Therefore Demades, in later times, made a hit when he said that Draco’s laws were written not with ink, but blood.” - Plutarch, Life of Solon1
There are many Dracos; Draco constellation, Draco Malfoy and Draco the Lizard. But we are going into the branch of description with Draconian. Saying the word is absolutely delicious2 yet it evokes a sense of fear, cruelty and restriction. The word Draconian is an adjective used to describe rules, laws, legislations and punishments that are cruel, harsh and severe. I’m sure we’ve heard of this word being thrown around on the news, political talks and anywhere you hear about politics. But how did we get this descriptive word, Draconian?
This word came from an Athenian legislator named Draco3. We don’t have anything really on Draco’s younger life or how he came into a position of power4. What we do have are the record of the laws that were drawn up during his time as a lawgiver. Around 621 BCE the the Draconian Laws5 were introduced to the Athenian Law Code. The Draconian Law was the first time in in Greece where the constitution, the law was written down. The very first law code written down was from Mesopotamia created about 1,500 years before Draco came along; The Ur-Nammu Law Code6, if you were curious.
The idea behind writing down the law was simple; put it all into writing to keep it fair and easy to follow7. It gave the lawmakers, merchants and the other Greek citizens8 a rule book to go back to when disputes arose. It gave the Greek citizens, even one from the lower members of society, an opportunity to vote, have a say in what direction the country can go in and utilize their citizenship more.
The issue was, the penalty for nearly any and all offenses was death9. It did lean a little in favor to the wealthier citizens of Greece but not by much10. Stole an Cabbage? Death. Wore the wrong toga? Death. It seemed that Draco was lazy in picking the same punishment for everything but he did have some reasoning behind his choice:
“small offences deserved death and he knew of no severer penalty for great ones”11
The only real records we have of this Draconian fellow (aha ha see what I did there?) is from Aristotle12, which has led to some speculation if Draco was a real person or just a name put to a document13. Either way, his name is now attached to these cruel and restrictive laws that were once enforced over 2,500 years ago.
The laws put in place by Draco were extreme and were enforced, especially by the wealthier and more powerful members of society. The law allowed them to exploit, extort and create more slaves and serfs to their sole benefit. Leaving the middle and lower classes of farmers, merchants and craftsmen excluded from government and resentful. Thankfully, 27 years later, the legislator Solon14 came on the scene and made reformations to the Athenian Law like15:
Debt Relief to people struggling to pay back their debt, especially the poor
Releasing people of debt slavery
Make the court system more equal and fairer to the lower classes
Freedom to marry someone for love
The option to create a Will that left your possessions to a certain person, not just relatives
And he reformed the number of crimes that are punishable by death
We have the description word Draconian is from the pain and suffering the people living in Greece at the time went through (recognize that it was the people, not citizens). The Draconian Laws were put in place to control and maintain it. Thankfully, we had smart and courageous people step up and change the rules that were set in place. Question now is, how do we become smart and courageous enough to defend against cruel, harsh and severe laws?
https://lexundria.com/plut_sol/17/prr
My opinion
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Draco-Greek-lawgiver
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26430992
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Draconian-laws
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=2241
https://www.scribd.com/document/598462932/Dracko-lawgiver
https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/data/UQ_0821978/Social_Structure_UQ_eSpace.pdf?Expires=1779678291&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJKNBJ4MJBJNC6NLQ&Signature=cqubZE5ZNvN52J57BMYWaWe7FFrjgQZI0jKJRqNUUsL~Jimyq~RFHfUGvbylwvBd~EQLRjOrzywHBcUxFcZ1Gk5VJObv4t3yOFJo5-AUiu5Q55scYt9kKHJC2WR1HXt832-kpiBsgwV~-v6srmdLYS2dLDutJy2Kih4vPARVhmbB7OoUBggYEqu5nQbWL16VruHRuQ74a90Xe6A91KDqdVYdCaw2gcdoRPA3Z5sIXTueeQWlf9Hhj71hSmK3vRk~kecn6YCMsApZh0EyMY5fTuUJJiD4mNNSSszW9JUfhjsywUpjpi9zaV43s0mkpjnRmJw8EF5g890yeZuU8PawYQ__
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Draconian-laws
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_(legislator)
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61673/chapter-abstract/548778949?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/v8lnci/does_dracodrakon_the_athenian_legislator_deserve/
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Solon
https://teachdemocracy.org/online-lesson/solon-put-athens-on-the-road-to-democracy/
Idk, i feel like you could have really expanded on this one! I appreciated his view to have laws that are fair and consistent, because laws were being exploited by aristocrats. We have to appreciate the fact that it was the Greeks that gave us democracy. Romantically you would like to think that they spent their time philosophizing, but you know how that often ended up. With Hemlock poisoning. So I guess the decoronian methods never really stopped, where death was the penalty for making people think and questioning the status quo.
But here we are 600 years later, with aristocrats exploiting laws, inconsistent punishment depending on, not only one's economic status but by their amount of melanin. If the laws became fully enforced to all irregardless of their position in life, buisness, and politics; perhaps we need a return of severely harsh punishment? After thousands of years, of recorded history, the same problems exist everywhere, and the underlying problem is obviously, man.
I found this most interesting.