Draco (lawgiver)

Draco (ˈdreɪkoʊ; Δράκων, Drakōn; fl. c. 7th century BC), also called Drako or Drakon, was the first recorded legislator of Athens in Ancient Greece. He replaced the prevailing system of oral law and blood feud by the Draconian constitution, a written code to be enforced only by a court of law. Draco was the first democratic legislator requested by the Athenian citizens to be a lawgiver for the city-state, but the citizens had not expected that Draco would establish laws characterized by their harshness. ' His name may be a metaphor (δράκων literally means "sharp-sighted"), not the name of an actual person, since there are reasons to believe that he is also a fiction, entirely or in part. This is supported by the lack of a patronymic and any biographical information. Since the 19th century, the adjective draconian (Greek: δρακόντειος drakónteios) refers to similarly unforgiving rules or laws, in Greek, English, and other European languages. During the 39th Olympiad, in 622 or 621 BC, Draco established the legal code with which he is identified. Little is known about Draco’s life. He may have belonged to the Greek nobility of Attica prior to the period of the Seven Sages of Greece, as per the 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, the Suda. The Suda chronicles a folkloric story of his death in the Aeginetan theatre: in a traditional ancient Greek show of approval, his supporters "threw so many hats and shirts and cloaks on his head that he suffocated, and was buried in that same theatre". The truth about his death is still unclear, but it is known that Draco was driven out of Athens by the Athenians to the neighbouring island of Aegina, where he spent the remainder of his life. Draconian constitution The laws (θεσμοί – thesmoi) that he laid were the first written constitution of Athens. So that no one would be unaware of them, they were posted on wooden tablets (ἄξονες – axones), where they were preserved for almost two centuries on steles of the shape of four-sided pyramids (κύρβεις – kyrbeis).

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Related concepts (12)

Law

Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the art of justice. State-enforced laws can be made by a group legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes; by the executive through decrees and regulations; or established by judges through precedent, usually in common law jurisdictions.

Athenian democracy

Athenian democracy developed around the 6th century BC in the Greek city-state (known as a polis) of Athens, comprising the city of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica. Although Athens is the most famous ancient Greek democratic city-state, it was not the only one, nor was it the first; multiple other city-states adopted similar democratic constitutions before Athens. By the late 4th century BC as many as half of the over one thousand existing Greek city-states might have been democracies.

Draco (lawgiver)