The Foundations of Human Rights in Ancient Greek Thought

This article argues, against those scholars who locate the origin of human rights in the late eighteenth century, that expressions of human rights have always existed and can be found in our earliest literary works, even though the concept may not have been fully articulated. Focusing on archaic and early classical Greek literature (c. 725–430 BCE), this article discusses empathy for marginalized people in the Odyssey and in Herodotus’s Histories, equality before the law in Solon’s poems, and the concept of themis (justice or right) in Homer. The article concludes that human rights is a developing concept whose foundations are clearly present in ancient Greek thought. The point is also made that the eighteenth-century thinkers who defined human rights for the modern world were well aware of the classical precedents that shaped their thinking.