Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/398

 382 HISTORY OF GREECE. mulgation of written laws. The Epizephyrian Lokrianr-, having applied to the Delphian oracle for some healing suggestion under their distress, were directed to make laws for themselves j 1 and received the ordinances of a shepherd named Zaleukus, which he professed to have learned from the goddess Athene in a dream. His laws are said to have been put in writing and promulgated in 664 B. c., forty years earlier than those of Drako at Athens. That these first of all Grecian written laws were few and sim- ple, we may be sufficiently assured. The only fact certain re- specting them is their extraordinary rigor :- they seem to have enjoined the application of the lex talionis as a punishment for personal injuries. In this general character of his laws, Zaleukus was the counterpart of Drako. But so little was certainly known, and so much falsely asserted, respecting him, that Timaeus the historian went so far as to call in question his real existence, 3 ngainst the authority not only of Ephorus, but also of Aristotle for a long time, formally unchanged ; for so great was the aver- sion of the Lokrians, we are told, to any new law, that the man who ventured to propose one appeared in public with a rope round his. neck, which was at once tightened if he failed to con- vince the assembly of the necessity of his proposition. 4 Of the government of the Epizephyrian Lokri we know only, that ii> 1 Aristot. ap. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. x, 17. 2 Proverb. Zcnob. Centur. iv, 20. Za/lewcov v6fj.o, lm TUV UTTOTO^UV. 3 Strabo, vi, p. 259; Skymnus Chius, v, 313; Cicero de Legg. ii, G, and Epist. ad Atticum, vi, 1. Heyne, Opuscula, vol. ii, Epimetrum ii, pp. 60-68; Gollcr ad Timaei Fragment, pp. 220-259. Bentley (on the Epistles of Phalaris, ch. xii, p 274) seems to countenance, without adequate reason, the doubt of Timajus about the existence of Zaleukus. But the statement of Ephorus, that Zaleukus had collected his ordinances from the Kretan, Laconian, and Areiopagitic customs, when contrasted with the simple and far more credible statement above cited from Aristotle, shows how loose were the affirmations respecting the Lokrian lawgiver (ap. Strabo, vi, p. 260). Other statements, also, concerning him, alluded to by Aristotle (Politic, ii, 9, 3), were distinctly at variance with chronology. Charondas, the lawgiver of the Chalkidic towns in Italy and Sicily, as far as we can judge amidst much confusion of testimony, seems to belong to ac age much later than Zaleukus : I shall speak of him hereafter. 4 Dcmosthen. cont Timokrat. p. 744 ; Polyb xii, 10.
 * uid Theophrastus. The laws must have remained, however,