Solon - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Solon was an Athenian

Classical Athens

The city of Athens during the classical period of Ancient Greece was a notable polis of Attica, Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. Athenian democracy was established in 508 BC under Cleisthenes following the tyranny of Hippias...

statesman

Statesman

A statesman is usually a politician or other notable public figure who has had a long and respected career in politics or government at the national and international level. As a term of respect, it is usually left to supporters or commentators to use the term...

, law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

maker, and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic

Archaic period in Greece

The Archaic period in Greece was a period of ancient Greek history that followed the Greek Dark Ages. This period saw the rise of the polis and the founding of colonies, as well as the first inklings of classical philosophy, theatre in the form of tragedies performed during Dionysia, and written...

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

. His reforms failed in the short term, yet he is often credited with having laid the foundations for Athenian democracy.

Knowledge of Solon is limited by the lack of documentary and archeological evidence covering Athens

Athens

in the early 6th century BC. He wrote poetry for pleasure, as patriotic propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

, and in defence of his constitutional reforms. His works only survive in fragments. They appear to feature interpolations

Interpolation (manuscripts)

An interpolation, in relation to literature and especially ancient manuscripts, is an entry or passage in a text that was not written by the original author...

by later authors and it is possible that fragments have been wrongly attributed to him (see Solon the reformer and poet). Ancient authors such as Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

and Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

are the main source of information, yet they wrote about Solon hundreds of years after his death, at a time when history was by no means an academic discipline. Fourth century orators, such as Aeschines

Aeschines

Aeschines was a Greek statesman and one of the ten Attic orators.-Life:Although it is known he was born in Athens, the records regarding his parentage and early life are conflicting; but it seems probable that his parents, though poor, were respectable. Aeschines' father was Atrometus, an...

, tended to attribute to Solon all the laws of their own, much later times. Archaeology reveals glimpses of Solon's period in the form of fragmentary inscriptions but little else. For some scholars, our 'knowledge' of Solon and his times is largely a fictive construct based on insufficient evidence while others believe a substantial body of real knowledge is still attainable. Solon and his times can appear particularly interesting to students of history as a test of the limits and nature of historical argument.

Background to Solon's reforms

During Solon's time, many Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

city-states had seen the emergence of tyrant

Tyrant

A tyrant was originally one who illegally seized and controlled a governmental power in a polis. Tyrants were a group of individuals who took over many Greek poleis during the uprising of the middle classes in the sixth and seventh centuries BC, ousting the aristocratic governments.Plato and...

s, opportunistic noblemen who had grabbed power on behalf of sectional interests. In Sicyon

Sicyon

Sikyon was an ancient Greek city situated in the northern Peloponnesus between Corinth and Achaea on the territory of the present-day prefecture of Corinthia...

, Cleisthenes

Cleisthenes of Sicyon

Cleisthenes was the tyrant of Sicyon from c. 600–570 BC, who aided in the First Sacred War against Kirrha that destroyed that city in 595 BC. He is also told to have organized with success a war against Argos because of his anti-Dorian feelings...

had usurped power on behalf of an Ionian

Ionians

The Ionians were one of the four major tribes into which the Classical Greeks considered the population of Hellenes to have been divided...

minority. In Megara

Megara

Megara is an ancient city in Attica, Greece. It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being taken by Athens. Megara was one of the four districts of Attica, embodied in the four mythic sons of King...

, Theagenes had come to power as an enemy of the local oligarchs

Oligarchy

Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy...

. The son-in-law of Theagenes, an Athenian nobleman named Cylon

Cylon of Athens

Cylon was an Athenian associated with the first reliably dated event in Athenian history, the Cylonian affair....

, made an unsuccessful attempt to seize power in Athens in 632 BC. Solon, on the other hand, appears to have been temporarily awarded autocratic powers by his fellow citizens on the grounds that he had the wisdom to sort out their differences for them in a peaceful and equitable manner. According to ancient sources, he obtained these powers when he was elected eponymous archon

Archon of Athens

This is a list of the eponymous archons of Athens.-Background:The archon was the chief magistrate in many Greek cities, but in Athens there was a council of archons which comprised a form of executive government...

