dracon

name

1. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative form of Draco (“Athenian lawgiver”).

   “The archaic law of Dracon which dealt with unintentional homicide, passed over a century before Cleisthenes, but reaffirmed in 409 as the law of the state, appoints that if the dead man has no close relatives ten members of his phratry shall settle with the killer.”

   “A little later, perhaps c.620, Dracon drew up the first published Athenian law code. A probably trustworthy fifth-century BC copy of his homicide law survives, but the account of the ‘Draconian constitution’ given by Aristotle is almost certainly spurious.”

   “In 620 BC the lawgiver Dracon drafted Athens’ first criminal code, and extremely draconian (i.e. severe) it was too, since Dracon argued that, as small crimes deserved the death penalty, so must big ones (his laws were ‘written in blood, not ink’, a later politician said).”