Draco of Athens: Death for Stealing a Cabbage and the First Law of Intent

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Draco gave Athens its first written laws around 621 or 620 BC, dated by the archonship of Aristaechmus, and almost nothing else about his life is known. The historian Karl Julius Beloch even argued that Draco, whose name means serpent, was a sacred Acropolis snake in whose name priests issued laws, a theory most scholars now reject. Before him, Athenian law was oral, interpreted by a few aristocratic families, and disputes were settled through blood feuds. Draco's laws were written on wooden axones mounted on pillars in public, where citizens could rotate the tablets, read the rules and appeal to the Areopagus. The rules themselves were savage: death for nearly any offense, including stealing a cabbage, and debt slavery for anyone owing money to a social superior.

Plutarch preserved Draco's reported defense: small crimes deserved death, and he had nothing harsher for great ones. In the early sixth century BC Solon repealed nearly all of it but kept the homicide law, which for the first time separated intentional murder from involuntary killing. An inscription from 409 or 408 BC preserves part of it, sending accidental killers into exile and making prosecution a formal matter for the victim's relatives. Aristotle later credited Draco with a council of 400 chosen by lot and property rules for office, claims modern scholars largely reject.

• The 10th-century Byzantine Suda says he suffocated on Aegina under cloaks thrown by admiring crowds.
• Aristotle's account required 10 minas of unencumbered property for an archon and 100 minas plus legitimate children over 10 for a general.
• One mina equaled roughly 100 days' wages for a skilled laborer.
• The adjective draconian has been used in English since at least 1777.
• He appears on the south frieze of the U.S. Supreme Court courtroom, carved by Adolph Weinman, beside Confucius and Moses.