Living with the Rules: Gender and the Rule of Law in Herodotus’ Histories

What does “the rule of law” mean to an ancient historian, Herodotus? This paper uses modern legal theories and a sociological model to consider how he presents the concept in his Histories. The author takes a novel approach in that she considers the rule of law from a gender perspective. She argues that law is as much about social and cultural rules, which involve women as much as men, as it is about institutional practices which exclude women and reinforce an ideology of female inferiority. She also shows that the rule of law is a powerful normative ideal which Herodotus uses to interrogate power. The author uses the theoretical model of law developed by the English legal scholar HLA Hart, who argues that rules have a social as well as a legal dimension (the “internal” view of law), that is, how rules are perceived by community members, and how normative behaviours are enforced by that community. She also uses the work of a legal anthropologist, Leopold Pospίčil, and feminist legal theory, to argue for a wider definition of the rule of law than that used by most contemporary scholars. She uses three case studies to show that the rule of law is a powerful force in the Histories precisely because it combines external coercive force, internal rule of conduct and normative ideal.