Court
A court is any person or institution with authority to judge or adjudicate as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil and administrative matters in accordance with the rule of law. In both common law and civil law legal systems, courts are the central means for dispute resolution, it is understood that all people have an ability to bring their claims before a court; the rights of those accused of a crime include the right to present a defense before a court. The system of courts that interprets and applies the law is collectively known as the judiciary; the place where a court sits is known as a venue. The room where court proceedings occur is known as a courtroom, the building as a courthouse; the practical authority given to the court is known as its jurisdiction – the court's power to decide certain kinds of questions or petitions put to it. According to William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, a court is constituted by a minimum of three parties: the actor or plaintiff, who complains of an injury done.
It is usual in the superior courts to have barristers, attorneys or counsel, as assistants, though courts consist of additional barristers, reporters, a jury. The term "the court" is used to refer to the presiding officer or officials one or more judges; the judge or panel of judges may be collectively referred to as "the bench". In the United States, other common law jurisdictions, the term "court" by law is used to describe the judge himself or herself. In the United States, the legal authority of a court to take action is based on personal jurisdiction over the parties to the litigation and subject-matter jurisdiction over the claims asserted; the word court comes from the French cour, an enclosed yard, which derives from the Latin form cortem, the accusative case of cohors, which again means an enclosed yard or the occupants of such a yard. The English word court is a cognate of the Latin word hortus from Ancient Greek χόρτος, both referring to an enclosed space; the meaning of a judicial assembly is first attested in the 12th century, derives from the earlier usage to designate a sovereign and his entourage, which met to adjudicate disputes in such an enclosed yard.
The verb "to court", meaning to win favor, derives from the same source since people traveled to the sovereign's court to win his favor. The word jurisdiction comes from juris and dictio. Jurisdiction is defined as the official authority to make legal decisions and judgements over an individual or materialistic item within a territory."Whether a given court has jurisdiction to preside over a given case" is a key question in any legal action. Three basic components of jurisdiction are personal jurisdiction over an individual, jurisdiction over the particular subject matter or thing and territorial jurisdiction. Jurisdiction over a person refers to the full authority over a person regardless on where they live, jurisdiction over a particular subject matter refers to the authority over the said subject of legal cases involved in a case, lastly, territorial jurisdiction is the authority over a person within an x amount of space. Other concepts of jurisdiction include general jurisdiction, exclusive jurisdiction, territorial jurisdiction, appellate jurisdiction, diversity jurisdiction.
Trial courts are courts. Sometimes termed "courts of first instance", trial courts have varying original jurisdiction. Trial courts may conduct trials with juries as the finders of fact or trials in which judges act as both finders of fact and finders of law. Juries are less common in court systems outside the Anglo-American common law tradition. Appellate courts are courts that hear appeals of trial courts; some courts, such as the Crown Court in England and Wales may have both trial and appellate jurisdictions. The two major legal traditions of the western world are the civil law courts and the common law courts; these two great legal traditions are similar, in that they are products of western culture although there are significant differences between the two traditions. Civil law courts are profoundly based upon Roman Law a civil body of law entitled "Corpus iuris civilis"; this theory of civil law was rediscovered around the end of the eleventh century and became a foundation for university legal education starting in Bologna and subsequently being taught throughout continental European Universities.
Civil law is ensconced in the French and German legal systems. Common law courts were established by English royal judges of the King's Council after the Norman Invasion of Britain in 1066; the royal judges created a body of law by combining local customs they were made aware of through traveling and visiting local jurisdictions. This common standard of law became known as "Common Law"; this legal tradition is practiced in the English and American l
Rome
Rome is the capital city and a special comune of Italy. Rome serves as the capital of the Lazio region. With 2,872,800 residents in 1,285 km2, it is the country's most populated comune, it is the fourth most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4,355,725 residents, thus making it the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber; the Vatican City is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been defined as capital of two states. Rome's history spans 28 centuries. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe; the city's early population originated from a mix of Latins and Sabines.
The city successively became the capital of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, is regarded by some as the first metropolis. It was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, the expression was taken up by Ovid and Livy. Rome is called the "Caput Mundi". After the fall of the Western Empire, which marked the beginning of the Middle Ages, Rome fell under the political control of the Papacy, in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. Beginning with the Renaissance all the popes since Nicholas V pursued over four hundred years a coherent architectural and urban programme aimed at making the city the artistic and cultural centre of the world. In this way, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, creating masterpieces throughout the city.
