Īnd Draco himself, they say, being asked why he made death the penalty for most offences, replied that in his opinion the lesser ones deserved it, and for the greater ones no heavier penalty could be found.Īlthough the full Draconian constitution no longer exists, severe punishments were reportedly meted out to those convicted of offenses as minor as stealing an apple. The homicide laws were the only laws retained by the early-6th-century BC Solonian Constitution. Since murder cases were tried by the state, feuds as a form of justice became illegal. As a result, the Draconian constitution was accessible to the literate.ĭraco introduced the concepts of intentional and unintentional homicide, with both crimes adjudicated at the Areopagus. To promulgate the new constitution, its text was inscribed on displaying devices. They authorized Draco, an aristocratic legislator, to construct the written constitution, and he began to write the text around 621 BC. To minimize the incidence of these feuds, the governing aristocratic families of Athens decided to abandon their concealed system of legal proposals and amendments and promulgate them to Athenian society in writing. This triggered feuds by families ignorant of the law in an attempt to obtain justice. The aristocratic exploitation of this system began during the mid-seventh century BC, and laws were often amended to benefit the aristocracy. The need for written laws began with the unequal access to legal knowledge of the aristocracy as compared with the general populace the established laws of Athens were inefficiently formulated in the spoken language and often modified and re-evaluated. 4.3 Relationships among Athenian officials.
This enactment of a rule of law was an early manifestation of Athenian democracy.
Draconian language code#
The literate could read the code at a central location accessible to anyone. Around 621 BC the people of Athens commissioned Draco to devise a written law code and constitution, giving him the title of the first legislator of Athens. As most societies in Greece codified basic law during the mid-seventh century BC, Athenian oral law was manipulated by the aristocracy until the emergence of Draco's code. It was written in response to the unjust interpretation and modification of oral law by Athenian aristocrats. The Draconian constitution, or Draco's code, was a written law code enforced by Draco near the end of the 7th century BC its composition started around 621BC. To resolve unequal accessibility to the acquirement of legal knowledge of oral law by replacing such with a written constitution Draco, the creator of the conceptualization and formulation of the Draconian constitution
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