Note 240 — Chapter XI · SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION.

See the laws in Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. pp. 733-736. Notwithstanding the opinion both of Heraldus (Animadversion. in Salmas. iv, 8) and of Meier (Attischer Prozess, p. 356), I cannot imagine anything more than the basis of these laws to be Solonian,—they indicate a state of Attic procedure too much elaborated for that day (Lysias c. Theomn. p. 356). The word ποδοκάκκῃ belongs to Solon, and probably the penalty of five days’ confinement in the stocks, for the thief who had not restored what he had stolen.

Aulus Gell. (xi, 18) mentions the simple pœna dupli: in the authors from whom he copied, it is evident that Solon was stated to have enacted this law generally for all thefts: we cannot tell from whom he copied, but in another part of his work, he copies a Solonian law from the wooden ἄξονες on the authority of Aristotle (ii, 12).

Plato, in his Laws, prescribes the pœna dupli in all cases of theft, without distinction of circumstances (Legg. ix, p. 857; xii, p. 941); it was also the primitive law of Rome: “Posuerunt furem duplo condemnari, fœneratorem quadruplo.” (Cato, De Re Rusticâ, Proœmium),—that is to say, in cases of furtum nec manifestum (Walter, Geschichte des Römisch. Rechts. sect. 757).