Draco

• I The Athenian lawgiver, Cic. Rep. 2, 1; id. de Or. 1, 44, 197; Gell. 11, 18.—
• II One of Actaeon's hounds, Hyg. Fab. 181.

DRACO (Δράκων, a small river which enters the southern side of the bay of Astacus, in the Propontis. It runs from the high land north of the lake Ascania, near Nicaea, and enters the sea at the promontory of Dil, and near Helenopolis (Ersek). The Draco is a rapid river, with a winding course, which by its alluvium has formed the Dil. (Procop. de Aedif. 5.2.) Leake observes (Asia Minor, p. 10):--In riding from the Dil to Kizderweút (on the road to Nicaea, Iznik), I remarked that we traversed the river about twenty times, without being aware that Procopius has made precisely the same remark with regard to the Draco.

(Δράκων). A very celebrated Athenian legislator, who flourished about B.C. 621. Suidas tells us that he brought forward his code of laws (θεσμοί) in this year, and that he was then an old man. Aristotle (Pol. ii.fin.) says that Draco adapted his laws to the existing constitution, and that they contained nothing particular beyond the severity of their penalties. The slightest theft was punished capitally, as well as the most atrocious murder; and Demades remarked of his laws that they were written with blood, and not with ink ( Solon, 17). Draco, however, deserves credit as the first who introduced written laws at Athens; and it is probable that he improved the criminal courts by his transfer of cases of bloodshed from the archon to the ephetae, since before his time the archons had a right of settling all cases arbitrarily and without appeal—a right which they enjoyed in other cases until Solon's time. It appears that there were some offences which he did not punish with death; for instance, loss of civil rights was the punishment of attempting to alter one of his laws (Demosth. c. Aristocr. p. 714, Bekker). Draco was an archon (Pausan. ix. 36, 8), and, consequently, an Eupatrid; it is not, therefore, to be supposed that his object was to favour the lower orders, though his code seems to have tended to abridge the power of the nobles. The Athenians, it is said, could not endure the rigour of his laws, and the legislator himself was obliged to withdraw to the island of Aegina. Here he is said by Suidas to have been suffocated in the theatre beneath the number of cloaks and garments which the people of the island, according to the usual mode of expressing approbation among the Greeks, showered upon him. He was buried in the theatre.

• laws of D. for Athenians on homicide: Paus. 6.11.6
• on adultery: Paus. 9.36.8