A large number of the garden species of Dracaena are varieties of Cordyline terminalis. D. Goldieana is a grandly variegated species from west tropical Africa, and requires more heat.
DRACHMANN, HOLGER HENRIK HERBOLDT (1846-1908), Danish poet and dramatist, son of Dr A. G. Drachmann, a physician of Copenhagen, whose family was of German extraction, was born in Copenhagen on the 9th of October 1846. Owing to the early death of his mother, who was a Dane, the child was left much to his own devices. He soon developed a fondness for semi-poetical performances, and loved to organize among his companions heroic games, in which he himself took such parts as those of Tordenskjold and Niels Juul. His studies were belated, and he did not enter the university until 1865, leaving it in 1866 to become a student in the Academy of Fine Arts. From 1866 to 1870 he was learning, under Professor Sörensen, to become a marine painter, and not without success. But about the latter date he came under the influence of Georg Brandes, and, without abandoning art, he began to give himself more and more to literature. At various periods he travelled very extensively in England, Scotland, France, Spain and Italy, and his literary career began by his sending letters about his journeys to the Danish newspapers. After returning home, he settled for some time in the island of Bornholm, painting seascapes. He now issued his earliest volume of poems, Digte (1872), and joined the group of young Radical writers who gathered under the banner of Brandes. Drachmann was unsettled, and still doubted whether his real strength lay in the pencil or in the pen. By this time he had enjoyed a surprising experience of life, especially among sailors, fishermen, students and artists, and the issues of the Franco-German War and the French Commune had persuaded him that a new and glorious era was at hand. His volume of lyrics, Daempede Melodier (“Muffled Melodies,” 1875), proved that Drachmann was a poet with a real vocation, and he began to produce books in prose and verse with great rapidity. Ungt Blod (“Young Blood,” 1876) contained three realistic stories of contemporary life. But he returned to his true field in his magnificent Sange ved Havet; Venezia (“Songs of the Sea; Venice,” 1877), and won the passionate admiration of his countrymen by his prose work, with interludes in verse, called Derovre fra Graensen (“Over the Frontier there,” 1877), a series of impressions made on Drachmann by a visit to the scenes of the war with Germany. During the succeeding years he was a great traveller, visiting most of the principal countries of the world, but particularly familiarizing himself, by protracted voyages, with the sea and with the life of man in maritime places. In 1879 he published Ranker og Roser (“Tendrils and Roses”), amatory lyrics of a very high order of melody, in which he showed a great advance in technical art. To the same period belongs Paa Sömands Tro og Love (“On the Faith and Honour of a Sailor,” 1878), a volume of short stories in prose. It was about this time that Drachmann broke with Brandes and the Radicals, and set himself at the head of a sort of “nationalist” or popular-Conservative party in Denmark. He continued to celebrate the life of the fishermen and sailors in books, whether in prose or verse, which were the most popular of their day. Paul og Virginie and Lars Kruse (both 1879); Östen for Sol og vesten for Maone (“East of the Sun and Moon,” 1880); Puppe og Sommerfugl (“Chrysalis and Butterfly,” 1882); and Strandby Folk (1883) were among these. In 1882 Drachmann published his fine translation, or paraphrase, of Byron’s Don Juan. In 1885 his romantic play called Der var en Gang (“Once upon a Time”) had a great success on the boards of the Royal theatre, Copenhagen; and his tragedies of Völund Smed (“Wayland the Smith”) and Brav-Karl (1897) made him the most popular playwright of Denmark. He published in 1894 a volume of exquisitely fantastic Melodramas in rhymed verse, a collection which contains some of Drachmann’s most perfect work. His novel Med den brede Pensel (“With a Broad Brush,” 1887) was followed in 1890 by Forskrevet, the history of a young painter, Henrik Gerhard, and his revolt against his bourgeois surroundings. With this novel is closely connected Den hellige Ild (“The Sacred Fire,” 1899), in which Drachmann speaks in his own person. There is practically no story in this autobiographical volume, which abounds in lyrical passages. In 1899 he produced his romantic play called Gurre; in 1900 a brilliant lyrical drama, Hallfred Vandraadeskjald; and in 1903, Det grönne Haab. He died in Copenhagen on the 14th of January 1908.
See an article by K. Gjellerup in Dansk Biografisk Lexikon vol. iv. (Copenhagen, 1890).
(E. G.)
