ABSTRACT
CRETAN institutions of the historical period, as we have seen, had their roots in primitive tribal institutions. Though tribal society as such had long passed away, its forms, terminology and influence survived, as they persistently survived all over the Greek world well into the historical period. The tribal institutions themselves, undergoing successive changes, had now been adapted to serve the purposes of a quite different social and economic system. The evidence of the Code, supplemented by other data, enable us, not only, as Calhoun has said, in discussing the aristocratic character of the system, to 'trace with some confidence the general outline of the constitution': 1 we can also ascertain certain characteristic features of a social and economic system which present important analogies with the pre-Solonian state in Attica, and with the Spartan state of the historical period.
