered an
inscription issued sometime shortly after the death of
the Thracian king Kotys I (359 BCE) that records the
rights Thracian authorities granted to Greek resident
traders living in an emporion called Pistiros (Velkov and Domaradzka,
BCH 1994). The
inscription describes traders' rights vis-à-vis
both other merchants and Thracian natives and rulers; the
limits of the Thracians' power over the Greeks living in
Thrace; and various economic provisions. This
little-known inscription is of singular importance: its
detailed legislation reveals the inner workings of trade
across cultural borders and the legal mechanisms a host
society used to manage and control foreign communities in
its lands. Yet, scholarship has focused mainly on the
inscription's economic aspects (e.g. Avram, Il Mar
Nero,
1997-98; Bravo, BCH 1999; Archibald, TALANTA 2000-2001). In
this paper I analyze the legal stipulations for what they
imply about interethnic relations between Greeks and
Thracians. I demonstrate that law and religion served to
mediate both between the host society and the Greeks of
Pistiros and among the diverse community of traders who
came from different poleis.
The text
begins with an oath sworn by the Thracian rulers to
Dionysus. I suggest that as a divinity that both
Thracians and Greeks recognized, Dionysus could serve as
a cultural intermediary between the two groups,
guaranteeing the text's provisions to both.
More than religion, however,
law emerges as the main vehicle used to mediate both
among different Greeks and between Greeks and Thracians.
To regulate affairs among the resident traders who
brought claims against one another, the Thracian rulers
legislated that traders were to be judged by their
"syngeneis"
(l.4-7). I argue that syngeneis
were not the traders' relatives (contra
Velkov and Domaradzka, BCH
1994, 4); rather the term refers to arbitrators from syngeneis
poleis &endash; a term that describes friendly
interstate relations in diplomatic documents. The
practice of sending foreign arbitrators from syngeneis
poleis was an easy way for foreign royals to
adjudicate affairs in subjugated communities whose ethnic
make-up was not homogeneous without infringing on the
cities' autonomy. Other portions of the decree focus on
the relations between the Greeks and Thracians of
Pistiros. Thracian debts owed to the Greeks could not be
cancelled; the traders' land and other possessions could
not be confiscated; soldiers could not be sent to
Pistiros; and, hostages could not be taken from among the
residents (l. 7-20). The Thracian authorities thus
granted the Greek traders the right to pursue their
operations without any threat to their safety and with
limited autonomy.
In sum, the
legislation recorded on this inscription reveals how an
emporion located in a
non-Greek land was organized legally and how the
different resident groups interacted with one another in
day-to-day life. Law and, to a lesser extent, religion
could create a mutually comprehensible world for both
Greeks and Thracians.
Abstracts
Index