The immediate occasion which led to Draco’s legislation is not recorded, and even the motives which induced him to impress it with that character of severity to which it owes its chief celebrity, are not clearly ascertained. We know however that he was the author of the first written laws of Athens: and as this measure tended to limit the authority of the nobles, to which a customary law, of which they were the sole expounders, opposed a much feebler check, we may reasonably conclude that the innovation did not proceed from their wish, but was extorted from them by the growing discontent of the people. On the other hand, Draco undoubtedly framed his code as much as possible in conformity to the spirit and the interests of the ruling class, to which he himself belonged; and hence we may fairly infer that the extreme rigour of its penal enactments was designed to overawe and repress the popular movement which had produced it. Aristotle observes that Draco made no change in the constitution; and that there was nothing remarkable in his laws, except the severity of the penalties by which they were enforced. It must however be remembered that the substitution of law for custom, of a written code for a fluctuating and flexible tradition, was itself a step of great importance; and we also learn that he introduced some changes in the administration of criminal justice, by transferring causes of murder, or of accidental homicide, from the cognisance of the archons to the magistrates called _ephetes_; though it was not clear whether he instituted, or only modified or enlarged, their jurisdiction. Demades was thought to have described the character of his laws very happily, when he said that they were written not in ink, but in blood. He himself is reported to have justified their severity, by observing that the least offences deserved death, and that he could devise no greater punishment for the worst. This sounds like the language of a man who proceeded on higher grounds than those of expediency, and who felt himself bound by his own convictions to disregard the opinions of his contemporaries. Yet it is difficult to believe, that Draco can have been led by any principles of abstract justice, to confound all gradations of guilt, or, as has been conjectured with somewhat greater probability, that, viewing them under a religious rather than a political aspect, he conceived that in every case alike they drew down the anger of the gods, which could only be appeased by the blood of the criminal.