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.
Read more about this topic: Draco (lawgiver)
Famous quotes containing the words law of, law and/or homicide:
“Here, lads, we live by the law of the taiga. But even here people manage to live. D’you know who are the ones the camps finish off? Those who lick other men’s left-overs, those who set store by the doctors, and those who peach on their mates.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket: and the glorious uncertainty of it is of more use to the professors than the justice of it.”
—Charles Macklin (1690–1797)
“Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)