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Posted By: wwh draconian - 01/09/02 04:01 PM
BBC news uses the word "draconian" to describe new law code proposed in an African country. We all have a general understanding of the term meaning a harsh penal code. But I have been unable to get a clear picture of why Draco's code was considered excessively harsh. I like the word "Eupatridae" '''.

The hereditary kingship of Athens was abolished in 683 BC by the nobles, or Eupatridae, who ruled Athens until the mid-6th century BC. The Eupatridae retained complete authority by their supreme power to dispense justice, often in an arbitrary fashion. In 621 BC the statesman Draco codified and published the Athenian law, thereby limiting the judiciary power of the nobles. A second major blow to the hereditary power of the Eupatridae was the code of the Athenian statesman and legislator Solon in 594 BC, which reformed the Draconian code and gave citizenship to the lower classes.

"Greece," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 98 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Who can tell us what specifically was excessively harsh in Draco's code?

Posted By: wwh Re: draconian - 01/09/02 04:17 PM
I went looking in Internet for information about Draco, and found this, which seems to indicate that he was not hated. I find it hard to believe that he could have been suffocated this way.

621 BC: Draco's Law

This Greek citizen was chosen to write a code of law for Athens (Greece). The penalty for many offences was death; so severe, that the word "draconian" comes from his name and has come to mean, in the English language, an unreasonably harsh law. His laws were the first written laws of Greece. These laws introduced the state's exclusive role in punishing persons accused of crime, instead of relying on private justice. The citizens adored Draco and upon entering an auditorium one day to attend a reception in his honour, the citizens of Athens showered him with their hats and cloaks as was their customary way to show appreciation. By the time they dug him out from under the clothing, he had been smothered to death.

Posted By: tsuwm Re: draconian - 01/09/02 04:21 PM
The citizens adored Draco and upon entering an auditorium one day to attend
a reception in his honour, the citizens of Athens showered him with their hats and
cloaks as was their customary way to show appreciation. By the time they dug him
out from under the clothing, he had been smothered to death.


thus codifying the phrase hat trick.

Posted By: wwh Re: draconian - 01/09/02 04:52 PM
Dear tsuwm: I just thought of the explanation. All those hats and cloaks had just come back from the dry cleaners, and were so full of carbon tetrachloride fumes that poor Draco was gassed to death.

BBC didn't give specifics of new code proposed for Zimbabwe. But if you ever want to hear a draconian code, listen to Uniform Code of Military Justice read to Army recruits at frequent interval, or Navy's "Rocks and Shoals" and notice how often you hear the words: "Death, or such other penalty as a court-martial may direct".

Posted By: Capital Kiwi Re: draconian - 01/09/02 09:59 PM
In Napoleonic times (and probably later), in the English navy during times of conflict the Articles of War were read to ships' crews every week after Sunday services. I may have this wrong, but if I remember correctly the penalty for every "crime" except one was "death".

Now that's draconian!

Posted By: wwh Re: draconian - 01/09/02 10:26 PM
Dear CK: I remember vaguely some British Naval commanders getting very harsh treatment for failure to perform adequately. I never heard of anything comparable in US services. I remember one particular injustice toward an enlisted man. I read in TIME in early days of WWII, a Colonel who hated black men was inadvertently sent a black sergeant with a vehicle to drive him. When the black Sergeant came to the door, the Colonel whipped out his .45 and shot him. Can't remember if black man died or not. But only punishment of the Colonel was a bit of reduction in rank and loss of pay for perhaps six months. Imagine what the verdict would have been if the Sergeant had shot the Colonel! I never heard that the injustice was ever corrected.

Posted By: wwh Re: draconian - 01/09/02 10:36 PM

Byng, John
Byng, John,
1704-57, British admiral; son of George Byng, Viscount
Torrington. Sent (1756) to prevent the French from taking
Minorca, he arrived when the island was already under siege
and, after an indecisive naval engagement, withdrew without
relieving the siege. His court-martial and execution for "failure
to do his utmost brought charges that he had been used as a
scapegoat for ministerial failure and prompted Voltaire's
suggestion (in Candide) that from time to time the British find it
desirable to shoot an admiral "pour encourager les autres [to
encourage the others].

Posted By: Wordwind Re: draconian - 01/10/02 12:42 AM
tsuwm,

I don't get your either your joke or your observation:

thus codifying the phrase hat trick.

