No systematic collection of Greek laws has come down to us. Our knowledge of some of the earliest notions of the subject is derived from the Homeric poems. For the details of Attic law we have to depend on _ex parte_ statements in the speeches of the Attic orators, and we are sometimes enabled to check those statements by the trustworthy, but often imperfect, aid of inscriptions. Incidental illustrations of the laws of Athens may be found in the Laws of Plato, who deals with the theory of the subject without exercising any influence on actual practice. The Laws of Plato are criticized in the _Politics_ of Aristotle, who, besides discussing laws in their relation to constitutions, reviews the work of certain early Greek lawgivers. The treatise on the _Constitution of Athens_ includes an account of the jurisdiction of the various public officials and of the machinery of the law courts, and thus enables us to dispense with the second-hand testimony of grammarians and scholiasts who derived their information from that treatise (see CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS). The works of Theophrastus _On the Laws_, which included a recapitulation of the laws of various barbaric as well as Grecian states, are now represented by only a few fragments (Nos. 97-106, ed. Wimmer). Law in Homer. Our earliest evidence is to be sought in the Homeric poems. In the primitive society of the heroic age (as noticed by Plato) written laws were necessarily unknown; for, "in that early period, they had no letters; they lived by habit and by the customs of their ancestors" (_Laws_, 680 A). We find a survival from a still more primitive time in the savage Cyclops, who is "unfamiliar with dooms of law, or rules of right" ([Greek: oute dikas eu eidota oute themistas], _Od._ ix. 215 and 112 f.). Dike. _Dike_ ([Greek: dike]), assigned by Curtius (_Etym._ 134) to the same root as [Greek: deiknymi], primarily means a "way pointed out," a "course prescribed by usage," hence "way" or "fashion," "manner" or "precedent." In the Homeric poems it sometimes signifies a "doom" of law, a legal "right," a "lawsuit"; while it is rarely synonymous with "justice," as in _Od._ xiv. 84, where "the gods honour justice," [Greek: tiousi diken]. Themis. Various senses of "right" are expressed in the same poems by _themis_ ([Greek: themis]), a term assigned (_ib._ 254) to the same root as [Greek: tithemi]. In its primary sense _themis_ is that which "has been laid down"; hence a particular decision or "doom." The plural _themistes_ implies a body of such precedents, "rules of right," which the king receives from Zeus with his sceptre (_Il._ ix. 99). _Themis_ and _dike_ have sometimes been compared with the Roman _fas_ and _jus_ respectively, the former being regarded as of divine, the latter of human origin; and this is more satisfactory than the latest view (that of Hirzel), which makes "counsel" the primary meaning of _themis_. Thesmos. Nomos.