The current town of Locri, on the Calabrian coast in southern Italy, is the site of the ancient Greek city of Locros, founded in the 8th century BC. by settlers from the Locrida region north of the Gulf of Corinth.
Strabo states that they were Ozolian locrians (literally smelly ) and came from the Gulf of Crisa, led by an oikistes (head of colonizing expedition) called Evanto. Polybius, on the other hand, says that they were Eastern Locrians, Epicnemidians (those who lived at the foot of Mount Cnemis) or Opuntians (for their capital Opuntia), something that Virgil also asserts. But it gives an additional curious fact, the city would have been founded by slaves who fled with the wives of their masters while the First Messenian War was taking place.
When that conflict had lasted 10 years, the Spartans, who had sworn not to return to their city without having conquered Messenia, were afraid of not having enough offspring and sent the youngest back to procreate. But they did not allow the Locrians, who were their allies, to do the same even though they were not bound by that oath.
Polybius did not invent this story, but took it from none other than Aristotle, who cites it in his Constitution of the Locro , a work now lost but widely cited by Clemente Alejandrino. Perhaps this is related to the fact that in Locros the nobility was transmitted through the mother, inherited from the one hundred original families that maintained the oligarchic government of the colony.
The Locrians founded a first settlement, by indication of the Oracle of Delphi (who was always consulted before embarking on a colonization trip), in the vicinity of Cape Cefirio, in the territory of the current municipality of Bruzzano Zeffirio. But three or four years later, according to Strabo, they abandoned this first settlement and moved 20 kilometers to the north, to the area between the Ionian Sea and the Gerace and Portigliola rivers, where they founded the definitive Epicefirian Locros (Λοκροί Ἐπιζεφύριοι), on a hill called Esopis.
A century later, in the 7th century BC, the lawgiver Zaleucus would give Locros the first written law code of Greek civilization. In no other city of mainland Greece, nor of the islands, nor of Magna Graecia, had a similar legislative corpus been drawn up until then. In this sense, it is also the first written laws in all of Europe.
Zaleuco is an almost mythical character, of whose life little is known. The sources mix legends with contradictory data, such as that he would have been a disciple of Pythagoras (when he lived a century later), or that he had previously been a slave and shepherd.
According to Ephorus, quoted by Strabo, Zaleucus composed his laws from the norms of the Cretans, Sparta and the Areopagus. With them he composed the so-called Locrian Code , which remained in force for more than 200 years, and whose laws even extended to neighboring (and sometimes enemy) cities such as Crotona and Sybaris.
Among the things that his laws stipulated were the prohibition for a free woman to be accompanied by more than one slave, unless she is drunk . They also couldn't go out of town at night, except if they had a lover .
It was also forbidden to drink wine undiluted with water, except for medical purposes . But perhaps one of the best-known rules of the code is the one that forced anyone who proposed a new law or a modification of an existing one, to appear before the Citizen Council with a noose around their neck. If the Council voted against the proposal, the rope immediately fulfilled its function. According to Demosthenes, thanks to this, only one new law was enacted in more than 200 years.
Today we only have 14 fragments of the Zaleuco law code left. In some, punishments are established, in others prohibitions, such as entering the assembly with swords, selling foodstuffs if you have not produced them yourself, introducing novelties from distant lands, or going to court if reconciliation has not been attempted before. . Currently some of his laws seem strange, disproportionate or directly regrettable. But as we said, they are the first to be written in Europe.
The city of Locros was an ally of Rome from 215 BC. Then, during the Middle Ages, Arab incursions forced the population to move to Gerace, a town at a higher altitude and therefore easier to defend. By the 7th century the city of Locros had completely disappeared. Until the archaeological excavations began at the end of the 19th century, which gradually brought to light the remains of the ancient city.