ABSTRACT
The closest link with the dispute on the shield of Achilles is found in the one provision that survives in detail from the laws for which Draco was famously responsible at Athens in the late seventh century. This provision survives because it continued to be current Athenian law, and was re-inscribed as part of the writing up of the Athenian laws at the end of the fifth century. The obsession of early law with procedure fits into the story of politics. From the middle of the seventh century individuals appear in a large number of Greek cities who usurp powers and set themselves up as the final arbiters. The word 'tyrant' was probably borrowed from the east, which suggests that the idea of despotic rule by a single man was one with which the Greeks first became familiar there. The earliest tyranny about which any detailed tradition survived in the fifth century was that of Kypselos in Corinth.
