Having described so far the conceptual and historical background needed to understand the Greek-Roman concept of “crime”, it is time to detect this concept primarily in the ancient Greek texts from the 5^th to the 1^st c. BC., when Christianity was unknown . Though the ancient Greek distinction between public and private cases was by no means as the modern distinction between criminal and civil cases, or between crime and tort, it seems that the ancient Greeks had a real sense of “the violation of a right  and the evil tendency of such violation as regard the community at large” (MacDowell, 1978: 54; Calhoun, 1927: 6 f.). They call it hybris (arrogant violence arising from passion) and this can mutatis mutandis be considered as the “big bang” of the concept-formation of crime as we know it today. For the Greeks, manifestations of such a deliberately criminal behaviour are found in the misconduct of a young man full of energy as well as of men who abuse their wealth and political power. Other characteristic manifestations are further eating and drinking, sexual activity, larking about, hitting and killing, taking other people’s property and privileges, jeering at people and disobeying authority both human and divine. A person shows hybris (arrogance) by deliberately indulging in conduct which is bad, immoral, or at best useless, because it is what he wants to do, having no regard for the wishes or rights of other people (MacDowell, 1978: 129). The great 4^th c. BC Athenian orator Demosthenes, being himself the victim of hybris, comments on the law about this offence as follows:

So for hybris the legislator allowed graphai (written prosecutions) to anyone who wishes, and made the penalty entirely payable to the state. He considered that a man who attempts to act with hybris wrongs the state, not just the victim; and that vengeance is sufficient compensation for the victim, and he ought not to take money for himself for such offences. And he went so far as to allow a graphe even for a slave, if anyone treats one with hybris. For he thought that what matters was not the identity of the victim but the nature of the act; and since he found the act inexpedient,  he did not allow it to be permitted either against a slave or at all. Nothing, men of Athens, nothing is more intolerable than hybris, or more deserving of your anger […] If  anyone treats with hybris any person, either child or woman or man, free or slave, or does anything illegal against any of these, let anyone who wishes, of those Athenians who are entitled, submit a graphe (prosecution) to thesmothetai (legislators).

Demosthenes  Prosecution of Meidias 21, 45-46, 47, trs Mac Dowell with alterations

In his speech (Prosecution of Konon 54), Demosthenes describes a case of hybris, i.e.,  how he and his friend, Phanostartos, while walking in the Agora one evening, were brutaly attacked and beaten by Konon:

When we came up to them, one of them, whom I did not know, fell upon Phanostratos and held him down, while this man Konon and his son and Andromenes’ son fell upon me. First they pulled off my cloak, and then they tripped me up and pushed me into the mud, and they put me in such a state, by jumbing on me and treating me with hybris, that my lip was cut and my eyes closed. They left me in such a bad condition that I could not stand up or speak. And while I was lying there I heard them saying a lot of dreadful things. Most of them were scurrilous, and some I should not like to repeat in front of you. But the thing which shows Konon’s hybris, and indicates that he was the ring-leader, I will tell you: he crowed in imitation of cocks that have won fights, and the others suggested he should beat his sides with his elbows like wings

Demosthenes, Prosecution of Konon 54, 8-9, trs Mac Dowell

This is a case of deliberate hybris, that is a deliberate violation of Demosthenes’ rigth to be safe. For Demosthenes, all recognize the distinction between deliberate wrongdoing, which incurs anger and resentment, and unintentional wrongdoing, which deserves indulgence [4]; they recognize that a citizen might advocate  wrong policies either through ignorance and failure to undestand the situation or with unpatriotic design [5]. For Aristotle, as well, there is a difference between unintentional and intentional offences. The difference lay in the motive and state of mind of the offender. If, for example, a man hit someone because his lost his temper, or even by accident, that was just battery (aikeia), not hybris. But if he hit him because he considered himself and his own wishes more important than the rights and esteem of his victim, as Konon did against Demosthenes, that was hybris, a much more serious offence:

If one hits, one does  not in all cases commit hybris, but only if it is for a purpose, such as dishonouring the man or enjoying oneself […] Hybris is doing and saying things at which the victim incurs dishonour, not in order to get for oneself anything which one did not get before, but so as to have pleasure

Aristotle Rhetoric 1374a13-15, 1378b23-25; trs MacDowell with alterations.

