Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/94

66 taking the place of an administration of justice by magistrates according to unwritten customs or traditions. How far he anticipated Solon in modelling the constitution was always uncertain. The laws engraved on stelae were sometimes attributed to him and sometimes to Solon. What remained in the popular imagination was the severity of the punishment for breaches of the law, which was always death. "Draco's laws were written in blood," it was said, and there was an end of the matter.

The beginning of better things was attributed to Solon, though as a constitutional reformer he does not seem to have made violent changes. The council of 401, which prepared matters for the assembly, and was elected by lot from the four original tribes, does not seem to have originated with him. But he attempted a kind of compromise between pure oligarchy and pure democracy by neglecting distinctions of birth and dividing the people into classes or assessments , according to their wealth, the first class, consisting of those who possessed wealth equal to 500 medimni of corn, being alone eligible to the archonship. He also established popular courts, in which the office of dicast, or juryman, was open to all classes, even the lowest, or Thetes. The details of his constitutional measures will be better seen in connection with the reforms of Cleisthenes. The constitution as he left it was still oligarchical in that certain offices were not open to all; but all men were on an equal footing as far as the power of obtaining redress in the law courts was concerned, of voting in the assembly, and