Anti‑Tyranny Law Reaffirmed in Stone (IG II³ 1 320)

After Chaironeia, autonomy narrowed. Yet the Athenians reached for an old shield and made it new. In 337/6 BCE, they enacted and inscribed an anti‑tyranny law: whoever killed a would‑be tyrant or his supporters would be “hosios,” without guilt. Stelai would be set up on the Areopagos and in the Assembly space [12]. The text’s placement mattered as much as its words.

The Areopagos—dark rock under the Acropolis—had long associations with homicide law; the Assembly’s Pnyx was the city’s debating heart. Putting the law on both sites fused sacred and civic authority. Sunlight struck the letters; readers traced grooves with their fingers. The sound around them was the ordinary hum of a city still operating: Council in the Bouleuterion, juries near the Royal Stoa, ships in the blue of Peiraieus. Against that hum, the law’s scarlet warning stood out.

The formula echoed the Demophantos oath’s lethal logic from 410/409, later quoted by Andocides: defend democracy by authorized violence [9]. Now, with Macedon’s power evident, the reaffirmation reads as ritual and resolve. The law did not promise victory. It promised memory and permission.

In legal terms, the law clarified immunity and linked it to sanctity—hosios. That religious language gave cosmic weight to political defense. It told potential resisters that gods and city agreed. It told would‑be tyrants that, even if assemblies were constrained by hegemony, individuals had a rule to act under.

In the months after inscription, nothing visibly changed in garrisons or treaties. But the city’s constitutional self-image sharpened. Orators pleading in 330, like Aeschines, argued in courts that lived under these stones [8]. The texts watched as autonomy ebbed.

Athenian democracy ended, conventionally, in 322 with property bars. The stones remained. Their black letters turned gray but legible—the constitution’s vow carved into the city’s face.