Hostname: page-component-5db58dd55d-mhzq2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-06-06T22:32:05.180Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

IN SEARCH OF DRAKON

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2013

Chris Carey
Chris Carey*
Affiliation:
University College London, UK
*
*Email: c.carey@ucl.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper takes issue with two widely held views on Drakon. The first is the claim made at least as early as the fourth century BC that only the homicide laws survived the subsequent intervention of Solon; the second is the repeated assertion that Drakon's laws were uniformly harsh. It argues that more of Drakon's work survived into the Classical period, both in substance and in procedure, than the Athenians realised or admitted, and that the harshness has been exaggerated.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 59 , December 2013 , pp. 29 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2013. Published by Cambridge University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works cited

Austin, M. M. and Vidal Naquet, P. (1977) Economic and social history of ancient Greece: an introduction, Berkeley and Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Carey, C. (2004) ‘Offence and procedure’, in Harris, E. M. and Rubinstein, L. (eds.) The law and the courts in classical Athens, London, 111–36.Google Scholar
Cohen, D. (1983) Theft in Athenian law, Munich.Google Scholar
Cohen, D. (2005) ‘Introduction’, in Gagarin and Cohen (eds.), 1–26.Google Scholar
Fisher, N. R. E. 1990, ‘The law of hubris in Athens’, in Cartledge, P., Millett, P. and Todd, S. (eds.) Nomos: essays in law, politics and society, Cambridge, 123–38.Google Scholar
Gagarin, M. (1986) Early Greek law, Berkeley and London.Google Scholar
Gagarin, M. (2005) ‘The unity of Greek law’, in Gagarin and Cohen (eds.), 29–40.Google Scholar
Gagarin, M. (2007) ‘From oral law to written laws: Dracon's law and its Homeric roots’, in Cantarella, E. (ed.) Symposion 2005: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte, Vienna, 1–18.Google Scholar
Gagarin, M. (2008) Writing Greek law, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Gagarin, M. and Cohen, D. (eds.) (2005) The Cambridge companion to ancient Greek law, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, J. M. (2007) A history of the archaic Greek world, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hansen, M. H. (1975) Eisangelia: the sovereignty of the people's court in Athens in the fourth century B.C. and the impeachment of generals and politicians, Odense.Google Scholar
Hansen, M. H. (1976) Apagoge, endeixis, ephegesis, Odense.Google Scholar
Hölkeskamp, K.-J. (1992) ‘Written law in archaic Greece’, PCPS 38, 87–117.Google Scholar
Hölkeskamp, K.-J. (1999) Schiedsrichter, Gesetzgeber und Gesetzgebung im archaischen Griechenland, Historia Einzelschriften 131, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Humphreys, S. C. (1991) ‘A historical approach to Drakon's law on homicide’, in Gagarin, M. (ed.) Symposion 1990: papers on Greek and Hellenistic legal history, Cologne, 17–45.Google Scholar
Leão, D. F. 2001, ‘Nomos argias’, Logo 1, 103–108.Google Scholar
MacDowell, D. M. (1963) Athenian homicide law in the age of the orators, Manchester.Google Scholar
MacDowell, D. M. (1978) The law in classical Athens, London.Google Scholar
MacDowell, D. M. (2007) review of Gagarin and Cohen (eds.) (2005), Hermathena 182, 175–8.Google Scholar
Meiggs, R. and Lewis, D. (1969) A selection of Greek historical inscriptions to the end of the fifth century BC, rev. edn, Oxford.Google Scholar
Nagy, G. (1979) The best of the Achaeans, Baltimore.Google Scholar
Nagy, G. (1990) Pindar's Homer, Baltimore 1990.Google Scholar
Osborne, R. G. (1985) ‘Law in action in classical Athens’, JHS 105, 40–58.Google Scholar
Osborne, R. G. (1997) ‘Law and laws: how do we join up the dots’, in Mitchell, L. G. and Rhodes, P. J. (eds.) The development of the polis in archaic Greece, London, 74–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, D. D. (2008) Avengers of blood: homicide in Athenian law and custom from Draco to Demosthenes, Historia Einzelschriften 202, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Raaflaub, K. (1997) ‘Homeric society’, in Morris, I. and Powell, B. (eds.) A new companion to Homer, Leiden, 624–48.Google Scholar
Rhodes, P. J. (1981) A commentary on the Aristotelian ‘Athenaion Politeia’, Oxford.Google Scholar
Riggsby, A. (2010) Roman law and the legal world of the Romans, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruschenbusch, E. (1960) ‘Phonos. Zum Recht Drakons und seiner Bedeutung für das Werden des athenischen Staates’, Historia 9, 129–54.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, A. C. (1924) ‘Draco in the hearts of his countrymen’, CP 19, 370–3.Google Scholar
Schmalz, C. G. R. (2006) ‘The Athenian Prytaneion rediscovered?’, Hesperia 75, 33–81.Google Scholar
Schmitz, W. (2001) ‘“Drakonische Strafen”. Die Revision der Gesetze Drakons durch Solon und die Blutrache in Athen’, Klio 83, 7–38.Google Scholar
Snodgrass, A. M. (1974), ‘An historical Homeric society?,’ JHS 94, 110–22.Google Scholar
Stroud, R. (1979) The axones and the kyrbeis of Drakon and Solon, University of California Publications in Classical Studies 19, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Thomas, R. (1989) Oral tradition and written record in Classical Athens, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Thomas, R. (1992) Literacy and orality in ancient Greece, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Thomas, R. (1996) ‘Written in stone? Liberty, equality, orality and the codification of law’, in Foxhall, L. and Lewis, A. D. E. (eds.) Greek law in its political setting: justifications not justice, Oxford, 9–31 (=BICS 40, 1995, 59–74).Google Scholar
Thomas, R. (2005) ‘Writing, law, and written law’, in Gagarin and Cohen (eds.), 41–60.Google Scholar
Thür, G. (2007) ‘Die Einheit des “Griechischen Rechts”. Gedanken zum Prozessrecht in den griechischen Poleis’, Etica & Politica 9, 25–54.Google Scholar
Todd, S. C. (1993) The shape of Athenian law, Oxford.Google Scholar
Van der Vliet, E. (2003) ‘Justice and written laws in the formation of the polis’, in Feldbrugge, F. J. M (ed.) The law's beginnings, Leiden, 23–43.Google Scholar