Thus a graphe for hybris was one of the most serious kind of prosecution which could be brought if necessary by any Athenian against a man whose behaviour was an offence to  the whole community (MacDowell, 1978: 130-1); which reminds us of the modern common law definition of crime as “a violation of a right as regard the community at large” (Burke, 1977: op. cit). But what is the cause of crime (hybris) by the ancient Greek standards ?

The ancient Greek concept of “crime (hybris)” as an “error” (hamartia) against the community,

 not as a “sin” against the God

Demosthenes’ adversary, the 4^th c. B.C. orator Aeschines, says that the real causes of crime are not to be found in any God’s will, but in the fallibility and weakness of human nature:

Do not imagine that wrongdoing originates with the gods rather than with the vileness of men; do not imagine that Furies, as on the tragic stage, harry and punish the impious with blazing torches. No it is the unbriddled pleasures of the flesh, the inability ever to be satisfied, which mans the dens of brigands and fills the pirates’ ships; these pleasures are each man’s Fury, these incite him to slaughter his fellow-citizens, enslave himself to tyrants, and to join in conspiracies against democracy

Aeschines, Prosecution of Timarchos, I 190 f. (trs Dover, 1974:145-6)

            It is interesting to note how two 5^th c. B.C. intellectuals, the historian Thucydides and the orator Antiphon, distinguish “crime as an error” from “religious sin”:

Wrongful acquital is only an error (hamartema), but wrongful condemnation is an impiety (asebema). Errors which are involuntary (akousios) are forgivable, but those which are deliberate (ekousios) are not; for the involuntary error proceeds from chance (tyche), but the deliberate from intention (gnome).

                                                Antiphon, On the murder of Herodes,  91f. (trs Dover, 1974:145-6)

One brings criticism (aitia) against friends when they err (hamartanein), but an accusation (kategoria) against enemies when they have committed a wrong (adikein)

                                                                                    Thucydides, 69.6 (trs Dover, 1974:145-6)

What we should keep in mind is that “crime” is an “error” (hamartia) which is to be prosecuted only when voluntarily affects the community. Sin (asebeia) is just a subspecies of “error” committed against the community’s  gods, e.g., theft of a temple’s money (ierosylia) [MacDowell, 1978: ch. XII 192 f.]. Homicide, injury and damage were penalized with comparative leniency in Attic law when it was clear that there had been no intention to do harm, though the penalty of temporary exile for involuntary homicide was in many cases unjust by our standards [6]. When a man was accused of hybris, the violent treatment  of a fellow-citizen, it seems that he might succesfully plead drunkness or an excess of anger, for the nature and the attitude of the aggressor towards his victim was an essential ingredient and cause of hybris  (Dover, 1974: 146-7) [7]. Nevertheless, however clearly it was perceived that an individual’s nature affects and circumscribes his moral capacity, the community did not tolerate an “error” (hamartia) committed against itself. As Demosthenes put it:

Do you not see that his nature and his politics are governed neither by reason nor by any sense of decency, but by desperation (aponoia), or rather, that his politics as a whole are desperate? Desperation is the greatest of ills for its possessor, formidable and troublesome for anyone else, and for a city, intolerable. […] Who would not avoid it and put its possessor out of the way (i.e. kill, outlaw or exile him), so as never to fall in with it even by mistake?

Demosthenes, xv  Prosecution of Aristogeiton 32 f. (trs Dover,1974:149, with alterations)

            That is to say, the community, being above the individual, was prosecuting any crime against the common good. When it was desired to emphasize that a person not only does things which are unweclome to the community but does them by deliberare decision, he could be described as “wishing to be bad” [boulesthai, haireisthai einai poneros] (Dover, 1974: 150-1)[8].

We saw that it was possible to distinguish between “error” (hamartia, hamartema, verb hamartanein or exhamartanein) on the one hand and crime, wrong-doing (adikia, adikema, verb adikein), sin or impiety (ierosylia, asebeia, asebema, verb asebcin) on the other. This distinction could also be made in particular cases, e.g., in the comic dramatist Philippides fr. 26, we read:  “You can't say ... "I erred", to get my forgiveness... The man who does violence to one who is weaker does not "err", but hybrizei”. That is, not all errors are crimes or sins, but any crime or sin can be called “error” (hamartia) in Greek. This is verified by the 4th c BC orators Isokrates and Lysias as follows:

 The villainy of the Thirty Tyrants incited many to behave in this way, for the Thirty were so far from punishing those who committed crimes (adikein) that they actually enjoined some men to err (exhamartanein)

 Isokrates Against Kallimachos 17; trs Dover

Think that you would be come as angry as this case merits if you were to go over in your minds how much greater hybris is than other errors (hamartemata), for you will find that other kinds of wrongdoing  (adikiai) harm only some aspects of the victim's life, whereas hybris damages his fortune as a whole ...

