Greek law capped ship crews at five men to deter piracy

Evidence

I will first give a few examples of the second alternative. In the early Greek period, there were legal provisions according to which ship crews could not consist of more than five men, in order to prevent them from engaging in piracy. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 4870

Categorization

• CANDY: Fun trivia: ancient Greek law assumed a crew of just five was too small to turn pirate — a sharp legal recognition that wrongdoing requires a critical mass.
• SHARE: Send to anyone interested in classical law or in Simmel’s quantity thresholds — also to a tabletop-gaming friend who builds faction rules around group size.