Life
During the 39th Olympiad, in 622 or 621 BC, Draco established the legal code with which he is identified.
Little is known about his life. He may have belonged to the Greek nobility of the Attica deme called the Eupatridae, with which the 10th-century Suda text records him as contemporaneous, prior to the period of the Seven Sages of Greece. It also relates a folkloric story of his death in the Aeginetan theatre. In a traditional ancient Greek show of approval, his supporters "threw so many hats and shirts and cloaks on his head that he suffocated, and was buried in that same theatre".
Aristotle specifies that Draco laid down his legal code in the archonship of Aristaechmus (Ἀρισταίχμος) in 620 or 621 BC.
Read more about this topic: Draco (lawgiver)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
Their life a general mist of error,
Their death a hideous storm of terror.”
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“Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees its close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)