Isokrates , xx, Prosecution of Lochites 9:1; trs Dover

You preferred to commit such an error (hamartema, exhamartanein, sc. adultery) against my wife and children ... 45: Had I not been wronged the greatest of all wrongs (adikemata)?

Lysias. i On the murder of Eratosthenes 26; trs Dover..

In Thucydides vi 80.2, “become kakos (villain)” and hamartanein (err) treated as synonyms. As shown in the aforementioned examples, the hamart- group of words  was not used simply in referring to alleged misdeeds of one’s own, but in direct attack on the misdeeds of a hated adversary. But inference from language to “underlying assumptions” is dangerous, and it is perhaps sufficient to note that just as in war and sport “hamartanein the target” is simply to “miss” it, so in moral action hamartia is “not attaining” what is desired by oneself or by others [9].

If then “crime” in Greek is a kind of hamartia (error), what is really “error”? There has been a great deal of reseach work on “hamartia”. To summarize some interesting research results, in his Poetics 13.5 (1453a 8-23) Aristotle says that tragedy presents a great man brought low by a “megale hamartia” (failure, error in mind); his examples are Oedipus and Thyestes (Dyer, 1965). The phrase is taken  to mean very different things by different people: either (i) a moral failing or character-flaw (German Schuld; Harsh, 1945) or (ii) an intellectual error in judgement or even a mistake about the identity of a person (Van Braam, 1912; Hey, 1927; Bremer, 1969 ) or (iii) some kind of combination of the two (Stinton, 1975; Fritz, 1962). It is sure that the classical Greek word does not signify the “sin” in the Christian moral sense of the word. Hey in his well documented paper, based on Aristotle’s texts, “Hamartia.  Zur Bedeutungsgeschichte des Wortes, Philologus 1927, 1-17,  137-163,  proves that, in classical Greece, the Greek word for “error” (hamartia) had the meaning of “intellectual error leading to a misconduct like Oedipus’ one”. According to Dover (1974, 152),  there was  a certain shift of meaning from hamart-(error) towards adik-(crime as wrongdoing) in the later fourth century BC. But the greater shift of meaning occurred during the Christian era, when the Greek word for “error and wrongdoing against the community” came up to mean “an error or wrongdoing or sin against the God’s will”. The Christians gave the Greek word hamartia (error) a moral meaning as modern Greeks know it and use it today. Given the fact that, as shown,  “crime” also was a kind of hamartia (error), “crime” too aquired the same Christian moral meaning of “an error or wrongdoing or sin against the God’s will”. The same goes to a certain extent  for the Latin word for wrongdoing “crimen, criminis” from which the modern term “crime”derives.

            According to the The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins (edited by T.F. Hoad, Oxford Univerity Press, 1986, p. 104), the english word “crime” derives from the Latin word “crimen, criminis” meaning at first judgement, accusation, offence, reduced form of base of the verb cerno decide (cf. discern). The etymological root of this Latin word, as many Latin roots,  comes from (or is cognate with) a Greek root; this  is the Greek word-root “krima” or “krisis” (crisis) meaning as well judgement, sentence, conviction, a matter of an accusation, charge, reduced form of base of the verb “krino” decide. So the first judicial meaning of the terms “crime” and “krima” at issue was not “wrongdoing”, but a “judgement” of it [10]. What is more interesting is that these cognate words have a common conceptual history. In classical Greece and Rome, they mean “jugdement”, “conviction”, “wrongdoing or error against the community”, “erring in mind” (hamartia), but not “sin against the will of God”. Their first judicial sense, i.e.,  “jugdement” (krisis), gave birth to the word “krima”(crimen) from which derives the modern term “crime”. In modern English there are some word-roots derivatives from “crimen” which come from Greek or Latin and retain the first judicial meaning of the term; that is, discriminate (discern), critic, critique, crisis, criticism,  criticize, criterion; all these words do have a “judgemental” sense pointing to the first meaning of the word  “crime”, i.e., “jugdement” (krisis).

