Draco (lawgiver) - Law of Homicide

Law of Homicide

After much debate from the Athenians, it was decided to revise the laws, including the homicide law, in 409. The homicide law is a highly fragmented inscription, but it does state that it is up to the victim’s relatives to prosecute a killer. According to the preserved part of the inscription, unintentional homicides receive a sentence of exile, while intentional murders are punishable by death. Apart from the inscriptions very little is known about Draco’s background or the nature of most of his laws. However, the significance of his work was prevalent when most of his laws were successfully abolished by Solon.

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