I do get Bill's dry cleaning joke, but I don't understand this hat trick. I looked it up and it had to do with sports, but it didn't seem to have anything to do with suffocating.

Back into that ol' dark mud puddle,
DubDub


Posted By: stales Re: draconian - 01/10/02 02:03 AM
> ... the penalty for every "crime" except one was "death"

Reminds me of Gary Larsen's cartoon about equine medicine - the cure for every horsy malady being "Shoot"

stales

Posted By: stales Re: draconian - 01/10/02 02:20 AM
On behalf of tsuwm - who no doubt will supply the etymology of the phrase as I've forgotten it - a hat trick being an English-English term for three consecutive events of some significance. Examples are an individual player getting 3 goals in a single match, a cricketer (bowler) getting three people out off consecutive balls, a team winning three matches in a row etc. A player or team is said to be "on a hat trick" if they've completed two events and have the potential to complete the third.

I think tsuwm is using the term moreso for its "pun-itive" value.

stales

Posted By: stales Re: draconian - 01/10/02 02:27 AM
Harry Potter fans may recall that "draco" is not only a character in the series, but also part of the Hogwarts' school motto.

Having looked it up when I read the books, I can report that draco is Latin for dragon. In this sense it is also the name for the dragon constellation. The Hogwarts motto translates to "don't tickle a sleeping dragon".

It seems to me therefore that "tough" punishments could be referred to as "dragon-like"????

stales

Posted By: Faldage Re: draconian hat tricks - 01/10/02 11:07 AM
tsuwm had, in another thread, mentioned his original impression that the phrase hat trick had come from hockey fans throwing their hats in the rink upon a player's scoring three goals. He stood corrected.

Posted By: WhitmanO'Neill Re: draconian - 01/10/02 03:31 PM
The citizens adored Draco and upon entering an auditorium one day to attend a reception in his honour, the citizens of Athens showered him with their hats and cloaks as was their customary way to show
appreciation. By the time they dug him out from under the clothing, he had been smothered to death.


Thus the phrase smother with love?

Posted By: wwh Re: draconian - 01/10/02 04:54 PM
I found a couple sites that said that Draco's code mostly shocked the Athenians because they hadn't known how many laws passed by the nobles had been so severe. Yet there was also a quoted that said Draco had thought death for theft of an apple was fitting. I found a site with a lot of history about a very wide range of topics, well worth browsing. But the site about Draco gave a URL so long it took two lines, and I didn't have tsuwm's tool for shortening it handy. So I'll just give entrance URL in case somebody wants to browse.
http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/

Posted By: tsuwm Re: draconian - 01/10/02 05:46 PM
> tsuwm's tool for shortening it

wasn't that max's tool? surely he must have it on his links page.

Posted By: wwh Re: draconian - 01/10/02 06:09 PM
You would know, tsuwm. My memory is quite porous. Forgive me, Max.

Posted By: Jackie Special to Anu (and tsuwm) - 01/10/02 06:20 PM
Thank you, Seattle Post-Intelligencer--it was the only place I could find today's cartoon on-line:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/hi.asp

Posted By: wwh Re: Special to Anu (and tsuwm) - 01/10/02 07:33 PM
Dear Jackie: the cartoonist got it wrong. The "hat trick" is child putting cereal bowl on top of head.

Posted By: Wordwind Re: Special to Anu (and tsuwm) - 01/10/02 08:11 PM
Jackie,

That's a great cartoon! Living on the periphery, as I do, and completely out of the sports arena, I had such a great, glorious feeling of INCLUSION in actually understanding a sports-related joke! Oh, joy!!!

Best regards,
DubDub

Posted By: Akatsukami Re: draconian - 01/10/02 08:25 PM
Draco was, as wwh's first post indicates, a codifier of Athenian customary law, not a writer of a new code (the confusion may be related to the insertion of a forged "Constitution of Draco" into the Athenian Constitution attributed to Aristotle). Interestingly, what little knowledge of archaic Greek customary law we have suggests that the punishment was not death, but outlawry (atimia), a formal abandonment of the criminal to the vengeance of the victim or the victim's kin.

