The Courts of Justice in Archaic Chios

The mutilated inscription generally called the ‘Constitution of Chios’ was first discovered in the village of Tholopotami and published in 1909 by Dr. Jacobsthal and Professor U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. The examination of the stone and the photographs and squeezes were all made under very difficult conditions, and shortly afterwards the stone disappeared from sight and record. It found its way finally into the hands of the local authorities, and, Chios being then under Turkish rule, was sent to the Archaeological Museum at Istanbul, where it remained without attracting the notice of later travellers. The inscription has been included in several collections of Greek epigraphical texts, accompanied by the short commentaries of editors who were relying on the original description and readings. I examined the stone at Istanbul in 1949, and cannot suggest a full restoration of the text, any more than did the first editors in their short but admirably comprehensive account.