E. From the ancient Greek “crime” (krima) as a “judgemental” error

to the christian “crime” (crimen) as a moral sin

As regards the Greek word for crime (krima/crimen), the lexical data provided by the Thesaurus Linguae Grecae and the searching program  MUSAIOS 1.0e-32 (1992-2000 by Darl J. Dumont and Randall M. Smith) convince us that in classical Greece apart from  error (hamartia) crime (krima/crimen) as well has not the christian moral sense of “sin” against the God. In the totality of Greek texts there are 2301 occurences of the Greek word for crime (krima/crimen), approximately1/3 from the classical era and 2/3 from the christian era. The basic meanings of the classical Greek word are the following: “thought or judgement” (Marcus Aurelius Antonius Imperator Phil., Book 4, ch. 3, section 2, line 2; Aeschylus Trag., Supplices, line 397; Plotinus Phil., Enneades 6, ch. 4. Section 6, line 14; Epictetus Phil., Dissertationes ab Arriano digestae, Bk 2, ch. 15, section 8, line 2; Proclus Phil., In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 758, line 8; Joannes Stobaeus Anthologus, Anthologium, Bokk 1, ch. 49. Section 54, line 36), “the judgement of the senses and of the intellect” (Plutarchus Biogr.  Phil., Adversus Coloten, Stephanus, p. 1121, section E, line 5; Claudius Ptolemaeus Math., De judicandi facultate et animi principatu, vol. 3, 2, p. 16, line 8), “wise judgements of the intellect” (ta tes phroneseos krimata: Chrysippus Phil., Fragmenta Moralia, fr. 274, line  18; Sextus Empiricus Phil., Adversus Mathematicos, Book 9, section 174, line 3), “the cunning  judgements of the soul” (Epictetus Phil., Dissertationes ab Arriano digestae, Bk 4, ch. 11, section 8, line 1), “conviction and decision” (katakrima kai katadiken, krisis: Lexicon Etymologicum Magnum, p. 539, line 35), “trials and votes” (psephoi, dikai) (Hesychius Lexicogr., Lexicon, entry kappa, 4114, line 1), “democratic decisions” (ta tou demou krimata: Dionysios Halicarnassensis Hist.-Rhet., Antiquitares Romanae,  Bk 4, ch. 2, sect. 3, line 6).  It is impressive that none of  the classical Greek words for “crime” (krima) coming from non Christian authors means “sin” in the christian sense of the word [11].

On the contrary, the Greek words for “crime” (krima) coming from Christian authors do have almost exclusively a religious meaning as follows: “sin  against the God” (Origenes Theol., Fragmenta in Psalmos, 1-150, psalm 9, verse 17, line 1; Johannes Chrysostomus, Scr. Eccl., Ad Stelechium de Compuctione, lib. 2, vol.47, page 416, line 18),  “devine, not human judgement” (Philo Judaeus Phil., De Congressu eruditionis gratia, section 86, line 6;), “the God’s judgement and commandments” (Ps Justinus Martyr, Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos, page 448 section B, line 3; Gregorius Nyssenus, Contra Encomium, Bk 3, ch. 1, section 56, line 6), “the undisclosed judgements of Providence and God” (Novum Testamentum, Epistula Pauli ad Romanos, ch. 11, sect. 33, line 2; Nemesius Theol., De Natura hominis, secttion 42, line 248), “heavens’ judgement and justice” (Apocalypsis Ioannis, section 4, line 4)”, “the nation’s just rights according to the law of God” (Septuaginta, Deuteronomion, ch. 4, section 8, line 2), “God’s rights and judgements” (Clemens Alexandrinus Theol., Stromateis, Book1, ch. 27. Section 172, subsection 2, line 5; Gregorius Nazianzenus, Suprerum vale, orat. 42, vol. 36, page 460, line 35),  “God’s wrath and the consequent punishment” (Michael Psellus the Byzantine, Orationes Forenses et acta, oration 1, line 2271, “me eph’ hemas elthoi to krima”: a Byzantine and modern Greek expression meaning “beware of the God’s wrath on us”); “Christ’s judgement [krisis Christou] which is the  decision of just people” (Basilius Theol., Enarratio in Prophetam Isiam, ch. 1, section 41, line 9); and finally, “the Church’s judgement” (krimata ekklesias), where we must observe that the word for the ancient Greek people’s assembly (ekklesia) was later used to denote the christian churches, a fact that indicates the transformation of the political assemblies into religious gotherings (synagogues), that is the substitution of the religious christian mentality for the ancient Greek political mentality (Athanasius Theol, Historia Arianorum, ch. 52, section 3, line 5).