In 1871, Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, which, in 1946, became the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city. In 2016, Rome ranked as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, the most popular tourist attraction in Italy, its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The famous Vatican Museums are among the world's most visited museums while the Colosseum was the most popular tourist attraction in world with 7.4 million visitors in 2018. Host city for the 1960 Summer Olympics, Rome is the seat of several specialized agencies of the United Nations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development; the city hosts the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean as well as the headquarters of many international business companies such as Eni, Enel, TIM, Leonardo S.p. A. and national and international banks such as Unicredit and BNL.
Its business district, called EUR, is the base of many companies involved in the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, financial services. Rome is an important fashion and design centre thanks to renowned international brands centered in the city. Rome's Cinecittà Studios have been the set of many Academy Award–winning movies. According to the founding myth of the city by the Ancient Romans themselves, the long-held tradition of the origin of the name Roma is believed to have come from the city's founder and first king, Romulus. However, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was derived from Rome itself; as early as the 4th century, there have been alternative theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. Several hypotheses have been advanced focusing on its linguistic roots which however remain uncertain: from Rumon or Rumen, archaic name of the Tiber, which in turn has the same root as the Greek verb ῥέω and the Latin verb ruo, which both mean "flow". There is archaeological evidence of human occupation of the Rome area from 14,000 years ago, but the dense layer of much younger debris obscures Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites.
Evidence of stone tools and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence. Several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the bronze age and the beginning of the Iron age, each hill between the sea and the Capitol was topped by a village. However, none of them had yet an urban quality. Nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city developed through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine; this aggregation was facilitated by the increase of agricultural productivity above the subsistence level, which allowed the establishment of secondary and tertiary activities. These in turn boosted the development of trade with the Greek colonies of southern Italy; these developments, which according to archaeological ev
Athens
Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence starting somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennium BC. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state that emerged in conjunction with the seagoing development of the port of Piraeus, a distinct city prior to its 5th century BC incorporation with Athens. A center for the arts and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, it is referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy because of its cultural and political impact on the European continent, in particular the Romans. In modern times, Athens is a large cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, industrial, maritime and cultural life in Greece. In 2012, Athens was ranked the world's 39th richest city by purchasing power and the 67th most expensive in a UBS study. Athens is a global one of the biggest economic centres in southeastern Europe.
It has a large financial sector, its port Piraeus is both the largest passenger port in Europe, the second largest in the world. While at the same time being the sixth busiest passenger port in Europe; the Municipality of Athens had a population of 664,046 within its administrative limits, a land area of 38.96 km2. The urban area of Athens extends beyond its administrative municipal city limits, with a population of 3,090,508 over an area of 412 km2. According to Eurostat in 2011, the functional urban area of Athens was the 9th most populous FUA in the European Union, with a population of 3.8 million people. Athens is the southernmost capital on the European mainland; the heritage of the classical era is still evident in the city, represented by ancient monuments and works of art, the most famous of all being the Parthenon, considered a key landmark of early Western civilization. The city retains Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a smaller number of Ottoman monuments. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery.
Landmarks of the modern era, dating back to the establishment of Athens as the capital of the independent Greek state in 1834, include the Hellenic Parliament and the so-called "architectural trilogy of Athens", consisting of the National Library of Greece, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Academy of Athens. Athens is home to several museums and cultural institutions, such as the National Archeological Museum, featuring the world's largest collection of ancient Greek antiquities, the Acropolis Museum, the Museum of Cycladic Art, the Benaki Museum and the Byzantine and Christian Museum. Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, 108 years it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics, making it one of only a handful of cities to have hosted the Olympics more than once. In Ancient Greek, the name of the city was Ἀθῆναι a plural. In earlier Greek, such as Homeric Greek, the name had been current in the singular form though, as Ἀθήνη, it was rendered in the plural on, like those of Θῆβαι and Μυκῆναι.
The root of the word is not of Greek or Indo-European origin, is a remnant of the Pre-Greek substrate of Attica. In antiquity, it was debated whether Athens took its name from its patron goddess Athena or Athena took her name from the city. Modern scholars now agree that the goddess takes her name from the city, because the ending -ene is common in names of locations, but rare for personal names. During the medieval period, the name of the city was rendered once again in the singular as Ἀθήνα. However, after the establishment of the modern Greek state, due to the conservatism of the written language, Ἀθῆναι became again the official name of the city and remained so until the abandonment of Katharevousa in the 1970s, when Ἀθήνα, Athína, became the official name. According to the ancient Athenian founding myth, the goddess of wisdom, competed against Poseidon, the god of the seas, for patronage of the yet-unnamed city. According to the account given by Pseudo-Apollodorus, Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a salt water spring welled up.
