Department of Classcis

Since the inhabitants of classical Athens and mid-Republican Rome had ample opportunity to create and use documents of a legal nature in their everyday lives (laws, decrees, contracts, leases, wills), it would not be surprising to discover the literary artifacts of material legal culture on the comic stage. (1) It is unusual for legal documents to provide a mechanism of identification in New Comedy, but one such document appears in Menander's Sikyonioi.

Greek cities in different times and places, whether democratic or oligarchic, whether subordinated to Hellenistic kings or autonomous and free, whether members of leagues or their capital cities, kept records. These might have included treaties, laws, decrees, letters of kings, and their officials, inventories of treasures, accounts of building projects, accounts of revenues and money-lending activities, lists of magistrates, or lists of particular sets of citizens -such as ephebes, of men fit for cavalry service, and of debtors to the state. These records may have been deposited inside a building that would function in part or solely as an archive and possibly the building, often a temple, would be accessible to the public; or records may also have been publicly displayed, temporarily or permanently.

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