This statistical linguistic argument proves that the Christians, having a different view of justice and crime, transformed the meaning of the same Latin and Greek word for “crime” (krima or crimen) at issue. Our linguistic argument that the Christians had a different view of justice, in comparison to the Greek one, is supported by the historian Fustel as follows:

But there came a day when the religious sentiment recovered life and vigor, and when, under the Christian form, belief regained its empire over the soul. Were men not then destined to see the reappearance of the ancient confusion of governnment and the priesthood, of faith and the law? (382)

With  Christianity  not  only  was  the  religious  sentiment revived, but it assumed a higher and less material expression. Whilst previously men had made for themselves gods of the human soul, or of the great forces of nature, they now began to look upon God as really foreign by his essence, from human nature on the one hand, and from the world on the other. The divine Being was placed outside and above physical nature.  Whilst previously every man had made a god for himself, and there were as many of them as there were families and cities, God now appeared as a unique, immense, universal being, alone animating the worlds, alone able to supply the need of adoration that is in man. Religion, instead of being, as formerly among the nations of Greece and Italy, little more  than an assemblage of practices, a series of rites which men repeated without having any idea of them, a succession of formulas which often were no longer understood because the language had grown old, a tradition which had been transmitted from age to age, and which owed its sacred character to its antiquity alone, — was now a collection of doctrines, and a great object proposed to faith. It was no longer exterior; it took up its abode especially in the thoughts of man. It was no longer  matter; it became spirit. Christianity changed the nature and the form of adoration. Man no longer offered God food and drink. Prayer was no longer a form of incantation; it was an act of faith and a humble petition. The soul sustained another relation with the divinity; the fear of the gods was replaced by the love of God. (382-3)

As to the government of the state, we cannot say that Christianity essentially altered that, precisely because it did not occupy itself with the state. In the ancient ages, religion and the state made but one; every people adored its own god, and every god governed his own people; the same code regulated the relations among men, and their duties towards the gods of the city. Religion then governed the state, and designated its chiefs by the voice of the lot, or by that of the auspices. The state, in its turn, interfered with the domain of the conscience, and punished every infraction of the rites and the worship of the city. Instead of this, Christ teaches that his kingdom is not of this world. He separates religion from government. Religion, being no longer of the earth, now interferes the least possible in terrestrial affairs. Christ adds, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's". It is the first time that God and the state are so dearly distinguished. For Caesar at that period was still the pontifex maximus, the chief and the principal organ of the Roman religion; he was the guardian and the interpreter of beliefs. He held the worship and the dogmas in his hands. Even his person was sacred and divine, for it was a peculiarity of the policy of the emperors that, wishing to recover the attributes of ancient royalty, they were careful not to forget the divine character which antiquity had attached to the king-pontiffs and to the priest-founders. But now Christ breaks the alliance which paganism and the empire wished to renew. He proclaims that religion is no longer the state, and that to obey Caesar is no longer the same thing as to obey God (385).

Numa Denis Fustel De Goulanges, The Ancient City, A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institution of Greece and Rome, The John Hopkins  University Press, London, 1980, 382-383, 385

But why did the Greeks do not have a religious but a political mentality? And how and why did this transformation of justice, belief and mentality occur? Some interesting answers are provided by sociologists and political scientists such as Max Weber, Emile Durkheim,  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; by anthropologists like J. J. Bachofen, Lewis Henry Morgan, Numa Denis Fustel De Goulanges; by (social) historians like M. I. Finley, G. Glotz, G.E.M. de Ste Croix; and by structuralist classicists or traditional philologists such as M. M. Austin, P. Vidal-Naquet, J. P. Vernant, Jean Bollock.  That is to say, in order to answer these important questions which are beyond the scope of the present paper, we need the “interdisciplinary” methodological help of criminology, classics, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and political science.