Charondas

Charondas was a lawgiver of Catania in Sicily whose exact dates are not established, though ancient sources associate him with the era of Pythagoras, roughly the sixth century BCE, and his laws are known to have already been in force among the people of Rhegium before they were abolished by the tyrant Anaxilas in the early fifth century BCE. His code, originally composed in verse, was adopted across the Chalcidic colonies of Sicily and southern Italy, and Aristotle, while not crediting the code with much originality, specifically praised the precision with which its provisions were drafted, singling out its introduction of formal legal actions for perjury as a genuine innovation. One recorded provision required that if a male relative of an heiress refused to marry her, he was obligated to provide her with a dowry instead. Ancient sources treat much of the code attributed to Charondas as being of later, Neo-Pythagorean origin rather than authentically his own, and the most famous story told about him, that he killed himself for entering the citizens' assembly armed in violation of his own law, is also told of the Sicilian tyrant Diocles of Syracuse and of the lawgiver Zaleucus, suggesting the anecdote may be a traveling legend applied to more than one ancient lawgiver rather than a securely attested fact about any one of them.