In respect to theft, we find it stated that Solon repealed the punishment of death which Drako had annexed to that crime, and enacted as a penalty, compensation to an amount double the value of the property stolen. The simplicity of this law perhaps affords ground for presuming that it really does belong to Solon, but the law which prevailed during the time of the orators respecting theft[240] must have been introduced at some later period, since it enters into distinctions and mentions both places and forms of procedure, which we cannot reasonably refer to the 46th Olympiad. The public dinners at the prytaneium, of which the archons and a select few partook in common, were also either first established, or perhaps only more strictly regulated, by Solon: he ordered barley cakes for their ordinary meals, and wheaten loaves for festival days, prescribing how often each person should dine at the table.[241] The honor of dining at the table of the prytaneium was maintained throughout as a valuable reward at the disposal of the government. [240] See the laws in Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. pp. 733-736. Notwithstanding the opinion both of Heraldus (Animadversion. in Salmas. iv, 8) and of Meier (Attischer Prozess, p. 356), I cannot imagine anything more than the basis of these laws to be Solonian,—they indicate a state of Attic procedure too much elaborated for that day (Lysias c. Theomn. p. 356). The word ποδοκάκκῃ belongs to Solon, and probably the penalty of five days’ confinement in the stocks, for the thief who had not restored what he had stolen. Aulus Gell. (xi, 18) mentions the simple _pœna dupli_: in the authors from whom he copied, it is evident that Solon was stated to have enacted this law generally for _all_ thefts: we cannot tell from whom he copied, but in another part of his work, he copies a Solonian law from the wooden ἄξονες on the authority of Aristotle (ii, 12). Plato, in his Laws, prescribes the _pœna dupli_ in all cases of theft, without distinction of circumstances (Legg. ix, p. 857; xii, p. 941); it was also the primitive law of Rome: “Posuerunt furem duplo condemnari, fœneratorem quadruplo.” (Cato, De Re Rusticâ, Proœmium),—that is to say, in cases of _furtum nec manifestum_ (Walter, Geschichte des Römisch. Rechts. sect. 757). [241] Plutarch, Solon, 24; Athenæ. iv, p. 137; Diogen. Laërt. i, 58: καὶ πρῶτος τὴν συναγωγὴν τῶν ἐννέα ἀρχόντων ἐποίησεν, εἰς τὸ ~συνειπεῖν~,—where perhaps, ~συνδειπνεῖν~ is the proper reading.