Thanos Zartaloudis, The Birth of Nomos, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019

The main purpose of this book is to “examine in some detail the uses of the term nómos” (p. xiv), customarily translated as ‘law’, as well as the verb nemo and its other derivates, with a particular emphasis placed on its semantical evolution, i.e. the development of nomos from its archaic, pre-judicial meaning(s), whatever they were, to the senses which seem to be closer to the modern notion of “law”. Nevertheless, given the fact that the previous publications of Thanos Zartaloudis’ (hereafter Z.) have been largely devoted to Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy of law, one would expect that also his most recent book, the title of which announces a study of the essential category for the considerations of the Italian philosopher, would mainly constitute a defence of some of the Agamben’ ideas and interpretations of the Greek nomos, or an effort to develop his methods presented in his famous “Homo Sacer”^[1] to a wider body of texts. To my astonishment, Z.’s work goes far beyond this horizon of expectations and takes into account a wide range of subjects, bringing together most (but not all, see below) of the literary evidences regarding the meaning of nomos.

The introduction, in addition to some methodological considerations, provides a brief overview of traditional theories on the etymology and the source meaning of the concept under study. Each time Z. points to their limitations, emphasizing that nomos has never been a semantic monolith, which could be sufficiently reduced to one context or sense (p. xxii). Simultaneously, the cited etymologies largely guide his own considerations: one of the listed hypotheses, originally formulated by Emmanuel Laroche, who searched for the original meaning of the verb nemein on the ground of ‘ritual distribution-sharing’, takes the reader to the first chapter, devoted to “Feasts and Sacrifices” in the Homeric tradition. Z. begins there by showing the role of feasts in archaic Greece, their social and religious functions, with particular emphasis on sympotic practices of sharing of food and wine. In light of the background outlined there, in ch. II (entitled “Nomos Moirēgenēs”) Z. seeks to demonstrate in turn the ‘close proximity’ between nemein and moira. And, while giving surprisingly much attention to the second concept, already analysed in the previous section, he is using it as a ‘case study’: based on this example he clearly demonstrates, then, how archaic terminology, which draws its source from sacrificial rituals and practices of commensality, simultaneously resonates with social contexts; terms such as moira, aisa, kosmos, dynamis, and foremost nomos, as Z. shows, were already used in the times of Homer in a wide variety of ways, becoming a tool for conceptualizing ethical or eschatological intuitions related to ‘destiny’, and determining one’s own place in the social as well as the cosmological order.

Ch. III (“the Nomos of the Land”) sets out to delineate the socio-economic aspects of nómos, nomós, and the family of words to which they both belong. On that occasion, Z. goes far beyond the epic tradition, reaching for archaeological evidences and research hypotheses concerning the administration and distribution of worldly goods in the Dark Ages and the Mycenaean era. He also devotes much attention to the phenomenon of apoikismos, viz. “colonization” and the role of oikos understood as ‘the settlement-kinship unit’ (p. 102). His detailed analyses, unfortunately more often based on the Mycenaean tablets than on the text of Homer, lead the author to the assumption – postulated by many researchers before, for example by Carl Schmitt – that the meaning of nomos and the verb nemein have been largely grounded in the context of land distribution. At the same time Z. points out that these ‘land-management’ practices did not belong to the legal order in the present sense of this word, but rather constituted a “part of a ritualised nexus” and “juridical-political ordering” that could only be understood “in the sense of an ēthos, a way of life” (p. 119).

After his systematic investigation of the “pre-history of the Homeric age”, in ch. IV (“Pastoral Nomos”), Z. explores the metaphorical senses of nemein and nomos, offering an insightful view of the impact of the social and economic reality on the imagery and mindset of archaic Greeks. Further, the meaning of the figure of the shepherd is considered to be crucial for the political rhetoric known from both Homer and later epochs. The first part of the book, devoted to nomos in the Homeric tradition, closes with some considerations on the notion of nemesis presented in ch. V: here Z. argues that this concept did not mean originally the abstract ‘revenge’ or ‘redress’, but rather expressed a complex network of social dependencies related to distribution. Unfortunately, Z. ignores the potential of this thread here, as well as the abundant literature devoted to the issue of ‘reciprocity’^[2], leaving the reader somewhat halfway through the discussion.

