ABSTRACT
A number of scholars have argued that law was one of the areas of Greek life that had a significant influence on Presocratic thought, either by providing a model for the operation of the cosmos or more generally by acting as a model for and stimulus to free-flowing intellectual debate. These scholars have shed important light on certain aspects of early Greek thought, but they have also reached some conclusions that are in my view misleading. I believe that a more precise understanding of Greek law can help us refine the results attained thus far. And so in what follows, after considering the views of three leading scholars, Vernant, Vlastos, and Lloyd, I shall examine some features of early Greek law that seem to have been imperfectly understood in discussion of its influence on the Presocratics. I shall then pursue some more general implications of this understanding of law and the Presocratics.
