William Smith, A Smaller History of Ancient Greece

CHAPTER V

Early History of Athens down to the Establishment of Democracy by Clisthenes, B.C. 510

HOMER

PLATO

ARISTOTLE

THE GREEK OLD TESTAMENT (SEPTUAGINT)

THE NEW TESTAMENT

PLOTINUS

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

MAXIMUS CONFESSOR

SYMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN

CAVAFY

More...

Page 4

The government of the Eupatrids was oppressive; and the discontent of the people at length became so serious, that Draco was appointed in 624 B.C. to draw up a written code of laws. They were marked by extreme severity. He affixed the penalty of death to all crimes alike; to petty thefts, for instance, as well as to sacrilege and murder. Hence they were said to have been written not in ink but in blood; and we are told that he justified this extreme harshness by saying that small offences deserved death, and that he knew no severer punishment for great ones.

The legislation of Draco failed to calm the prevailing discontent. The people gained nothing by the written code, except a more perfect knowledge of its severity; and civil dissensions prevailed as extensively as before. The general dissatisfaction with the government was favourable to revolutionary projects; and accordingly, twelve years after Draco's legislation (B.C. 612), Cylon, one of the nobles, conceived the design of depriving his brother Eupatrids of their power, and making himself tyrant of Athens. Having collected a considerable force, he seized the Acropolis; but he did not meet with support from the great mass of the people, and he soon found himself closely blockaded by the forces of the Eupatrids. Cylon and his brother made their escape, but the remainder of his associates, hard pressed by hunger, abandoned the defence of the walls, and took refuge at the altar of Athena (Minerva). They were induced by the archon Megacles, one of the illustrious family of the Alcmaeonidae, to quit the altar on the promise that their lives should be spared; but directly they had left the temple they were put to death, and some of them were murdered even at the altar of the Eumenides or Furies.

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