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Drakon's

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. R. W. Harrison
Affiliation:
Merton College, Oxford

Extract

The long-standing enigma of I.G. i. 115 (= Tod, G.H.I. 87) has been brought into the lime-light once more by two recent articles, ‘The Law Codes of Athens’ by Sterling Dow in Proc. Massachusetts Hist. Soc., vol. lxxi (1953–7, pub. 1959) and by E. Ruschenbusch in Historia, ix, Heft 2 (i960).

This enigma has many facets, but I only wish to deal here with one. It concerns the precise nature and purpose of the inscription and, in particular, the significance of the words l. 10. The preamble to the decree is quite specific.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1961

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References

page 3 note 1 I am grateful to Professors Wade-Gery and Homer Thompson and to Mr. D. M. Lewis and Mr. Ronald Stroud for helpful discussion and criticism.

page 3 note 2 On the usually accepted restoration of the stone, from the secretary to the boule But Mr. D. M. Lewis casts legitimate doubt on this restoration since this formula is unparalleled in any form before the middle of the fourth century.

page 3 note 3 See, for example, Ruschenbusch, I.c., p. 130, n. 7.

page 3 note 4 I eschew discussion of the relation between

page 4 note 1 The only other references to axones by number seem to be to Axon 5 concerned with the schol. Iliad 21. 282Google Scholar, Gen. Pap. i (1891), 202Google Scholar ed. Nicole, , and Ox. Pap. ii (1899), 70Google Scholar; Axon 13 concerned with Solon's amnesty law, Plut, . Sol. 19. 3Google Scholar (which surely means ‘the 13th axon has as its—not Solon's—8th law’); Axon 16 concerned with prices for sacrificial victims, Plut, . sol. 23. 3Google Scholar. Whether there was an Axon 21 is dubious. Harpokration, s.v. dealing with the obligation on adopted sons to leave legitimate sons in the family of dieir adoption if returning to their natural family, quotes Solon as Dindorf prints, or as the Aldine edition prints, With a masculine case ending the reference could be to the 21 st (axon understood), or to the 21st law (of die xth axon, as in the Plut, . Sol. 19 passage, the reference to the axon having fallen out). With the feminine case ending one would presumably have to understand . This would be the only known reference to a by number. My colleague, Mr. N. G. Wilson, who examined a number of manuscripts for me, tells me diat diey all give or imply a masculine case ending. He would not, however, rule out the possibility diat die Aldine editor, who is unknown, was using a manuscript which gave die feminine case ending, and it must certainly be admitted diat this is the difficilior lectio.Google Scholar

page 5 note 1 Mr. Ronald Stroud with very great kindness re-examined this part of the stone and sent me squeezes of it. There seems little doubt that the second surviving letter in line 31 is nu. This gives high probability to the restoration in I.G. i2, which leaves no room for this clause.

page 5 note 2 The editors of I.G. i2 point out in their commentary that, in other passages, the wording on the stone is closer to the extracts from the law read out by the clerk than to the citations in the body of the speeches. The subject of will be ‘the law’ or ‘the lawgiver’.