(594/3 BC). Some modern scholars believe these powers were in fact granted some years after Solon had been archon, when he would have been a member of the Areopagus

Areopagus

The Areopagus or Areios Pagos is the "Rock of Ares", north-west of the Acropolis, which in classical times functioned as the high Court of Appeal for criminal and civil cases in Athens. Ares was supposed to have been tried here by the gods for the murder of Poseidon's son Alirrothios .The origin...

and probably a more respected statesman by his (aristocratic) peers.

The social and political upheavals that characterised Athens in Solon's time have been variously interpreted by historians from ancient times to the present day. Two contemporary historians have identified three distinct historical accounts of Solon's Athens, emphasizing quite different rivalries: economic and ideological rivalry, regional rivalry and rivalry between aristocratic clans. These different accounts provide a convenient basis for an overview of the issues involved.

Economic and ideological rivalry is a common theme in ancient sources. This sort of account emerges from Solon's poems (e.g. see below Solon the reformer and poet), in which he casts himself in the role of a noble mediator between two intemperate and unruly factions. This same account is substantially taken up about three centuries later by the author of the Athenaion Politeia but with an interesting variation:
"...there was conflict between the nobles and the common people for an extended period. For the constitution they were under was oligarchic in every respect and especially in that the poor, along with their wives and children, were in slavery to the rich...All the land was in the hands of a few. And if men did not pay their rents, they themselves and their children were liable to be seized as slaves. The security for all loans was the debtor's person up to the time of Solon. He was the first champion of the people."
Here Solon is presented as a partisan in a democratic cause whereas, judged from the viewpoint of his own poems, he was instead a mediator between rival factions. A still more significant variation in the ancient historical account appears in the writing of Plutarch in the late 1st-early 2nd century AD:
'Athens was torn by recurrent conflict about the constitution. The city was divided into as many parties as there were geographical divisions in its territory. For the party of the people of the hills was most in favour of democracy, that of the people of the plain was most in favour of oligarchy, while the third group, the people of the coast, which preferred a mixed form of constitution somewhat between the other two, formed an obstruction and prevented the other groups from gaining control.'
The ancient historical account here demonstrates a more sophisticated understanding of political process - what were two sides in Solon's account have now become three parties, each with a regional base and a constitutional platform. Plutarch then goes on to repeat the usual ancient account with its brutal landlords on one side and wretched tenants on the other. But how does this melodramatic struggle between haves and have-nots fit into a picture of three regional groupings?
Regional rivalry is a theme commonly found among modern scholars.
'The new picture which emerged was one of strife between regional groups, united by local loyalties and led by wealthy landowners. Their goal was control of the central government at Athens and with it dominance over their rivals from other districts of Attika.'
Regional factionalism was inevitable in a relatively large territory such as Athens possessed. In most Greek city states, a farmer could conveniently reside in town and travel to and from his fields every day. According to Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...

, on the other hand, most Athenians continued to live in rural settlements right up until the Peloponnesian War
Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian War, 431 to 404 BC, was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases...

. The effects of regionalism in a large territory could be seen in Laconia, where Sparta
Sparta
Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

had gained control through intimidation and resettlement of some of its neighbours and enslavement of the rest. Attika in Solon's time seemed to be moving towards a similarly ugly solution with many citizens in danger of being reduced to the status of helots
Helots
The helots: / Heílôtes) were an unfree population group that formed the main population of Laconia and the whole of Messenia . Their exact status was already disputed in antiquity: according to Critias, they were "especially slaves" whereas to Pollux, they occupied a status "between free men and...

.
Rivalry between clans is a theme recently developed by some scholars, based on an appreciation of the political significance of kinship groupings. According to this account, bonds of kinship rather than local loyalties were the decisive influence on events in archaic Athens. An Athenian belonged not only to a phyle
Phyle
Phyle is an ancient Greek term for clan or tribe. They were usually ruled by a basileus...

or tribe and one of its subdivisions, the phratry
Phratry
In ancient Greece, a phratry ατρία, "brotherhood", "kinfolk", derived from φρατήρ meaning "brother") was a social division of the Greek tribe...

or brotherhood, but also to an extended family, clan or genos
Genos
Genos was the ancient Greek term for kind; race; family; birth; origin which identified themselves as a unit, referred to by a single name...

. It has been argued that these interconnecting units of kinship reinforced a hierarchic structure with aristocratic clans at the top. Thus rivalries between aristocratic clans could engage all levels of society irrespective of any regional ties. In that case, the struggle between rich and poor was the struggle between powerful aristocrats and the weaker affiliates of their rivals or perhaps even with their own rebellious affiliates.

