I. THE LEGISLATION OF DRACO.
As we have already stated, the successive encroachments on the royal prerogatives that followed the death of Co'drus, and that finally resulted in the establishment of an oligarchy, are almost the only events that fill the meager annals of Athens for several centuries, or down to 683 B.C. "Here, as elsewhere," says a distinguished historian, "a wonderful stillness suddenly follows the varied stir of enterprise and adventure, and the throng of interesting characters that present themselves to our view in the Heroic Age. Life seems no longer to offer anything for poetry to celebrate, or for history to record." The history of Athens, therefore, may be said to begin with the institution of the nine annual archons in 683 B.C. These possessed all authority, religious, civil, and military. The Athenian populace not only enjoyed no political rights, but were reduced to a condition only a little above servitude; and it appears to have been owing to the anarchy that arose from the ruinous extortions of the nobles on the one hand, and the resistance of the people on the other, that Dra'co, the most eminent of the nobility, was chosen to prepare the first written code of laws for the government of the state (624 B.C.).
Draco prepared his code in conformity to the spirit and the interest of the ruling class, and the severity of his laws has made his name proverbial. It has been said of them that they were written, not in ink, but in blood. He attached the same penalty to petty thefts as to sacrilege and murder, saying that the former offences deserved death, and he had no greater punishment for the latter. Of course, the legislation of Draco failed to calm the prevailing discontent, and human nature soon revolted against such legalized butchery. Says an English author, "The first symptoms in Athens of the political crisis which, as in other of the Grecian states, marked the transition of power from the oligarchic to the popular party, now showed itself." Cy'lon, an Athenian of wealth and good, family, had married the daughter of Theagenes, the despot of Megara. Encouraged by his father-in-law's success, he conceived the design of seizing the Acropolis at the next Olympic festival and making himself master of Athens. Accordingly, at that time he seized the Acropolis with a considerable force; but not having the support of the mass of the people the conspiracy failed, and most of those engaged in it were put to death.