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This paper explores how a conception of the rule of law (embodied in a
variety of legal and political institutions) came to affirm itself in the world of the
ancient Greek city states. It argues that such a conception, formulated in opposition
to the arbitrary rule of man, was to a large extent consistent with modern ideas of
the rule of law as a constraint to political power, and to their Fullerian requirements
of formal legality, as well as to requirements of due process. The article then
analyses how this ideal was formulated in the Archaic period, and how it became a
key feature of Greek identity. Finally, it argues that in the fifth and fourth centuries
BCE it came to be used as the measure of the legitimacy of Greek political systems:
democracy and oligarchy, as they engaged in an ideological battle, were judged as
legitimate (and desirable) or illegitimate (and undesirable) on the basis of their
conformity with a shared ideal of the rule of law. Then as now, to quote Tamanaha,
‘the rule of law’ was ‘an accepted measure worldwide of government legitimacy’.