Book of the Magistrates of the Athenians

was before Solon, and he instituted such severe laws against the wicked that for even a small theft, any person was punished with capital punishment. Hence it was commonly said that Draco had written the laws not with ink, but with human blood. And who could believe that under such severity of law, being in the Republic for so long, and with so many wicked and malignant men, that in every age the saying of the poet a reference to the idea that the worst things often prevail is true, and that no one paid the penalty for his wickedness? Certainly, that cannot be. But if anyone says that Pliny wishes to understand this in the Arion a likely reference to the Areopagus district, that is, in Athens, it could hardly be true; since before the Empire of the Greeks, the affairs of the Persians, the Assyrians, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the Syrians had already collapsed, and these could not have lasted so long without imposing penalties upon the wicked. Hence it appears that Pliny does not speak the truth in this place, at which one should not be surprised, since being a Senator and occupied in the burdens of the Republic, he could hardly write down what he had collected. The authorities of this Senate are full of such testimony among authors; an oration of Demosthenes against Aristocrates speaks of it openly, to which I refer the reader.