In an alternative version of the myth from Vergil's Georgics, Poseidon instead gave the Athenians the first horse. In both versions, Athena offered the Athenians the first domesticated olive tree. Cecrops declared Athena the patron goddess of Athens. Different etymologies, now rejected, were proposed during the 19th century. Christian Lobeck proposed as the root of the name the word ἄθος or ἄνθος meaning "flower", to denote Athens as the "flowering city". Ludwig von Döderlein proposed the stem of the verb θάω, stem θη- to denote Athens as having fertile soil. In classical literature, the city was sometimes referred to as the City of the Violet Crown, first documented in Pindar's ἰοστέφανοι Ἀθᾶναι, or as τὸ κλεινὸν ἄστυ. In medieval texts, variant names include Setines and Astines, all derivations involving false splitting of p
Heliaia
Heliaia or Heliaea was the supreme court of ancient Athens. Τhe view held among scholars is that the court drew its name from the ancient Greek verb ἡλιάζεσθαι, which means συναθροίζεσθαι, namely congregate. Another version is that the court took its name from the fact that the hearings were taking place outdoors, under the sun; this was the name of the place where the hearings were convoked, but this appellation included the court as well. The judges were called dikasts; the operation of judging was called ἡλιάζεσθαι. It is not clear whether Heliaia was instituted by Cleisthenes or Solon, but it seems that the latter initiated a function of the Assembly to sit as an appeals court; the court had 6,000 members, chosen annually by lot among all the male citizens over 30 years old, unless they were in debt to the Treasury or disfranchised, namely deprived of their civil rights through the humiliating punishment of atimia. Those suffering from intellectual or corporeal flaws were excepted, if their shortages prevented them from perceiving the proceedings.
If any unqualified person participated in a jury information was laid against him and he was brought before the Heliaia. If convicted the court could assess against him whatever punishment or fine he is thought to deserve. If the punishment was a money fine the infringer had to go to prison until he had paid both the former debt, for which the information was laid, whatever additional sum had been imposed on him as a fine by the court; the public office of the heliast was not obligatory, but the citizens who wished to exert these duties had to submit a petition. The post of the dikast was salaried and, the jurors were remunerated for each day of employment with one obolus and at the instigation of Kleon in 425 BC with three oboloi, i.e. half a drachma. According to Aristotle, Pericles first made service in the jury-courts a paid office, as a popular counter-measure against Cimon's wealth; the 6,000 were drawn from the 10 tribes and they were divided into chambers of 600 jurymen, 500 or 501 of whom were regular members, with the rest constituting alternate jurors.
In exceptional cases the court could go into plenary sessions. Sometimes, the chambers had 1001 to 1501 members. After the selection by lot, the heliasts had to take the Heliastic Oath once every year. After the swearing-in, the jurors received one box-wood ticket, with their own names and that of their father and deme written on it, one letter of the alphabet as far as kappa and the jurors of each tribe were divided into ten sections an equal number under each letter; the Heliaia's jurisdiction was limited to judging the archons and some other similar accusations against public office-holders. It was when Ephialtes and Pericles prompted a binding resolution through the ecclesia, stripping the Areios Pagos, conservatism's hub, of most of the cases it judged, that the Heliaia started judging all the civil and penal cases; the Areios Pagos kept its competence only for the crimes of murder and arson, while the archons could impose some minor fines. The Heliaia's jurisdiction included litigation which involved Athenians and citizens of other cities or Athens and another city as subjects of international law.
Namely, the Heliaia functioned as a court for litigation of public and private international law. Taking the jurisdiction over the so-called graphe paranomon, the Heliaia replaced the Areios Pagos in the execution of the legal control of the decisions of the ecclesia; until Ephialtes' reforms the Areios Pagos had the duty of guarding the laws and to keep watch over the greatest and the most important of the affairs of state. The Heliaia was in session every normal day, except for the three last days of each month and for the days during which the ecclesia was in session; the sessions took place in the open within a marked-off area, since there was no specific building where they could be lodged. The location of the hearing was confined within a special hedge, outside of which the audience could stand; the details of the legal procedure were as follows: The hegemon of the court was responsible for the registration of the suits and complaints. After holding a preliminary investigation, he had to subpoena the litigant parties and the witnesses before the jury.
