ARBITRATION IN THE GREEK WORLD. 



277 



International arbitration was not, as is sometimes asserted, a 

 creation of the Greeks. The extensive discoveries, made within 

 recent years, of documents relating to the domestic and foreign 

 history of Egypt, the Hittite empire and the states of the 

 Euphrates and Tigris valleys, reveal to us remarkably advanced 

 civilizations, with developed laws and a strikingly active 

 system of diplomatic negotiation, existing before the beginnings 

 of heroic, we might almost say of legendary G-reece. Amongst 

 these documents, incised upon stone or imprinted upon clay, 

 I would call your attention to one, which relates the story of a 

 feud between the two Sumerian cities of Shirpurla and Gishkhu 

 about 4,000 years before Christ* : it tells how, when war had 

 failed to bring about any settlement of the frontier dispute, 

 arbitration was tried, and Mesilim, King of Kish, was appointed 

 to determine the frontier-line and set up a pillar between the 

 two states to commemorate the fact. It is worth noting how 

 prominent a part is played by religion in this early case of the 

 arbitral settlement of a disputed boundary : the chief god of 

 Shirpurla and the god of Gishkhu are spoken of as deciding 

 upon this method, they do so at the command of Enlil, " the 

 king of the countries," and the arbitrator acts under the 

 direction of his own god Kadi. That this was an isolated 

 instance of appeal to arbitration we cannot believe, but probably 

 such appeals grew rarer with the rise of great empires such as 

 those of Assyria, Media, and Persia, which swallowed up the 

 smaller states of western Asia and based their claims upon 

 force rather than upon equity. Yet we hear in Herodotusf 

 how, in the early years of the sixth century B.C., a long and 

 indecisive struggle between Alyattes of Lydia and Cyaxares of 

 Media was concluded by the intervention of Syennesis of Cilicia 

 and Labynetus of Babylon, who " reconciled " the two warring 

 monarchs. 



Whether the Greeks consciously adopted the expedient from 

 their eastern neighbours or discovered independently of them this 

 mode of settling quarrels, we cannot determine. The importance 

 of what they did in this field lies in their recognition of the 

 possibilities involved in arbitration, their frequent application 

 of it to heal the differences existing between individuals or 

 states, and their introduction of it into the political life of the 

 western world. From primitive times we can trace in the 

 Greek world attempts to settle disputes by means of negotiation, 



* L. W. King and H. E. Hall, Egi/jot and Western Asia, p. 171. 

 t i, 74. 



