None of the inscriptions surveyed thus far comes from Athens, but we do have later information about archaic legislation in Athens; in particular, the text of Draco's homicide law was reinscribed on a stone stele at the end of the fifth century (IGi3 104, dated to 409/8). The text from this stele provides no evidence for the original physical appearance of Draco’s law, but it does tell us much about the content, style, and organization of the law, and this can help us understand why the law was enacted and why it was written down and displayed in public. After examining this law in some detail, we will look briefly at archaic Athenian legislation after Draco.

Tradition holds that Draco wrote the first Athenian laws in 621/0 (Ath. Pol. 4.1, 41.2). Best attested is his homicide law but he may have written laws on other subjects too. A generation later, in 594, Solon wrote a new set of laws covering many different issues, but he kept Draco's homicide law. The Athenians reinscribed this law in 409/8 as part of their attempt to republish all valid laws (Chapter Eight). Part of this later reinscription survives, from which scholars have reconstructed a fragmentary text that, in the opinion of many, accurately reproduces the original text of Draco's law, though it is uncertain whether we have the original beginning of the law.