Deliberately, indeliberately, hybristically: intention and mental state as determinants of violent crime and homicide convictions in Classical Athens

Abstract

In Classical Athens (ca. 480–330 BCE), the juries were rather free to decide whether a violation of a given law had taken place or not. In this article, I analyse the role and rhetoric of one’s mental state in the legal context and weigh the importance of the defendant’s motives and intentions for the jurors when deliberating the judgement. I will use Draco’s law on homicide, Solon’s poems, and law-court speeches as sources. I will also study the healing methods of dangerous mental states in Plato’s Laws. The central research questions are: Did some mental states make the defendant criminally unaccountable in the eyes of the juries or, vice versa, were there mental states which were believed to make the crime particularly condemnable and the criminal especially dangerous? Did the convictions aim at expiating the crime or rehabilitating the criminal? The moral, social, religious, and legal concept of hybris will be of vital importance. With this article, I aim to enhance our understanding on the functions of social control and penal system from the perspective of ancient Athens. I will propose that when determining convictions, the juries both judged on account of the defendant’s intent and reacted to pollution caused by the crime.