The historical account of Solon's Athens has evolved over many centuries into a set of contradictory stories or a complex story that might be interpreted in a variety of ways. As further evidence accumulates, and as historians continue to debate the issues, Solon's motivations and the intentions behind his reforms will continue to attract speculation (see for example John Bintliff's 'Solon's Reforms: an archaeological perspective': and other essays published with it.)

Solon's reforms

Solon's laws were inscribed on large wooden slabs or cylinders attached to a series of axles that stood upright in the Prytaneum

Prytaneum

Prytaneum and Prytanis . In general in ancient Greece, each state, city or village possessed its own central hearth and sacred fire, representing the unity and vitality of the community. The fire was kept alight continuously, tended by the king or members of his family...

. These axones appear to have operated on the same principle as a Lazy Susan

Lazy Susan

A Lazy Susan is a rotating tray, usually circular, placed on top of a table to aid in moving food on a large table or countertop.- Origin :The term "Lazy Susan" made its first written appearance in a Good Housekeeping article in 1906, although their existence dates back to the 18th century...

, allowing both convenient storage and ease of access. Originally the axones recorded laws enacted by Draco in the late 7th Century (traditionally 621 BC). Nothing of Draco's codification has survived except for a law relating to homicide, yet there is consensus among scholars that it did not amount to anything like a constitution. Solon repealed all Draco's laws except those relating to homicide. Fragments of the axones were still visible in Plutarch

Plutarch

's time but today the only records we have of Solon's laws are fragmentary quotes and comments in literary sources such as those written by Plutarch

Plutarch

himself. Moreover, the language of his laws was archaic even by the standards of the fifth century and this caused interpretational problems for ancient commentators. Modern scholars doubt the reliability of these sources and our knowledge of Solon's legislation is therefore actually very limited in its details.

Generally, Solon's reforms appear to have been constitutional, economic and moral in their scope. This distinction, though somewhat artificial, does at least provide a convenient framework within which to consider the laws that have been attributed to Solon. Some short term consequences of his reforms are considered at the end of the section.

Constitutional reform

Previous to Solon's reforms, the Athenian state was administered by nine archons appointed or elected annually by the Areopagus

Areopagus

on the basis of noble birth and wealth. The Areopagus comprised former archons and it therefore had, in addition to the power of appointment, extraordinary influence as a consultative body. The nine archons took the oath of office while ceremonially standing on a stone in the agora

Agora

The Agora was an open "place of assembly" in ancient Greek city-states. Early in Greek history , free-born male land-owners who were citizens would gather in the Agora for military duty or to hear statements of the ruling king or council. Later, the Agora also served as a marketplace where...

, declaring their readiness to dedicate a golden statue if they should ever be found to have violated the laws. There was an assembly of Athenian citizens (the Ekklesia

Ecclesia (ancient Athens)

The ecclesia or ekklesia was the principal assembly of the democracy of ancient Athens during its "Golden Age" . It was the popular assembly, opened to all male citizens over the age of 30 with 2 years of military service by Solon in 594 BC meaning that all classes of citizens in Athens were able...

) but the lowest class (the Thetes) was not admitted and its deliberative procedures were controlled by the nobles. There therefore seemed to be no means by which an archon could be called to account for breach of oath unless the Areopagus favoured his prosecution.

According to Aristotle, Solon legislated for all citizens to be admitted into the Ekklesia and for a court (the Heliaia

Heliaia

Heliaia or Heliaea was the supreme court of ancient Athens. Τhe view generally held among scholars is that the court drew its name from the ancient Greek verb , which means , namely congregate. Another version is that the court took its name from the fact that the hearings were taking place...

) to be formed from all the citizens. The Heliaia appears to have been the Ekklesia, or some representative portion of it, sitting as a jury. By giving common people the power not only to elect officials but also to call them to account, Solon appears to have established the foundations of a true democracy. However some scholars have doubted whether Solon actually included the Thetes in the Ekklesia, this being considered too bold a move for any aristocrat in the archaic period. Ancient sources credit Solon with the creation of a Council of Four Hundred

Boule (Ancient Greece)

In cities of ancient Greece, the boule meaning to will ) was a council of citizens appointed to run daily affairs of the city...