With Chapter VI we move to the second, in my opinion, much weaker part of the book, devoted to the “post-Homeric Nomos”, in which Z. presents plenty of textual analyses of archaic and classical literary sources, placing them among the previously distinguished contexts and meanings of the concepts under discussion. Here, the fact that these chosen texts are arranged in chronological order sometimes leads the author to list, almost mechanically, the subsequent meanings and examples of the use of nomos without providing the full context. This tendency can be seen in particular in the part devoted to archaic poets, as well as in chapter IX which concerns classical tragedy, where Z. keeps repeatedly noting the recurrent senses of these terms: nomos as a ‘custom’, a ‘way of life’, religious-nomos, nomos as a political term etc.^[3] Earlier, Z. turns to Hesiodic tradition and shows how it develops the ambiguity of nomos and nemein, already visible in Homer’s tradition, to control the topical richness of narration. Thus, nomos can be seen as a bridge between the economic, political and, finally, cosmological (“cosmonomical”) levels or realms of the poetic work as a whole. Then Z. goes on to analyse Heraclitus (ch. VI), further exploring the cosmological and metaphysical potential of the verb nemo and its derivatives, and to Pindar and the famous motif of “Nomos Basileus” (ch. VIII), substantially determined by some influential and powerful (re)interpretations (especially of Hölderlin and Agamben). Here, he problematizes some canonical interpretations of the Pindaric fr. 169a and examines them through comprehensive ‘close reading’ of Papyrus Oxy. 2450, which adds almost 24 verses to the previously known passage, and by enhancing its interpretation through the intertextual analyses of some other Pindar’s fragments.

In ch. X (“Nomos Mousikos”), which, for reasons that remain unclear to me, closes the book, at the same time breaking away from the previously adopted chronological method of grouping material, Z. returns to the thesis put forward in ch. I and further develops his main argument on the crucial importance of the ritual context for the “birth” and development of nomos. Interestingly, the problem of the relationship between law and poetry – as the reader could see, often organized around the topic of ‘justice’ – is also taken here. For this purpose, Z. examines in detail the practices of oral transmission of laws as musically sung (which, however, as he himself points out several times, are reported in late sources, and thus constitute the subject of much controversy). Unfortunately, considering the fact that decisions and resolutions of semi-mythical law-givers like Charondas or Zaleucus were called thesmoi, not nomoi, and the oldest examples of the use of nomos in musical contexts come from the 5th century BC, the reader may still wonder if the social-worship context – determined by the interrelationships between the ritual, poetry-singing and any other forms of “social ordering”, visualized with great erudition by the author – actually reflect the “birth” of this key concept itself.

On this occasion, few criticisms may be offered. First of all, Z. repeatedly emphasizes that our own perception of the legal sphere, nowadays deeply institutionalised and relatively autonomous from other areas of political and social activities, poses a methodological challenge – thus, while presenting a multifaceted examination of the title term nomos, he is trying to avoid any arbitrarily and anachronistically accepted limitation or restriction on it meaning. The constant fear of abusing the modern technical terminology of legal research and projecting some unjustified evolutionary model of interpretation of the chosen concept seems to result, however, in the marginalised role of the ‘legality’ itself: the nature of legal sanctions, institutional procedures and authorities that enforced them etc. This, in turn, may raise doubts whether it is possible to explain – without an in-depth analysis oriented towards the development of legislation in Greece, based not only on literary texts but also on the inscribed decrees and laws – how the notion of nomos began to be used by Greeks with strong legal implications.

Moreover, while all pieces of this multi-level project are rich in their own right, Z.’s caution in framing the general interpretation of the analysed passages and examples of the use of nomos sometimes gives the whole book an impression of disorderliness or inconsistency. That impression is strengthened by the lack of clear exposition of what each chapter seeks to discuss. The author doesn’t offer a summary of the main points either. As a consequence, the reader may be a bit surprised when so much space is devoted to the hypotheses about the division of the land in the Mycenaean era, while other topics, e.g. the relation of the term nomos to some legal institutions of Greece (often evoking this concept already at the lexical level, ie. ‘astynomos’, ‘agoranomos’ etc.), as well as the ambiguity of the term in court speeches, are silently dismissed by the author. Lastly, the typographical errors should be noted, especially in Greek words and their transcription into the Latin alphabet, e.g. mōros instead of moros (p. 50), horthos and horthonomoi instead of ortho- (p. 265), αἰδῶς instead of αἰδώς (p. 154) etc.

Summing up, the book is an intriguing proposal to look not only at the title concept, but also at the development of the normative and legal discourse in Greece from a perspective that is somewhat external to the topic of law. Therefore, the fact that Z. does not seem particularly interested in the issue of Greek legislation and the legal history as such, while being a significant disappointment for someone and, apart from that, being the book’s main weakness, paradoxically distinguishes it from many other studies relating to the concept of nomos^[4].

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^* Mgr Jan Skarbek-Kazanecki – Assistant Professor and PhD Student at the Department of Classical Philology, University of Lodz. His interests include archaic Greek poetry and music, especially the elegiac tradition, the philosophy of Plato and Modern Greece. A member of the academic society Collegium Invisibile; in cooperation with the Polish Children’s Fund (Krajowy Fundusz na rzecz Dzieci) he conducts workshops and talks for high school students. His dissertation focuses on the concept of “justice” (δίκη) in the Corpus Theognideum.

e-mail: jan.skarbek@unilodz.eu