During the 7th century BC, the Ancient Greek city-state of Athens was experiencing a time
of great social and political unrest. Determined to save Athens from ruin, the city’s council of
aristocrats appointed an oppressive lawmaker named Draco to rewrite their entire legal system.
Draco’s constitution led to the brutal execution of countless Athenian citizens. His laws and
punishments were so harsh that his name has become synonymous with mercilessness and cruelty.
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Draco belonged to a prominent Athenian family and was rumored to have been related to King Codrus,
the final king of Athens four centuries earlier. Athens was growing dramatically in size and
had developed into a major political and commercial hub on the Aegean Sea.
By this period, Athens had moved away from being ruled by kings. Instead, it was largely controlled
by a council of aristocrats called the Areopagus. The council met on a large outcrop overlooking the
city of Athens called the Hill of Ares. The hill was named after the Greek god of war and was the
alleged location where Ares was put on trial by other gods for the murder of Poseidon’s son.
The unwritten laws at the time were poorly conveyed to the majority of citizens and were
regularly altered to suit the interests of the upper class. Judges routinely showed favoritism
toward the wealthy, and this exploitative system created great unrest within Athenian society.
The issue became so great that the governing aristocratic families of Athens finally decided
to abandon their secretive legal system and promulgate the laws in writing to the public,
enabling every Athenian citizen to understand the legal process. The Areopagus appointed an
aristocratic legislator named Draco to create the new written code of laws. It is unclear why
Draco was chosen for this task, though he may have been a member of the Areopagus himself.
After three years of planning and deliberating, Draco introduced the first written constitution in Athenian history, known as the “Draconian Constitution”
in Athenian history, known as the “Draconian Constitution” in 621 BC. Plutarch wrote of
Draco’s laws that “one penalty was assigned to almost all transgressions, namely death,
so that even those convicted of idleness were put to death, and those who stole salad or fruit
received the same punishment as those who committed sacrilege or murder.” Unfortunately,
any written text of the constitution has not survived and historians are uncertain if death
was truly the punishment for most crimes, or if Draco’s character was maligned for unknown reasons.
The 4th century BC Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote about Draco in his work called the
“Constitution of the Athenians.” Aristotle writes that in Draco's constitution, “The franchise was
given to all who could furnish themselves with… military equipment. The nine Archons
and the Treasurers were elected by this body from persons possessing an unencumbered property of not
less than ten minas.” This meant that Draco vastly expanded the right to vote to any man capable of
purchasing a house and military equipment. Draco also introduced a new Athenian governing body
called the “Council of Four Hundred,” consisting of elected officials who would govern Athens alongside
the Areopagus. The elected officials generally consisted of oligarchs tasked with maintaining
peace within Athens. While Draco has been vilified for his excessive brutality, his political reforms
were an important step in the development of Athenian democracy. However, the political and
social unrest in Athens, which had led to the initial solicitation of Draco by the Areopagus,
only continued and intensified in the following years. In response to these reforms, the lawmaker
himself appears to have been run out of Athens, spending the remainder of his years in exile on
the neighboring island of Aegina. As a result, in the 590’s BC, a new Athenian lawmaker by the name of
Solon was asked to replace Draco’s controversial Constitution. Solon’s reforms repealed many of
Draco’s harsher measures, especially those related to his over-enthusiastic use of the death penalty.
However, Solon expanded upon Draco’s voting reform to include every man in Athens.
In the centuries that followed, Draco became an object of severe criticism, while Solon was
revered as the founder of the city’s greatness. For instance, by the 4th century BC, Draco’s notoriety
had already been cemented when a well-known Athenian orator and demagogue of the time,
Demades, exclaimed in front of a crowd that “Draco’s laws were written not with ink, but blood.” According
to Plutarch, when asked why he assigned the death penalty to most offenses, Draco replied that in his
opinion: “The lesser ones deserved it, and for the greater ones no heavier penalty could be found.”
Despite the protests from the poor and indebted, much of the Athenian upper class supported Draco’s
relentless laws. Sometime around 600 BC, during a visit to a theater in Aegina, a group of wealthy
aristocratic supporters barraged Draco with cloaks in a show of support and he suffocated
to death under the weight of the clothing. Through great severity and cruelty, Draco crafted the first
known written constitution in history and laid the groundwork for Athenian democracy.
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