DRACO (7th century b.c.), Athenian statesman, was Archon Eponymus (but see J. E. Sandys, Constitution of Athens, p. 12, note) in 621 b.c. His name has become proverbial as an inexorable lawgiver. Up to his time the laws of Athens were unwritten, and were administered arbitrarily by the Eupatridae. As at Rome by the twelve Tables, so at Athens it was found necessary to allay the discontent of the people by publishing these unwritten laws in a codified form, and Draco, himself a Eupatrid, carried this out. According to Plutarch (Life of Solon): “For nearly all crimes there was the same penalty of death. The man who was convicted of idleness, or who stole a cabbage or an apple, was liable to death no less than the robber of temples or the murderer.” For the institution of the 51 Ephetae and their relation to the Areopagus in criminal jurisdiction see [Greek Law], The orator Demades (d. c. 318 b.c.) said that Draco’s laws were written in blood. Whether this implies peculiar severity, or merely reflects the attitude of a more refined age to the barbarous enactments of a primitive people, among whom the penalty of death was almost universal for all crimes, cannot be decided. According to Suidas, however, in his Lexicon, the people were so overjoyed at the change he made, that they accidentally suffocated him in the theatre at Aegina with the rain of caps and cloaks which they flung at him in their enthusiasm.
The appearance in 1891 of Aristotle’s lost treatise on the constitution of Athens gave rise to a most important controversy on the subject of Draco’s work. From the statements contained in chapter iv. of this treatise, and inferences drawn from them, many scholars attributed to Draco the construction of an entirely new constitution for Athens, the main features of which were: (1) extension of franchise to all who could provide themselves with a suit of armour—or, as Gilbert (Constitutional Antiquities, Eng. trans. p. 121) says, to the Zeugite class, from which mainly the hoplites may be supposed to have come; (2) the institution of a property qualification for office (archon 10 minae, strategus 100 minae); (3) a council of 401 members (see [Boulē]); (4) magistrates and councillors to be chosen by lot; further, the four Solonian classes are said to be already in existence.
For some time, especially in Germany, this constitution was almost universally accepted; now, the majority of scholars reject it. The reasons against it, which are almost overwhelming, may be shortly summarized. (1) It is ignored by every other ancient authority, except an admittedly spurious passage in Plato[1]; whereas Aristotle says of his laws “they are laws, but he added the laws to an existing constitution” (Pol. ii. 9. 9). (2) It is inconsistent with other passages in the Constitution of Athens. According to c. vii., Solon repealed all laws of Draco except those relating to murder; yet some of the most modern features of Solon’s constitution are found in Draco’s constitution. (3) Its ideas are alien to the 7th century. It has been said that the qualification of the strategus was ten times that of the archon. This, reasonable in the 5th, is preposterous in the 7th century, when the archon was unquestionably the supreme executive official. Again, it is unlikely that Solon, a democratic reformer, would have reverted from a democratic wealth’ qualification such as is attributed to Draco, to an aristocratic birth qualification. Thirdly, if Draco had instituted a hoplite census, Solon would not have substituted citizenship by birth. (4) The terminology of Draco’s constitution is that of the 5th, not the 7th, century, whereas the chief difficulty of Solon’s laws is the obsolete 6th-century phraseology. (5) Lastly, a comparison between the ideals of the oligarchs under Theramenes (end of 5th century) and this alleged constitution shows a suspicious similarity (hoplite census, nobody to hold office a second time until all duly qualified persons had been exhausted, fine of one drachma for non-attendance in Boulē). It is reasonable, therefore, to conclude that the constitution of Draco was invented by the school of Theramenes, who wished to surround their revolutionary views with the halo of antiquity; hence the allusion to “the constitution of our father” (ἡ πάτριος πολιτεία).
This hypothesis is further corroborated by a criticism of the text. Not only is chapter iv. considered to be an interpolation in the text as originally written, but later chapters have been edited to accord with it. Thus chapter iv. breaks the connexion of thought between chapters iii. and v. Moreover, an interpolator has inserted phrases to remove what would otherwise have been obvious contradictions: thus (a) in chapter vii., where we are told that Solon divided the citizens into four classes (τιμήματα), the interpolator had added the words “according to the division formerly existing” (καθάπερ διῄρηται καὶ πρότερον), which were necessary in view of the statement that Draco gave the franchise to the Zeugites; (b) in chapter xli., where successive constitutional changes are recorded, the words “the Draconian” (ἡ ἐπὶ Δράκοντος) are inserted, though the subsequent figures are not accommodated to the change. Solon is also here spoken of as the founder of democracy, whereas the Draconian constitution of chap. iv. contains several democratic innovations. Two further points may be added, namely, that whereas Aristotle’s treatise credits Draco with establishing a money fine, Pollux definitely quotes a law of Draco in which fines are assessed at so many oxen; secondly, if chapter iv. did exist in the original text, it is more than curious that though the treatise was widely read in antiquity there is no other reference to Draco’s constitution except the two quoted above. In any case, whatever were Draco’s laws, we learn from Plutarch’s life of Solon that Solon abolished all of them, except those dealing with homicide.