Popular Prosecution in Early Athenian Law. The Drakonian Roots of the Solonian Reforms

Is it possible to find some Drakonian antecedents for the Solonian reform concerning ‘popular prosecution’ by ὁ βουλόμενος? In the light of such a fundamental question, on the one side, the essay is directed to demonstrate that Drakonian law – even if it did not develop any formal and general concept of ‘crime’ – both treated, from a procedural point of view, some offences as wrongs injuring the πόλις (for instance ‘attempted tyranny’ and ‘breach of the exile rule’), and gave any citizen the right to bring ‘public cases’ before the proper court. On the other side, one supposes that prior to Solon the Athenian magistrates – entitled to pass final judgments and to impose penalties on their own initiative – took care of all the incapacitated victims who lacked ‘standing to sue’ (as one can conjecture with regard to the convicted killer harmed by blackmail and torture). It is accordingly assumed that Solon did not introduce ex novo the legal entity of ‘popular and voluntary prosecution’: indeed, the Athenian legislator – focused on a need of solidarity and cohesion in the whole community, rather than on a need of protection in favor of the whole community – through the institution of the general principle of ‘third-party prosecution’, diminished the role formerly played by magistrates and, at the same time, renewed a procedural feature that, already existing, was previously related to the safeguard of the community only.