Some Remarks on Homicide and Criminal Responsibility in Ancient Greece

In the Homeric poems – where also begins to emerge the notion that material and causal responsibility should be separated from moral responsibility – predominates the idea of a strict liability. This is true also as far as homicide is concerned: when a man is killed, no matter whether the killing is intentional or not, the victim’s relatives react with vengeance. With his law on homicide, towards the end of the seventh century BC, the Athenian legislator Drakon is the first to consider mens rea as a criterion to differentiate the penalties. The debate on criminal and, more generally, moral responsibility becomes urgent in the last years of the fifth century, when finally the idea prevails that a merely material and causal agent cannot be considered neither responsible not, consequently, guilty.