Justice in Hesiod’s poetry

In very ancient Greece, such as the one narrated by Homer in his poems justice was based on themistes i.e. sort of sacred decrees that somehow the Gods inspired to the βασιλευς through dreams or oracles. These both supernaturally originated and religiously enforced laws then actually ruled those communities and being harvested and transmitted from generation to generation became a rather complex and sacrosanct system of duties, rights and even jurisprudence. Consequently, in that age the word Θέμις (Themis) was considered the translation for Justice, being, besides, Θέμις the God of Justice. Nonetheless, Greeks also had used another term to convey the sense of justice i.e. Δίκη. (Dike) These two terms (Themis and Dike) that seem to have been sort of synonyms during what is called by modern scholars the Greek Dark Age (until circa 700 B.C.) became as the political structure of πολις began to develop and then evolved, diverse and to a certain extent identified justice in two different stages of ancient Greek socio-political framework.

In the first stage of this said evolution Θέμις was a Justice administered within a community by a narrow aristocratic circle where rules were conceived, interpreted and respected because they are considered being the direct will of the Gods. A rather brutal and mainly predatory aristocratic society – as the ones described by Homer – is the principal actor within this social framework where agriculture is still undeveloped and sheep farming and neighbourhood ransacking constitute its main economy. Later on these communities started to convert their war-structures into more pacific and agricultural societies, and later on even mercantile and naval ones. Concomitantly the Greek world developed also the concept of law, which was still in the first stage difficult to distinguish from justice itself. Thus human laws replaced supernatural and divine laws. This process obviously was not immediate, but surely the need to legalise the economic and non-economic relations among people within the community and the necessity to give exact and reliable rules to increasingly complex transactions, most certainly accelerated the birth and growth of Δίκη. Finally after a period of interregnum during which the two sets of laws somehow coexisted, Dike – together with nomos (written law) as its operational longa manus – took definitively the place of Θέμις in meaning justice, and at the same time certainty of rights and duties. The main achievement of Greek society – democracy – therefore has also fundaments in Dike combined with nomos whose resultant was equal rights.

Nevertheless, at the dawn of Greek re-birth and yet long before democracy was reached, Hesiod (circa 700 B.C.) was already living, feeling and describing this transition. In his poem The works and the days Hesiod basically deals with the pains originating from working as a farmer and yet he recommends a simple – though hard – life based on manual labour and reproaches inactivity and laziness. Hesiod’s verses are quite dry and samey, nonetheless he suddenly somehow bursts against unjust judges. Actually Hesiod is incited by a personal case he had lost against his own brother Perses:

But you, Perses, listen to right and do not foster
violence; for violence is bad for a poor man. Even the
prosperous cannot easily bear its burden, but is weighed down
under it when he has fallen into delusion

He describes the judges as δωροφάγοι – referring to bribing and corruptibility which were likely to happen also in those days:

But only when he has suffered does the fool learn this. For Oath
keeps pace with wrong judgements. There is a noise when Justice
is being dragged in the way where those who devour bribes and
give sentence with crooked judgements, take her.

Thus Hesiodos hopes are placed in Dike as a superior justice:

The better path is to go by on the other side towards justice; for Justice beats
Outrage when she comes at length to the end of the race
(…omissis…)
And she,wrapped in mist, follows to the city and haunts of the people,
weeping, and bringing mischief to men, even to such as have
driven her forth in that they did not deal straightly with her

And this Justice should be applied to everyone: aristocratic and not, even including the βασιλευς:

You princes, mark well this punishment you also;
for the deathless gods are near among men and mark all those who
oppress their fellows with crooked judgements, and reck not the
anger of the gods.

According to Hesiod such a Dike is a necessity, because without it a community cannot prosper:

they who give straight judgements to strangers
and to the men of the land, and go not aside from what is just,
their city flourishes, and the people prosper in it: Peace, the
nurse of children, is abroad in their land, and all-seeing Zeus
never decrees cruel war against them. Neither famine nor
disaster ever haunt men who do true justice; but light-heartedly
they tend the fields which are all their care. The earth bears
them victual in plenty, and on the mountains the oak bears acorns
upon the top and bees in the midst. Their woolly sheep are laden
with fleeces; their women bear children like their parents. They
flourish continually with good things, and do not travel on
ships, for the grain-giving earth bears them fruit.

However it must be underlined that Hesiodos portrays Gods and other supernatural agents that keep spying on humanity in order to verify the application of justice and punish injustice:

But for those who practise violence and cruel deeds
far-seeing Zeus, the son of Cronos, ordains a punishment. Often
even a whole city suffers for a bad man who sins and devises
presumptuous deeds, and the son of Cronos lays great trouble upon
the people, famine and plague together, so that the men perish
away, and their women do not bear children, and their houses
become few, through the contriving of Olympian Zeus. And again,
at another time, the son of Cronos either destroys their wide
army, or their walls, or else makes an end of their ships on the
sea.
(…omissis…)For upon the bounteous earth Zeus has thrice
ten thousand spirits, watchers of mortal men, and these keep
watch on judgements and deeds of wrong as they roam, clothed in
mist, all over the earth. And there is virgin Justice, the
daughter of Zeus, who is honoured and reverenced among the gods
who dwell on Olympus, and whenever anyone hurts her with lying
slander, she sits beside her father, Zeus the son of Cronos, and
tells him of men’s wicked heart, until the people pay for the mad
folly of their princes who, evilly minded, pervert judgement and
give sentence crookedly. Keep watch against this, you princes,
and make straight your judgements, you who devour bribes; put
crooked judgements altogether from your thoughts.

Therefore Hesiod’s Dike, albeit containing many forthcoming features of democratic justice and nomos, is still intensely linked to a remarkable mythological interpretation which was typical of Hesiod’s age.

Nevertheless Hesiod is more distant from the Homeric Θέμις approach and much closer to the isonomic sense of justice, a logic which will be paramount for the actual birth of democracy – and even modern and applicable to our own days:

οἷ γ‘ αὐτῷ κακὰ τεύχει ἀνὴρ ἄλλῳ κακὰ τεύχων,
ἡ δὲ κακὴ βουλὴ τῷ βουλεύσαντι κακίστη

[He does mischief to himself who does mischief to
another, and evil planned harms the plotter most.]