greek-politicsfeatured in 30 works

The Lawgiver

The founding legislator who hands a city its laws — figures like Athens' Solon and Sparta's Lycurgus.

The lawgiver (nomothetēs) is the founder-legislator who frames or reforms a city's constitution — often a figure half-historical, half-legendary. The two archetypes are Solon, who reshaped Athens' laws (early 6th c. BCE), and Lycurgus, the semi-mythical author of Sparta's order. Greek thinkers from Herodotus to Plato and Aristotle treated the wise lawgiver as the key to a city's whole character, and the figure later inspired Enlightenment ideas of the constitutional founder.

How it traveled

Histories
Thurii (Magna Graecia) · -425
explains
Republic
Athens · -375
explains
Cratylus
Athens · -375
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Constitution of the Lacedaimonians
Athens · -354
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Against Aristocrates
Athens · -353
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Laws
Athens · -348
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Letters
Athens · -348
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Minos
Athens · -348
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Against Timarchus
Athens · -346
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Against Ctesiphon
Athens · -330
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Res Publica Atheniensium
Chalcis · -325
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Politics
Chalcis · -322
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Against Timocrates
Athens · -322
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Against Leptines
Athens · -322
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Nicomachean Ethics
Chalcis · -322
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Against Leochares
Athens · -322
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Histories
Megalopolis · -118
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De Republica
Formiae · -54
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Ab urbe condita
Padua · -27
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Geography
Amaseia · 24
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Lycurgus
Chaeronea · 120
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Solon
Chaeronea · 120
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Agis and Cleomenes
Chaeronea · 120
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Apophthegmata Laconica
Chaeronea · 120
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Comparison of Lycurgus and Numa
Chaeronea · 120
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Numa
Chaeronea · 120
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Instituta Laconia
Chaeronea · 120
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Agesilaus
Chaeronea · 120
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Comparison of Solon and Publicola
Chaeronea · 120
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Description of Greece
— · 180
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Key passages(20)

Aristotle, Politics 2.1274b↗explains

Politics · Aristotle