In the morning of the day of hearings, the hegemon had to determine by lot the jury that would judge the case as well as the place where it would convene. After the formation of the jury, the hegemon had to submit the conclusions of his preliminary investigation and defining the litigation on which the court should decide, it was the time for the plaintiff, the defendant and the witnesses to be heard. The arguments were exposed by the litigants themselves, without the legal support of a lawyer, in the form of an exchange of single speeches timed by water clock. In a public suit each litigant had three hours to speak, whereas they had much less in private suits. In this way the judicial cases became a vehement fight of impressions, since the jurors did not constitute a little group of mature citizens, such as the Court of Areios Pagos, interested only in the correct application of the law. Additionally, before the Chambers of Heliaia each citizen had to become an effective orator and to act in his capacity as citizen, in order to protect his interests and to enforce his views.
Decisions were made by voting without any time set aside for deliberation. Nothing, howeve
Pnyx
The Pnyx is a hill in central Athens, the capital of Greece. Beginning as early as 507 BC, the Athenians gathered on the Pnyx to host their popular assemblies, thus making the hill one of the earliest and most important sites in the creation of democracy; the Pnyx is located less than 1 kilometre west of the Acropolis and 1.6 km south-west of the centre of Athens, Syntagma Square. The Pnyx was used for popular assemblies in Athens as early as 507 BC, when the reforms of Cleisthenes transferred political power to the citizenry, it was outside the city proper, but close enough to be convenient. It looks down on the ancient Agora, the commercial and social centre of the city. At this site all the great political struggles of Athens of the "Golden Age" were fought out. Pericles and Alcibiades spoke here, within sight of the Parthenon, temple of Athena. Here Demosthenes delivered his vilifications of Philip of Macedon, the famous Philippics; the Pnyx is a small, rocky hill surrounded by parkland, with a large flat platform of eroded stone set into its side, by steps carved on its slope.
It was the meeting place of one of the world's earliest known democratic legislatures, the Athenian ekklesia, the flat stone platform was the bema, the "stepping stone" or speakers' platform. This was the oratorical platform from which noted politicians such as Pericles and orators "fulmined over Greece." Some scholars note that the environs and position of the Pnyx as well as its openness and objects of appeal, provided the ancient Greek speakers with the inspiration that not the Roman Forum could rival. It is described as a result of previous reforms that included the utilization of demography and topography for the purpose of serving the interests of a rhetorical culture; as such, the Pnyx is the material embodiment of the principle of isēgoría, "equal speech", i.e. the equal right of every citizen to debate matters of policy. The other two principles of democracy were isonomía, equality under the law, isopoliteía, equality of vote and equal opportunity to assume political office; the right of isēgoría was expressed by the presiding officer of the Pnyx assembly, who formally opened each debate with the open invitation "Tís agoreúein boúletai?".
The Pnyx was protected by a defense wall built in the fourth century BC and reconstructed a century later. The new walls, made of solid masonry and ashlar blocks, were two-meter thick; the stretch began on a northern end with a tower that stood south of the Melitides Gate of the Themistoclean Wall and ended at the western end of the summit where it joined the Diateichisma. The wall featured seven towers set with 40-meter interval while the connecting walls were strengthened by buttresses; the Pnyx was the official meeting place of the Athenian democratic assembly. In the earliest days of Athenian democracy, the ekklesia met in the Agora. Sometime in the early 5th century, the meeting place was moved to a hill south and west of the Acropolis; this new meeting place came to be called "Pnyx" (from the Greek word meaning "tightly packed together". In the early history of the Pnyx, three phases can be distinguished:Pnyx I: Probably constructed in the early 5th century; the people sat on the hillside facing a speaker's platform on the north.
The seating capacity may have been anywhere from 6000 to 13,000 people. This phase is represented archaeologically only by a few cuttings in the bedrock and a boundary stone, so that it is impossible to determine the date and size with any precision. Pnyx II: Probably late 5th century B. C. In this phase the orientation of the auditorium was reversed. A stepped terrace wall was created on the north to support an artificial terrace, the people sat facing a speaker's platform on the south; some sources stated that this retaining wall was constructed around 500 BC for the purpose of holding the soil, brought in to form the level space for the bema. Part of the stepped terrace wall is preserved, as well as a staircase with rock-cut steps leading up to it from the direction of the Agora; the size of the auditorium is not that much larger than Pnyx I. Pnyx III: The Pnyx was rebuilt and expanded in the 3rd quarter of the 4th century B. C. around 345-335 B. C. A massive, retaining wall was built on the north.
