DRACHMANN, dr:Wm:in. I I ot.ct:a ( 816 —) . A Danish poet. dramatist, and novelist of re markable fertility and protean versatility, being royalist and socialist, realist and romantic., radi cal and orthodox. national and cosmopolitan, everything by starts and nothing long, through 46 volumes. He is best in description of the sea and of sailor and fisher life, having been at one time a marine painter of some promise. Charac teristic works are the partly autobiographical Condemned ( 1890 ) ; songs by the Sea ( I s77 ) ; On a Sailor's Word (1878) : and From the Fron tier (1871). Sacred Fire (1900) is thought his best book.
DRAT() (Lat.. from Gk. ...1p6mdr, Druktin). .1n Athenian legislator. It was he who, as Tiles mothete, in B.C. 621 put into written and codified form the common law of Athens. To a later age this legislation bore the stamp of severity and cruelty, it being said of the laws that they were written, not in ink, but in blood. In every case, no matter what the offense. the penalty was death. We are not, however, to a,sume that Draco was more severe than his age: he simply put in writing the ordinances that the archons bad been accustomed to enforce without writing, and the old Attic common law, when thus reduced to writing, appeared harsh and rigorous to a milder age. Connected with the legislation—hut
whether instituted by Draco or not is uncertain— was the court of appeal, the Ephetfe, judges of life and death, whose number was fifty-one. These laws, except those on homicide, were re pealed by Solon. Aristotle, in the Constitution of Athens. speaks of Draco as being also a consti tutional reformer. ascribing to him, among other measures, the following: the extension cal rights to all who were able to provide them selves with arms at their own expense, the insti tution of a council, or Bottle, of 401 members, and the regulation of the qualifications required of aspirants for the various offices. Draco is said to have met his death at _Egina, being stifled in the theatre by the garments thrown upon him by the people as a mark of respect. Consult. Holm, Grieehisehe Geschiehte, vol. i. (Berlin, 1886).