III and IV, and Appendix). The subject is analysed by place and
time, rather than by theme, because, in common with many social
historians, I conceptualize societies as more or less self-contained
systems in which constituent institutions, such as bastardy, are
best explained with reference to the other constituent institutions
of the same society. The remarks of Needham, made with particu-
lar reference to the sociological analysis of marriage, an institution
which is of course intimately bound up with that of bastardy,
invite quotation: 'The complex of prohibitions in a society cannot
be comprehended except by a systematic purview of the institu-
tions with which they are implicated' ( Needham 1971: 26). This
approach may be termed 'structuralist'.

The material embraced in this study is defined spatially and
temporally in terms of the lifespan of the independent Greek
culture of the ancient world. The chronological parameters of the
study as a whole are defined at the start by the worlds depicted in
Homer, and at the end by the fall to Rome of the last independent
Greek (Macedonian) state, Ptolemaic Egypt. All dates are there-
fore BC by default. Internal periodization is partly determined by
the availability of evidence. Relative paucity of evidence often
forces one to treat as a unit for synchronic analysis a period in
which there has been significant diachronic development. These
difficulties particularly afflict the Spartan material in Part II.

A Greek societal system is usually easy to define by space
(strictly human space, rather than geographical) as a city, its insti-
tutions, members, and immediate dependants. So, where possible,
I have indeed based my analyses at the level of the city. It is
less easy to define a system for the more amorphous hellenistic
Egyptian chora in Chapter 4. In our investigation of the Greek
culture of legitimacy there I have included a study of relevant
Egyptian institutions, since from the start Egyptian cultural and
legal options were available to the Greeks and ultimately
influenced the development of their own culture. Equally, the
possibility of moving out into the chora should perhaps itself be
included in those systems based on the cities of Egypt (particularly
in view of the career of Dryton). It will also be useful to consider
the hellenistic Greek world in its entirety as a large, single system
(Part III).

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