The southern side of the auditorium and speaker's platform were quarried out of the natural bedrock.. On a terrace above the speaker's platform, the foundations were begun for 2 long stoas, it is unknown for how many years Pnyx III was used as the meeting place of the ekklesia, by the 1st century B. C. the assembly held their meetings in the Theater of Dionysos on the South Slope of the Acropolis. In the Roman period, part of the Pnyx was used as a sanctuary of Zeus Hypsistos. Evidence for the sanctuary consist of c. 50 niches for votive plaques cut into the bedrock scarp east of the speaker's platform. Many of the votive plaques are carved with representations of human body parts, suggesting that this Zeus Hypsistos was a healing divinity. Scholars such as Mogens Herman Hansen suggest the Pnyx was able to hold about 6,000 citizens, though expa
Pericles
Pericles was a prominent and influential Greek statesman and general of Athens during its golden age – the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. He was descended, through his mother, from the powerful and influential Alcmaeonid family. Pericles had such a profound influence on Athenian society that Thucydides, a contemporary historian, acclaimed him as "the first citizen of Athens". Pericles turned the Delian League into an Athenian empire, led his countrymen during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War; the period during which he led Athens from 461 to 429 BC, is sometimes known as the "Age of Pericles", though the period thus denoted can include times as early as the Persian Wars, or as late as the next century. Pericles promoted literature, he started an ambitious project. This project beautified and protected the city, exhibited its glory, gave work to the people. Pericles fostered Athenian democracy to such an extent that critics call him a populist. He, along with several members of his family, succumbed to the Plague of Athens in 429 BC, which weakened the city-state during a protracted conflict with Sparta.
Pericles was born c. 495 BC, in Greece. He was the son of the politician Xanthippus, though ostracized in 485–484 BC, returned to Athens to command the Athenian contingent in the Greek victory at Mycale just five years later. Pericles' mother, Agariste, a member of the powerful and controversial noble family of the Alcmaeonidae, her familial connections played a crucial role in helping start Xanthippus' political career. Agariste was the great-granddaughter of the tyrant of Sicyon and the niece of the Athenian reformer Cleisthenes. According to Herodotus and Plutarch, Agariste dreamed, a few nights before Pericles' birth, that she had borne a lion. Legends say that Philip II of Macedon had a similar dream before the birth of his son, Alexander the Great. One interpretation of the dream treats the lion as a traditional symbol of greatness, but the story may allude to the unusually large size of Pericles' skull, which became a popular target of contemporary comedians. Although Plutarch claims that this deformity was the reason that Pericles was always depicted wearing a helmet, this is not the case.
Pericles belonged to the tribe of Acamantis. His early years were quiet, his family's nobility and wealth allowed him to pursue his inclination toward education. He learned music from the masters of the time and he is considered to have been the first politician to attribute importance to philosophy, he enjoyed the company of the philosophers Protagoras, Zeno of Elea, Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras, in particular, influenced him greatly. Pericles' manner of thought and rhetorical charisma may have been in part products of Anaxagoras' emphasis on emotional calm in the face of trouble, skepticism about divine phenomena, his proverbial calmness and self-control are often regarded as products of Anaxagoras' influence. In the spring of 472 BC, Pericles presented The Persians of Aeschylus at the Greater Dionysia as a liturgy, demonstrating that he was one of the wealthier men of Athens. Simon Hornblower has argued that Pericles' selection of this play, which presents a nostalgic picture of Themistocles' famous victory at Salamis, shows that the young politician was supporting Themistocles against his political opponent Cimon, whose faction succeeded in having Themistocles ostracized shortly afterwards.
Plutarch says. If this was so, Pericles must have taken up a position of leadership by the early 460s BC – in his early or mid-thirties. Throughout these years he endeavored to protect his privacy and to present himself as a model for his fellow citizens. For example, he would avoid banquets, trying to be frugal. In 463 BC, Pericles was the leading prosecutor of Cimon, the leader of the conservative faction, accused of neglecting Athens' vital interests in Macedon. Although Cimon was acquitted, this confrontation proved that Pericles' major political opponent was vulnerable. Around 461 BC, the leadership of the democratic party decided it was time to take aim at the Areopagus, a traditional council controlled by the Athenian aristocracy, which had once been the most powerful body in the state; the leader of the party and mentor of Pericles, proposed a reduction of the Areopagus' powers. The Ecclesia adopted Ephialtes' proposal without opposition; this reform signaled the beginning of a new era of "radical democracy".