, drawn from the four Athenian tribes to serve as a steering committee for the enlarged Ekklesia. However, many modern scholars have doubted this also.

There is consensus among scholars that Solon broadened the financial and social qualifications required for election to public office. The Solonian constitution divided citizens into four political classes defined according to assessable property a classification that might previously have served the state for military or taxation purposes only. The standard unit for this assessment was one medimnos (approximately 12 gallons) of cereals and yet the kind of classification set out below might be considered too simplistic to be historically accurate.

Pentacosiomedimnoi
- valued at 500 medimnoi of cereals annually.
- eligible to serve as Strategoi (Generals)
Hippeis
Hippeis
Hippeis was the Greek term for cavalry. The Hippeus was the second highest of the four Athenian social classes, made of men who could afford to maintain a war horse in the service of the state. The rank may be compared to Roman Equestrians and medieval knights. Among the Athenians, it referred to...
- valued at 300 medimnoi production annually.
- approximating to the mediaeval class of knights, they had enough wealth to equip themselves for the Cavalry
  Cavalry
  Cavalry or horsemen were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback. Cavalry were historically the third oldest and the most mobile of the combat arms...
Zeugitai
- valued at a 200 medimnoi production annually.
- approximating to the mediaeval class of Yeoman
  Yeoman
  Yeoman refers chiefly to a free man owning his own farm, especially from the Elizabethan era to the 17th century. Work requiring a great deal of effort or labor, such as would be done by a yeoman farmer, came to be described as "yeoman's work"...
  
  , they had enough wealth to equip themselves for the infantry (Hoplite
  Hoplite
  A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek city-states. Hoplites were primarily armed as spearmen and fought in a phalanx formation. The word "hoplite" derives from "hoplon" , the type of the shield used by the soldiers, although, as a word, "hopla" could also denote weapons held or even...
  
  )
Thetes
- valued 199 medimnoi annually or less
- manual workers or sharecroppers, they served voluntarily in the role of batman
  Batman (army)
  A batman is a soldier or airman assigned to a commissioned officer as a personal servant.The term is derived from the obsolete bat, "packsaddle" + man....
  
  , or as auxiliaries armed for instance with the sling
  Sling (weapon)
  A sling is a projectile weapon typically used to throw a blunt projectile such as a stone or lead "sling-bullet". It is also known as the shepherd's sling....
  
  or as rowers in the Navy.

According to Aristotle, only the Pentacosiomedimnoi were eligible for election to high office as archons and therefore only they gained admission into the Areopagus. A modern view affords the same privilege to the hippeis. The top three classes were eligible for a variety of lesser posts and only the Thetes were excluded from all public office.

Depending on how we interpret the historical facts known to us, Solon's constitutional reforms were either a radical anticipation of democratic government, or they merely provided a plutocratic flavour to a stubbornly aristocratic regime, or else the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes."In all areas then it was the work of Solon which was decisive in establishing the foundations for the development of a full democracy."Marylin B. Arthur, 'The Origins of the Western Attitude Toward Women', in Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers, John Patrick Sullivan (ed.), State University of New York (1984), page 30.

"In making their own evaluation of Solon, the ancient sources concentrated on what were perceived to be the democratic features of the constitution. But...Solon was given his extraordinary commission by the nobles, who wanted him to eliminate the threat that the position of the nobles as a whole would be overthrown."Stanton, G.R. Athenian Politics c800-500BC: A Sourcebook, Routledge, London (1990), p. 76.

Economic reform

Solon's economic reforms need to be understood in the context of the primitive, subsistence economy that prevailed both before and after his time. Most Athenians were still living in rural settlements right up to the Peloponnesian War

Peloponnesian War

The Peloponnesian War, 431 to 404 BC, was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases...

. Opportunities for trade even within the Athenian borders were limited. The typical farming family, even in classical times, barely produced enough to satisfy its own needs. Opportunities for international trade were minimal. It has been estimated that, even in Roman times, goods rose 40% in value for every 100 miles they were carried over land, but only 1.3% for the same distance were they carried by ship and yet there is no evidence that Athens possessed any merchant ships until around 525 BC. Until then, the narrow warship doubled as a cargo vessel. Athens, like other Greek city states in the 7th Century BC, was faced with increasing population pressures and by about 525 BC it was able to feed itself only in 'good years'.

