Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/92

 76 HISTOEY OF GREECE. judging and deciding, and restricted tc the t.isk of first hearing the parties and collecting the evidence, next, of introducing the matter for trial into the appropriate dikastery, over which they presided. Originally, there was no separation of powers: the archons both judged and administered, sharing among themselves those privileges which had once been united in the hands of the king, and probably accountable at the end of their year of office to the senate of areopagus. It is probable also, that the functions of that senate, and those of the prytanes of the naukrars, were of the same double and confused nature. All of these functionaries belonged to the eupatrids, and all of them doubtless acted more or less in the narrow interest of their order : moreover, there was ample room for favoritism, in the way of connivance as well as antipathy, on the part of the archons. That such was decidedly the case, and that discontent began to be serious, we may infer from the duty imposed on the thesmothet Drako, B. c. 624, to put in writing the thesmoi, or ordinances, so that they might be "shown publicly," and known beforehand. 1 He did not meddle with the political constitution, and in his ordinances Aristotle finds little worthy of remark except the extreme severity 2 of the punishments awarded : petty thefts, or even proved idleness of life, being visited with death or disfranchisement. But we are not to construe this remark as demonstrating any special inhumanity in the character of Drako, who was not in- vested with the large power which Solon afterwards enjoyed, and cannot be imagined to have imposed upon the community severe laws of his own invention. Himself of course an eupatrid, he set forth in writing such ordinances as the eupatrid archons had before been accustomed to enforce without writing, in the partic- ular cases which came before them ; and the general spirit of 1 'Ore i9r/>c e^uvrj 6<5?, snch is the exact expression of Solon's law (Plutarch, Solon, c. 19) ; the word tfeo/iuf is found in Solon's own poems, deojiovc ff dpoiovf TU K<ZKGJ re xdyaiSy. Fausanias, ix, 36, 4 ; Plutarch, Solon, c. 19; though Pollux (viii, 4X) doe? not agree with him. Taylor, Lectt. Lysiacne, ch. 10. Respecting the ticafiol of Drako, see Knhn. ad JElian. V. II. viii, 10. The preliminary sentence which Porphyry (Dc Abstincntia, iv, 22) ascribes to Drako can hardly be ^c
 * Aristot. Polit. ii, 9,9; Rhetoric, ii. 25, 1; Aulns Gcll. N. A. xi, 18;