Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/1090

Rh 1072 DRAGON. DRAGON (Apifcuv), the author of the first written code of hiws at Athens, which were called ^eafiol^ as distinguished from the vofioi of Solon. (Andoc. de MpL p. 11; Ael. V. II. viii. 10 ; Pe- rizon. ai loc. ; Menag. ad Diog. iMcrl. i. 53.) In this code he affixed the penalty of death to almost all crimes — to petty thefts, for instance, as well as to sacrilege and murder — which gave occasion to the remarks of Herodicus and Demades, that his laws were not those of a man, hut of a dragon (SpoKo)!'), and that they were written not in ink, but in blood. We are told that he himself de- fended this extreme harshness by saying that small offences deserved death, and that he knew no severer punishment for great ones. (Aristot. Rliet. ii. IX § 29; Plut. Sol. 17; Cell. xi. 18; Fabric. Bihl. Grace vol ii. p. 23, and the authori- ties there referred to.) Aristotle, if indeed the chapter be genuine {Pol. ii. ad fin.; Gottling, ad loc.) says, that Dracon did not change the consti- tution of Athens, and that the only remarkable characteristic of his laws was their severity. Yet we know from Aeschines (c. Tiinarch. §§ 6, 7) that he provided in them for the education of the citizens from their earliest years ; and, according to Pollux (viii. 125) he made the Ephetae a court of appeal from the opx*"' iSarrjAfus in cases of un- intentional homicide. On this latter point Richter (oil Fabric. I. <r.), Sch'imann, and C. F. Hermann {Pol. Ant. § 103) are of opinion that Dracon esta- hlislied the Ephetae, taking away the cognizance of homicide entirely from the Areiopagus ; while Miiller thinks {Eumen. ^§ Go, 6G), with more probability, that the two courts wore united until the legislation of Solon. From this period (b. c. .594) most of the laws of Dracon fell into disuse (Gell. I.C.; Plut. Sol. I.e.); but Andocides tells us (/. c), that some of them were still in force at the end of the Peloponnesian war ; and we know that there reniained unrepealed, not only the law which inflicted death for murder, and which of course was not peculiar to Dnicon's code, but that too which permitted the injured husband to slay the adulterer, if taken in the act. (Lys. dc Coed. Erai. p. 94 ; Pans. ix. 36 ; Xenarch. ap. AOien. xiii. p. 6^9^ d.) Demosthenes also says (c. Timucr. p. 765) that, in his time, Dracon and Solon were justly held in honour for their good laws ; and Pausanias and Suidas mention an en.ictment of the former legislator adopted by the Thasians, providing that any inanimate thing which had caused the loss of human life should be cast out of the country. (Pans. vi. 11 ; Suid. s.r. ti'iKuv.) From Suidas we learn that Dracon died at Aegina, being smo- thered by the number of hats and cloaks showered upon him as a popular mark of honour in the thea- tre. (Suid. «. rr. ApdKuv^ ■jripiay€Lp6fjLfvoi-, Kuster, ad Suid. s. v. 'AKpuSpva.) His legislation is re- ferred by general testimony to the 39th OljTnpiad, in the fourth year of which (b. c. 621) Clinton is disposed to place it, so as to bring Eusebius into exact agreement with the other authorities on the subject. Of the immediate occasion which led to these laws we have no account. C. F. Hermann (/. c.) and Thirlwall {Greece., vol. ii. p. 18) are of opinion, that the people demanded a written code to replace the mere customary law, of which the Eupatridae were the sole expounders ; and that the latter, unable to resist the demand, gladly sanctioned the rigorous enactments of Dracon as adapted to check the democratic movement which DRAGON. had given rise to them. This theory certainly gets rid of what Thirlwall considers the difficulty of conceiving how the legislator could so confound the gradations of moral guilt, and how also (as we may add) he could fall into the error of making moral guilt the sole rule of punishment, as his own defence of his laws above mentioned might lead us to suppose he did. Yet the former of these errors is but the distortion of an important truth (Aristot. Elh. Nic. vi. 13. § 6) ; while the latter has actu- ally been held in modern times, and was more natural in the age of Dracon, especially if, with Wachsmuth, we suppose him to have regarded his laws in a religious aspect as instruments for ap- peasing the anger of the gods. And neither of these errors, after all, is more strange than his not foreseeing that the severity of his enactments would defeat its own end, and would surely lead (as was the case till recently in England) to impunity. [E. E.] DRAGON {ApdKwv), an Achaean of Pellene, to whom Dercyllidas (b. c. 3.08) entrusted the go- vernment of Atameus, which had been occupied by a body of Chian exiles, and which he had re- duced after a siege of eight months. Here Dracon gathered a force of 3000 targeteers, and acted suc- cessfully against the enemy by the ravage of Mvsia. (Xen. Hell. iii. 2. § 11; Isocr. Paneq. p. 70, d.) [E. E.] D II AGON {ApiKav). 1 . A musician of Athens, was a disciple of Damon, and the instructor of Plato in music. (Plut rfe ^/^M. 17; Olympiod. Vit. Plat.) 2. A grammarian of Stratonicea, flourished in the reign of Hadrian. Suidas mentions several works of his, of which only one {irepl ixhpotv) is extant. It is said to be an extract from a larger work, and has been edited by Godfr. Hermann, Leipzig, 1812. 3. Of Gorcyra, a writer, whose work Trep XlBwv is quoted by Athenaeus (xv. p. 692, d.). Casaubon {ad loc.) proposes irepl deuv as a conjecture. [E. E.] DRACON {ApaKojv) I., eighteenth in descent from Aesculapius, who lived in the fifth and fourth centuries B. c. He was the son of Hippocrates II. (the most celebrated physician of that name), the brother of Thessalus, and the father of Hippocrates commonly called IV. (Jo. Tzetzes, Chil. vii. Hist. 155, in Fabric. BiU. Gracca, vol. xii. p. 682, ed. vet. ; Suid. s. v. 'lTnroKpa.Tr)S ; Galen, De Difficult. Resjiir. ii. 8, vol. vii. p. 854 ; Commeiit. in Hippocr. "Zte Humor." i. 1, vol. xvi. p. 5; Comment, in Hifipocr. " Praedici. /." ii. 52, vol. xvi. p. 625 ; Comment, in Hippocr. " Dc Nat. Horn." ii. 1, vol. XV. p. Ill ; Thessali, Oral, ad Aram., and Sorani Vita Hippocr. in Hippocr. Opera., vol. iii. pp. 842, 855.) Galen tells us that some of the writings of Hippocrates were attributed to his son Dracon. Dracon II. Was, according to Suidas {s. r. ApcLKwy ), the son of Thessalus, and the fa- ther of Hippocrates (probably Hippocrates IV.). If this be correct, he was the nineteenth of the family of the Asclepiadae, the brother of Gorgias and Hippocrates III., and lived probably in the fourth century B. c. Dracon lil. is said by Suidas {s.v. Apdncav) to have been the son of Hippocrates (probably Hippocrates IV.), and to have been one of the physicians to Roxana, the wife of Alexander the Great, in the fourth century b. c. There is, however, certainly some confusion in Suidas, and perhaps the origin of the mistakes