21
Rich Man, Poor Man
Whenever I pass a group of street boys playing ball, I almost always hear some one shout, “That’s no fair!”
There always seem to be some players who think the others are not playing fair. Sides are always quarreling.
They need an umpire.
When Athens was young there were two sides among the people—the rich and the poor, the aristocrats and the common people—and they were always quarreling. Each side was trying to get more power, and each side said the other wasn’t playing fair.
They needed an umpire.
Athens had had kings, but the kings took the side of the rich, and so at last the Athenians had kicked out the last king, and after that they would have no more kings.
About the year 600 B.C. things became so very bad that a man named Draco was chosen to make a set of rules for the Athenians to obey. These rules he made were called the Code of Draco.
Draco’s Code made terrible punishments for any one who broke the rules. If a man stole anything, even as small a thing as a loaf of bread, he was not just fined or sent to jail; he was put to death! And no matter how small the wrong a man had done, he was put to death for it. Draco explained the reason for such a severe law by saying that a thief deserved to be put to death and should be. A man who killed another deserved more than to be put to death, but unfortunately there was no worse punishment to give him.