Book excerpt: This is a highly original, interdisciplinary study of the archaic Greek word nomos and its family of words. More recently used to mean simply 'law' or 'law-making', Thanos Zartaloudis draws out the richness of this fundamental term by exploring its many roots and uses over the centuries. The Birth of Nomos includes extracts from ancient sources, in both the original and English translation, including material from legal history, philosophy, philology, linguistics, ancient history, poetry, archaeology, ancient musicology and anthropology. Through a thorough analysis of these extracts, we gain a new and complete understanding of nomos and its foundational place in the Western legal tradition.