Draconian

From Loose Cannons, Red Herings, and other lost metaphors by Robert Claiborine.

Draconian, draconic. Around 620 B.C., the Athenian lawmaker Drakon introduced what was said to have been the first written code of laws in Greece. A later Greek writer described it as "written in blood": practically every crime was punishable by death. Within a generation or so the code was much softened, by Solon, but nearly twenty-five centuries later we still speak of draconic or draconian legislation or government.