Solon's reforms can thus be seen to have taken place at a crucial period of economic transition, when a subsistence rural economy increasingly required the support of a nascent commercial sector. The specific economic reforms credited to Solon are these:

Fathers were encouraged to find trades for their sons; if they did not, there would be no legal requirement for sons to maintain their fathers in old age.
Foreign tradesmen were encouraged to settle in Athens; those who did would be granted citizenship, provided they brought their families with them.
Cultivation of olives was encouraged; the export of all other produce was prohibited.
Competitiveness of Athenian commerce was promoted through revision of weights and measures, possibly based on successful standards already in use elsewhere, such as Aegina
Aegina
Aegina is one of the Saronic Islands of Greece in the Saronic Gulf, from Athens. Tradition derives the name from Aegina, the mother of Aeacus, who was born in and ruled the island. During ancient times, Aegina was a rival to Athens, the great sea power of the era.-Municipality:The municipality...

or Euboia or, according to the ancient account but unsupported by modern scholarship, Argos
Argos
Argos is a city and a former municipality in Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Argos-Mykines, of which it is a municipal unit. It is 11 kilometres from Nafplion, which was its historic harbour...

It is generally assumed, on the authority of ancient commentators that Solon also reformed the Athenian coinage. However, recent numismatic studies now lead to the conclusion that Athens probably had no coinage until around 560 BC, well after Solon's reforms.

Solon's economic reforms succeeded in stimulating foreign trade. Athenian black-figure pottery

Black-figure pottery

Black-figure pottery painting, also known as the black-figure style or black-figure ceramic is one of the most modern styles for adorning antique Greek vases. It was especially common between the 7th and 5th centuries BC, although there are specimens dating as late as the 2nd century BC...

was exported in increasing quantities and good quality throughout the Aegean between 600 BC and 560 BC, a success story that coincided with a decline in trade in Corinthian pottery. The ban on the export of grain might be understood as a relief measure for the benefit of the poor. However, the encouragement of olive production for export could actually have led to increased hardship for many Athenians since it would have led to a reduction in the amount of land dedicated to grain. Moreover an olive produces no fruit for the first six years. The real motives behind Solon's economic reforms are therefore as questionable as his real motives for constitutional reform. Were the poor being forced to serve the needs of a changing economy, or was the economy being reformed to serve the needs of the poor?

Moral reform

In his poems, Solon portrays Athens as being under threat from the unrestrained greed and arrogance of its citizens. Even the earth (Gaia

Gaia (mythology)

Gaia was the primordial Earth-goddess in ancient Greek religion. Gaia was the great mother of all: the heavenly gods and Titans were descended from her union with Uranus , the sea-gods from her union with Pontus , the Giants from her mating with Tartarus and mortal creatures were sprung or born...

), the mighty mother of the gods, had been enslaved. The visible symbol of this perversion of the natural and social order was a boundary marker called a horos, a wooden or stone pillar indicating that a farmer was in debt or under contractual obligation to someone else, either a noble patron or a creditor. Up until Solon's time, land was the inalienable property of a family or clan and it could not be sold or mortgaged. This was no disadvantage to a clan with large landholdings since it could always rent out farms in a sharecropping

Sharecropping

Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land . This should not be confused with a crop fixed rent contract, in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a fixed amount of...

system. A family struggling on a small farm however could not use the farm as security for a loan even if it owned the farm. Instead the farmer would have to offer himself and his family as security, providing some form of slave labour in lieu of repayment. Equally, a family might voluntarily pledge part of its farm income or labour to a powerful clan in return for its protection. Farmers subject to these sorts of arrangements were loosely known as hektemoroi indicating that they either paid or kept a sixth of a farm's annual yield. In the event of 'bankruptcy', or failure to honour the contract stipulated by the horoi, farmers and their families could in fact be sold into slavery.

Solon's reform of these injustices was later known and celebrated among Athenians as the Seisachtheia

Seisachtheia

Seisachtheia was a set of laws instituted by the Athenian lawmaker Solon in order to rectify the widespread serfdom and slaves that had run rampant in Athens by the 6th century BC, by debit relief...

