(), the author of the first written code of laws at
Athens, which were called de
Myst. p. 11; ad
loc.; Menag. ad Diog. Laert. 1.53.) In this code he affixed the
penalty of death to almost all crimes--to petty thefts, for instance, as well as to sacrilege
and murder--which gave occasion to the remarks of Herodicus and Demades, that his laws were
not those of a man, but of a dragon (Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. p. 23, and the authorities there referred to.)
Aristotle, if indeed the chapter be genuine (Pol. ii. ad fin.;
Göttling, ad loc.) says, that Dracon did not change the constitution
of Athens, and that the only remarkable characteristic of his laws was their severity. Yet we
know from Aeschines (c. Timarch. §§ 6, 7) that he provided in
them for the education of the citizens from their earliest years; and, according to Pollux
(8.125) he made the Ephetae a court of appeal from the ad Fabric. l.c.), Schömann, and C. F. Hermann (Pol.
Ant. § 103) are of opinion that Dracon established the
Ephetae, taking away the cognizance of homicide entirely from the Areiopagus; while
Müller thinks (Eumen. §§ 65, 66), with more probability,
that the two courts were united until the legislation of Solon. From this period (l.c.; Plut. Sol. l.c.); but Andocides tells us (l.c.), that some of them were still in force at the end of the Peloponnesian
war; and we know that there remained unrepealed, not only the law which inflicted death for
murder, and which of course was not peculiar to Dracon's code, but that too which permitted
the injured husband to slay the adulterer, if taken in the act. (Lys. de Caed.
Erat. p. 94; Athen. xiii. p. 569d.) Demosthenes also says (c. Timocr. p. 765)
that, in his time, Dracon and Solon were justly held in honour for their good laws; and
Pausanias and Suidas mention an enactment of the former legislator adopted by the Thasians,
providing that any inanimate thing which had caused the loss of human life should be cast out
of the country. (s. v.
s. vv.
ad
Suid. s. v.
l.c.) and Thirlwall (Greece, vol. ii. p. 18) are of opinion, that the people demanded a written code to
replace the mere customary law, of which the Eupatridae were the sole expounders; and that the
latter unable to resist the demand, gladly sanctione the rigorous enactments of Dracon as
adapted to check the democratic movement which had given rise to them. This theory certainly
gets rid of what Thirlwall considers the difficulty of conceiving how the legislator could so
confound the gradations of moral guilt, and how also (as we may add) he could fall into the
error of making moral guilt the sole rule of punishment, as his own defence of his laws above
mentioned might lead us to suppose he did. Yet the former of these errors is but the
distortion of an important truth (Aristot. Eth. Nic. 6.13.6); while the
latter has actually been held in modern times, and was more natural in the age of Dracon,
especially if, with Wachsmuth, we suppose him to have regarded his laws in a religious aspect
as instruments for appeasing the anger of the gods. And neither of these errors, after all, is
more strange than his not foreseeing that the severity of his enactments would defeat its own
end, and would surely lead (as was the case till recently in England) to impunity.