Press release: If laws are memorised, are they easier to keep?

15 February 2025

If laws are memorised, are they easier to keep? Free lecture from Gresham College asks if AI can learn from the Ancient Greeks and Spartans  

Professor Melissa Lane to explore Unwritten Laws? Legacies from Antigone and Lycurgus at 6pm, Thursday, 20 February 

On Thursday, 20 February, Gresham College Professor of Rhetoric Melissa Lane will give a lecture exploring the idea of unwritten law, and how it influenced the classical world. 

Professor Lane said: “From the late fifth century BCE, the idea that laws are more effective when learned by memory and observation than when written down was seen by some as key to the victory of Sparta over Athens. Likewise, a Greek contrast between unwritten divine laws and written human edicts would inspire many later appeals to natural law. 

“We will explore how Greek authors’ reflections on the interplay between writing and orality remain relevant to modern debates about ethical formation.” 

While written Greek laws are evidenced from approximately 650 BCE, the first references to ‘unwritten laws’ are found much later. This suggests that it was only when writing had become a viable possibility, that calling something ‘unwritten’ came to make sense.   

‘Unwritten laws’ could be used to refer to laws made by the gods, as in Sophocles’ play Antigone. In Antigone’s speech, these unwritten laws predate and override human edicts.   

But ‘unwritten laws’ could also refer to laws made by humans who eschewed the tool of writing. This is how the later Greek author Plutarch would describe the legendary Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus: as making laws prescribing military training, common meals, iron currency and other ‘spartan’ disciplinary measures, while prohibiting their being written down. The idea was that only by internalising the laws through habits and imitation would they become maximally effective.   

Professor Lane notes that: “With AI tools like ChatGPT and DeepSeek on the upsurge, the proliferation of writing threatens to override human memory and attention, just as the ancient Greeks feared that writing would do. We need to think afresh about the possibilities and pitfalls of writing and can do so with the ancient Greeks’ help.” 

Professor Lane will explore the idea of “unwritten laws” at Gresham College’s home in Barnard’s Inn Hall, Holborn, on Thursday, 20 February. 

Starting at 6pm, entry is free, and it is also broadcast online. It will last an hour.  

Gresham College is London’s oldest higher education institution. Founded in 1597 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, it has been delivering free public lectures for more than 427 years from a lineage of leading professors and experts in their field who have included Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Iannis Xenakis and Sir Roger Penrose.  

In-person places can be booked online via Gresham College’s website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/unwritten-laws-legacies-antigone-and-lycurgus 

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Notes to Editors

Images available on request

For more information about this story or to arrange an interview with a Gresham Professor please contact: Phil Creighton press@gresham.ac.uk   

About the Lawgivers in Political Imaginations lecture series at Gresham College 
These lectures explore cross-cultural political imaginations of the figure of the lawgiver – a figure whose rhetorical invocation is central to politics from the ancient Near East and Mediterranean to the French Revolution and the philosophy of Nietzsche.  

Through the lens of the lawgiver, the lectures will delve into the relationship between ethical formation and law (written or unwritten); the shaping of cultural identity; and different ways in which divine and human authority have been understood in the giving of laws. 

About Gresham College  
Gresham College has been providing free, educational lectures - at the university level - since 1597 when Sir Thomas Gresham founded the college to bring Renaissance Learning to Londoners. Our history includes some of the luminaries of the scientific revolution including Robert Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren and connects us to the founding of the Royal Society.  

Today we carry on Sir Thomas's vision. The College aims to stimulate intellectual curiosity and to champion academic rigour, professional expertise and freedom of expression. www.gresham.ac.uk  

Gresham College is a registered charity number 1039962 and relies on donations to help us encourage people's love of learning for many years to come. For more details or to make a gift, visit our website.