several years ago corey brennan suggested that i collect a number of my essays on Athenian Law and publish them in a single volume. With his encouragement, I submitted a proposal to Cambridge University Press, which agreed to publish this volume. I have not included every article that I have published on the subject of Athenian Law, but only those that fall into one of four general categories: Constitutional Law, Law and Economy, Law and the Family, and Aspects of Procedure. In general, these essays focus on specific laws and legal procedures and attempt to place them in their political, social, and economic contexts. They therefore pay less attention to the ways in which the Athenians interpreted, applied, and enforced the law in their courts. This topic will be the subject of another book on The Rule of Law in Action: The Nature of Litigation in Classical Athens. Aside from a few minor stylistic changes, I have not revised the essays. I have tried to take account of recent work on Athenian Law in the sections entitled “Afterthoughts” that follow most of the essays.

I am writing these words at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, but the work on these essays was done while I was a member of the Department of Classics at Brooklyn College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. I could never have done this work without the encouragement and support of my former colleagues in New York, for which I am deeply grateful.