Law Code

The largest known Greek inscription is to be found at Gortyn. Dating back to the first half of the 5th century BC, it is a legal code inscribed on twelve stone columns or tablets, the greater part of which is built into a later phase of the north-western wall of the Odeon at Gortyn.

The six hundred-line code is written boustrophedon (from right to left and back again), in an archaic Doric alphabet. It is an attempt to record and codify older and more recent laws, dealing in the main with matters of property, inheritance, rape and seduction, slaves, divorce, adoption and, in general, with issues that lay behind litigation at the time.