International Law Legal History Ancient Greece Explained

Ancient Greece, History of International Law, visualized. Lex Animata By Hesham Elrafei International law&core framework and key foundations are rooted in history. Ancient Greece adopted two institutions from oriental civilisations – treaty-making and diplomacy – and added two of its own: international arbitration and State hospitality, which is the foundation of consular and diplomatic protection for foreigners.  Ancient Greece had minimal relations with its neighbors, it was made up of a series of separate cities sharing common greek culture, which helped the following rules to grow up as to how the cities should relate to each other:  • war should be avoided;  • war should only be commenced by a declaration;   • heralds were not to be harmed; • soldiers killed in battle were entitled to a burial; • if a city was captured, those who took refuge in a temple were to be spared; • prisoners were to be ransomed or exchanged, or at worst enslaved, but not killed; • priests and seers were exempt. Although the Greeks considered those rules a religious duty and not laws, they were rules for the proper conduct of relations generally followed between Greek cities.  While The Greeks did not have the concept of a state in the modern sense, their usage of the term polis to describe the political organization of cities comes close to the contemporary understanding of the concept of State in international Law. international law lecture history of international law a brief...