ABSTRACT
The Cretan cities, like Greek cities in general, must have been largely dependent on available water in the immediate vicinity, if not within the cities themselves. The methods of pre-Roman Greece, inevitable in a country of poor water-supply, consisted of sinking wells and cutting cisterns in the rock to collect rain-water. At Gortyna the water-supply features in the legislation of the first half of the fifth century BC, the river water being concerned in the first of the three inscriptions which will be mentioned in this connection. So, at Gortyna, the legislation seeks to restrict responsibility to the epiballontes. It is hardly surprising that the early legislation includes regulations relating to the disposal of the dead. The first of three Gortynian inscriptions on the subject belongs to the earliest period. THE Gortynian Code presents us with a codification, not of law, but of laws.
