Carondas was a Greek legislator of the sixth century BC. He was disciple of Pythagoras and was inspired by the laws of Zaleuco de Locri to elaborate the laws of the Chalcidic colonies (that is to say, founded by the Greek city of Calcis) in Sicily and in Italy (Magna Grecia), among them Catania, his Sicilian hometown, and Regio. He wrote them in verse, so that it would be possible to sing them at banquets and thus learn them better, as Hermipo tells in the sixth book of his book On the Legislators. His laws, which are known through the Politics of Aristotle, Stool and other sources, had a democratic mood, although he belonged to the nobility. In them a special effort was made to write rules that protected the family: on the question of successions, he ordered that the orphans' property should be administered by the father's relatives, but the orphan should be cared for by the mother, and granted an heiress the right to take her next of kin as her husband, and if she refused, she had to endow her with five hundred drachmas; also the cost of education of the children of all citizens was to be borne by the State and it removed the civil rights to the widower with children who married again, thus protecting them from stepmothers. He also forbade citizens to go armed to assemblies of the people, established popular tribunals, and innovated with the creation of laws against slander, false witnesses and perjury, all of which caused shame to be wandered around with a tamarisk crown . According to their laws, merchants could only sell merchandise on the market and all sales had to be made in cash, an obligation that Plato would also collect in The Laws. In penal law his punishments were too severe: to enter armed in the Assembly was worth death, and the legislator himself, as Diodorus tells, made himself suffer such punishment by involuntarily transgressing the norm, committing suicide with his own sword and thus sealing his laws with their own blood. Carondas is also charged with imposing fines for crimes such as resisting to act as a jury, raping a free man to a slave, robbery with fracture, fire and damage. He punished the deserter with the shame of showing himself dressed in women three days in the agora. Aristotle had Carondas as a legislator more precise and clear than those of his own time. Bibliography
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