The democratic party became dominant in Athenian politics, Pericles seemed willing to follow a populist policy in order to cajole the public. According to Aristotle, Pericles' stance can be explained by the fact that his principal political opponent, was both rich and generous, was able to gain public favor by lavishly handing out portions of his sizable personal fortune; the historian Loren J. Samons II argues, that Pericles had enough resources to make a political mark by private means, had he so chosen. In 461 BC, Pericles achieved the politic
Draco (lawgiver)
Draco called Drako or Drakon, was the first recorded legislator of Athens in Ancient Greece. He replaced the prevailing system of oral law and blood feud by a written code to be enforced only by a court of law. Draco was the first democratic legislator, requested by the Athenian citizens to be a lawgiver for the city-state, but the citizens were unaware that Draco would establish laws characterized by their harshness. To this day, the adjective draconian refers to unforgiving rules or laws, in English and other European languages. During the 39th Olympiad, in 622 or 621 BCE, Draco established the legal code with which he is identified. Little is known about his life, he may have belonged to the Greek nobility of Attica, with which the 10th-century Suda text records him as contemporaneous, prior to the period of the Seven Sages of Greece. It relates a folkloric story of his death in the Aeginetan theatre. In a traditional ancient Greek show of approval, his supporters "threw so many hats and shirts and cloaks on his head that he suffocated, was buried in that same theatre".
The truth about his death is still unclear, but we do know that Draco was driven out of Athens by the Athenians to the neighbouring island of Aegina, where he spent the remainder of his life. The laws that he laid were the first written constitution of Athens. So that no one would be unaware of them, they were posted on wooden tablets, where they were preserved for two centuries on steles of the shape of three-sided pyramids; the tablets were called axones because they could be pivoted along the pyramid's axis to read any side. The constitution featured several major innovations: Instead of oral laws known to a special class, arbitrarily applied and interpreted, all laws were written, thus being made known to all literate citizens: "the constitution formed under Draco, when the first code of laws was drawn up"; the laws distinguish between involuntary homicide. The laws were harsh. For example, any debtor whose status was lower than that of his creditor was forced into slavery; the punishment was more lenient for those owing a debt to a member of a lower class.
The death penalty was the punishment for minor offences, such as stealing a cabbage. Concerning the liberal use of the death penalty in the Draconic code, Plutarch states: "It is said that Drakon himself, when asked why he had fixed the punishment of death for most offences, answered that he considered these lesser crimes to deserve it, he had no greater punishment for more important ones". All his laws were repealed by Solon in the early 6th century BCE, with the exception of the homicide law. After much debate, the Athenians decided to revise the laws, including the homicide law, in 409 BC; the homicide law is a fragmented inscription but states that it is up to the victim's relatives to prosecute a killer. According to the preserved part of the inscription, unintentional homicides received a sentence of exile, it is not clear. In 409 BC, intentional homicide was punished by death, but Draco's law begins,'καὶ ἐὰμ μὲ ‘κ ρονοίς τε', ambiguous and difficult to translate. One possible translation offers, "Even if a man not intentionally kills another, he is exiled".
Draco introduced the lot-chosen Council of Four Hundred, distinct from the Areopagus, which evolved in constitutions to play a large role in Athenian democracy. Aristotle notes that Draco, while having the laws written legislated for an existing unwritten Athenian constitution such as setting exact qualifications for eligibility for office. Draco extended the franchise to all free men who could furnish themselves with a set of military equipment, they elected the Council of Four Hundred from among their number. Thus, in the event of their death, their estate could pass to a competent heir; these officers were required to hold to account the prytanes and hipparchoi of the preceding year until their accounts had been audited. "The Council of Areopagus was guardian of the laws, kept watch over the magistrates to see that they executed their offices in accordance with the laws. Any person who felt himself wronged might lay an information before the Council of Areopagus, on declaring what law was broken by the wrong done to him.
But, as has been said before, loans were secured upon the persons of the debtors, the land was in the hands of a few." Ancient Greek law Hammurabi, a Babylonian who wrote some of the earliest codes of law Cruel and unusual punishment Retributive justice List of Ancient Greeks List of eponymous laws Roisman and translated by J. C. Yardley, Ancient Greece from Homer to Alexander ISBN 1-4051-2776-7 Carawan, Edwin. Rhetoric and the Law of Draco. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-815086-2. Gagarin, Michael. Drakon and Early Athenian Homicide Law. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-02627-6. Gagarin, Michael; the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-
