Dracon (in Greek old Δράκων/ Drákôn ) is a Athenian Législateur of seventh century BC, pertaining to the class of the Eupatrides.

In 621, it writes its Loi S as a archonte éponyme, first written laws of the city, the θεσμόι thesmoi , which would have been the first constituent laws of the city. And, so that nobody is not unaware of them, they are posted on wood panels (άξονες), preserved almost two centuries, and on steles of form of Bétyle S (κύρϐεις). It brings several major innovations:

• the right from now on is written, and thus recognizable by all those which learned how to read, instead of being oral, and known and is interpreted by some;
• the law on the homicide makes the distinction between the murder, volunteer, and the homicide, involuntary.

However, of the doubts about the existence of this first constitution remain. Indeed, the image of its " author; emblématique" would have been built by the political reactionaries of the end of the O C Solon, at the beginning of the VI E, preserves only the law on the homicide , which is again given to the honor by the democratic reaction of 409, symbol of the respect towards the ancestral values.

Severity " draconienne"

According to the Welded , it was then an old man. This corpus of laws was characterized by its severity. The least flight was punished of death. The speaker Démadès, at second century BC, notices then that these laws appeared written with blood, and not of ink. Only some crimes were not liable to death. Thus, the attempt to amend its laws was punished only by the deprivation of civil rights.

According to the Welded , the reprobation of the citizens was such as it had to be exiled with Égine. There, he died buried by the coats which the citizens threw on him with the theater, traditional reprobation in ancient Greece signs.

The severity of its measurements gave rise to the adjective “Draconien” that one can find in expressions like “Draconian punishments”, “Draconian laws” and more generally “of the drastic measures”.

One finds 11 of these laws in a work published with Lyon in 1588, under the title of Jurisprudentia vetus Draconis, Pardulpho Prateio collectoreac interprets , 1559.

It seems shown today that the alleged constitution of Dracon, exposed in Athénaîon Politeia , is largely apocryphal book. See E. Ruschenbush, Historia , IX, 1960, p 129-154.

Dracon and Early Athenian Homicide Law , London-Yale, 1981; SZEGEDY-MASZAK (S.), Article Legends off the Greeks Lawgivers in Romance Greek and Byzantine Studies , 19,1978, p. 199-209; Coll Symposium 1990, Cologne, 1991. -->

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