Draco was probably not hated; we should note that politically, this was an age of rebellion against the established aristocratic order in Greece. The poets of the age praise turannoi (those who seized power, the origin of our word "tyrant") for bringing eunomia (etymologically "good order", but used to merely "order") and dike ("justice"). Interestingly, the words that were used in opposite to "justice" meant "caprice"; the middle class (such as it was) apparently preferred a defined role, how limited and harsh, to being the playthings of the nobility.

Posted By: Max Quordlepleen . - 01/10/02 09:17 PM
Posted By: Keiva Re: draconian - 01/10/02 09:22 PM
LMAO, Max!
Clearly sesquipedaLINKanism will be the primary victim.
Posted By: Bingley Re: draconian - 01/12/02 09:15 AM
The story goes that the punishment for contravening any of Draco's laws was death. When asked why he said something along the lines that death was a suitable punishment for contravening the most minor of crimes and he couldn't think of anything worse for major crimes.

Bingley
Posted By: Capital Kiwi Re: draconian - 01/12/02 04:05 PM
Thanks Bingley. I kept meaning to post something about this, but never found the time to do it when I remembered and forgot when I did have the time. Indeed, as you suggest, Draco's code was quite benign - not a lot of laws, really - but the punishment for contravening them was severe. The consequences are called draconian, not the laws themselves. For instance, the new terrorism laws in Britain are not at all draconian, i.e. they are, in theory, not something the average citizen has to go about in fear of breaking. But the consequences of breaking them (or being in contravention of them) are indeed draconian - indefinite imprisonment without trial and with only a very small and inadequate set of safeguards to ensure that the imposition of this penalty is not continuously abused.

In terms of the draconian abuse of human rights, the Head Prefect and his cabinet of fifth form plonkers have excelled themselves in this instance. Still, he'll probably get full marks and a pat on the back from Headmaster Bush as well as an assured A-level in right-wing Labour politics!

Posted By: Keiva Re: draconian - 01/12/02 09:51 PM
Thank you for your expertise on british law, CK. Do the "facts" you note have anything whatsoever to do with President Bush, or are you just leaping gratuitously from them into your Bush-whacking?

Is this an appropriate forum for political opinionating?
Posted By: Jazzoctopus Re: draconian - 01/13/02 02:19 AM
Is this an appropriate forum for political opinionating?

Let me personally warn you: no.

Posted By: Capital Kiwi Re: draconian - 01/13/02 02:30 AM
I claim no "expertise" in British law. However, I do defer to the Lord Chief Justice's opinion. If he says something is an abuse of human rights, who am I to argue?

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/attacks/story/0,1320,626446,00.html

He used the word "draconian" in a BBC Radio 2 interview for which I couldn't find a transcript on the Net.

And this is one of the less vitriolic press reports about the current state of the "special relationship":

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/attacks/comment/0,1320,616858,00.html

Posted By: Max Quordlepleen . - 01/13/02 02:54 AM
Posted By: Keiva Re: draconian - 01/13/02 04:35 AM
I do defer to the Lord Chief Justice's opinion. If he says something is an abuse of human rights, who am I to argue? [emphasis added]

CK, he said nothing of the sort -- at least, not according to your citation.

He simply noted the "concern" and said taht if a case is brought before the court, "the courts will rule on that." I believe the BBC entire interview with the justice (which I have not yet played) can be heard at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/interview/interviewoftheweekdec.shtml

(Your other link is merely to the opinion of a coumnist. Quick googling suggests that that gentleman is more given to sensational soundbites than to moderate and balanced thought. [E.g., Jan. 12, 2002: "Inching back towards membership of the human race" ... "power-mad, tendentious and anti-democratic"])
Posted By: Capital Kiwi Re: draconian - 01/13/02 10:08 PM
Wrong interview. That was Radio 4. I listen to Radio 2.

I would also add that the Lord Chief Justice doesn't appear given to commenting on every law passed in Britain. This was exceptional. My political funnybone was tapped.

And I did say that my second citation was one of the less vitriolic press reports ... I didn't claim it as being anything else. Believe it or not, the Guardian seems to support the Labour government, by and large.

I was using the hurried passage of the anti-terrorism laws and the fuss that's caused here as an example of "draconian" consequences, but with a bit of humour.

THAT'S ALL!

Posted By: Keiva Re: draconian - 01/13/02 10:18 PM
Wrong interview. That was Radio 4. I listen to Radio 2.
Right interview. Your link specifically cites the judge's Radio 4 interview.
Perhaps it would be best to refrain from political polemics.


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