Beyond  these  political  changes,   so  grave   in  their
results,   he   invaded  the  realm  of  criminal  law,   and  serious-
ly modified  existing  economic  and  social  rules.      He  repealed
the  criminal  code   of  Draco  excepting  only  that  relating  to
t^e   crime   of  murder.      What  those  laws  were   is  unknown  ex-
cept  in  a  few  scattered  instances  which  yet   disclose  a  sys-
tem of  almost   intolerable   severity.      Plutarch  says  it   awarded
the  penalty  of  death  for  even  trivial  offenses,   such  as
mere   idleness  or   stealing  an  apple   or  a  cabbage,   and  that


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Draco  himself  when  asked  why  he   so  uniformly  punished  with
death  answered  that   sma.ll  offenses  deserved  that  penalty
and  he  had  no  higher  for   greater  crimes.     We   shall  find  a
similar   severity  in  the   early  Angl-Saxon  laws  where  death
followed  a  theft    of  more  than  twelve  pence   and  in  the
Welsh  triads  where     it  was  the  penalty  for   stealing  more
than  four  pence.      Draco  however  was  not   the  earliest   law-
maker of  Greece.      Some  thirty  years  before  him  a  Locrian
shepherd,    inspired  by  a  drean;  supposedly   sent  by  the  Gods,
wrote  out   a  code   for  his  city.     His  name  was  Zalenkos,
and  his  law  was  a  severe  retaliation  for  every  offense.
We  may  easily  believe  that  the   law  of  Draco  was  founded
on  the   same  principle  though  its   severity  may  be   accounted
for  by  the  fact  that   there  were   no  prisons,   no  money  for
fines,   and  the   only  effective  punishments  were  banishment
and  death.      Solon  did  well  in  abolishing  the  whole  of  that
bloody  code  retaining  only  its  provisions  as  to  Homicide.