(shaking off of burdens). As with all his reforms, there is considerable scholarly debate about its real significance. Many scholars are content to accept the account given by the ancient sources, interpreting it as a cancellation of debts, while others interpret it as the abolition of a type of feudal relationship, and some prefer to explore new possibilities for interpretation. The reforms included:

annulment of all contracts symbolised by the horoi.
prohibition on a debtor's person being used as security for a loan.
release of all Athenians who had been enslaved.

The removal of the horoi clearly provided immediate economic relief for the most oppressed group in Attica, and it also brought an immediate end to the enslavement of Athenians by their countrymen. Some Athenians had already been sold into slavery abroad and some had fled abroad to escape enslavement - Solon proudly records in verse the return of this diaspora. It has been cynically observed, however, that few of these unfortunates were likely to have been recovered. It has been observed also that the seisachtheia not only removed slavery and accumulated debt, it also removed the ordinary farmer's only means of obtaining further credit.

The seisachtheia however was merely one set of reforms within a broader agenda of moral reformation. Other reforms included:

the abolition of extravagant dowries.
legislation against abuses within the system of inheritance, specifically with relation to the epikleros
Epikleros
Epikleros was the term used to describe an heiress in ancient Athens, and in other ancient Greek city states. It denoted a daughter of a man who had no male heirs. In Sparta they were called patroiouchoi , as they were in Gortyn...

(i.e. a female who had no brothers to inherit her father's property and who was traditionally required to marry her nearest paternal relative in order to produce an heir to her father's estate).
entitlement of any citizen to take legal action on behalf of another.
the disenfranchisement of any citizen who might refuse to take up arms in times of civil strife, a measure that was intended to counteract dangerous levels of political apathy.

The personal modesty and frugality of the rich and powerful men of Athens in the city's subsequent golden age have been attested to by Demosthenes

Demosthenes

Demosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...

. Perhaps Solon, by both personal example and legislated reform, established a precedent for this decorum. A heroic sense of civic duty later united Athenians against the might of the Persians. Perhaps this public spirit was instilled in them by Solon and his reforms. Also see Solon and Athenian sexuality

The Aftermath of Solon's reforms

After completing his work of reform, Solon surrendered his extraordinary authority and left the country. According to Herodotus

Herodotus

the country was bound by Solon to maintain his reforms for 10 years, whereas according to Plutarch

Plutarch

and the author of Athenaion Politeia (reputedly Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

) the contracted period was instead 100 years. A modern scholar considers the time-span given by Herodotus to be historically accurate because it fits the 10 years that Solon was said to have been absent from the country. Within 4 years of Solon's departure, the old social rifts re-appeared, but with some new complications. There were irregularities in the new governmental procedures, elected officials sometimes refused to stand down from their posts and sometimes important posts were left vacant. It has even been said that some people blamed Solon for their troubles. Eventually one of Solon's relatives, Pisistratus

Peisistratos (Athens)

Peisistratos was a tyrant of Athens from 546 to 527/8 BC. His legacy lies primarily in his institution of the Panathenaic Festival and the consequent first attempt at producing a definitive version for Homeric epics. Peisistratos' championing of the lower class of Athens, the Hyperakrioi, can be...

, ended the factionalism by force, thus instituting an unconstitutionally gained tyranny

Tyrant

. In Plutarch's account, Solon accused Athenians of stupidity and cowardice for allowing this to happen.

Solon the reformer and poet

Solon was the first of the Athenian poets whose work has survived to the present day. His verses have come down to us in fragmentary quotations by ancient authors such as Plutarch and Demosthenes who used them to illustrate their own arguments. It is possible that some fragments have been wrongly attributed to him and some scholars have detected interpolations by later authors.

The literary merit of Solon's verse is generally considered unexceptional. Solon the poet can be said to appear 'self-righteous' and 'pompous' at times and he once composed an elegy with moral advice for a more gifted elegiac poet, Mimnermus. Most of the extant verses show him writing in the role of a political activist determined to assert personal authority and leadership. According to Plutarch however, Solon originally wrote poetry for amusement, discussing pleasure in a popular rather than philosophical way. Solon's elegiac style is said to have been influenced by the example of Tyrtaeus

Tyrtaeus

Tyrtaeus was a Greek poet who composed verses in Sparta around the time of the Second Messenian War, the date of which isn't clearly establishedsometime in the latter part of the seventh century BC...

. He also wrote iambic and trochaic verses which, according to one modern scholar, are more lively and direct than his elegies and possibly paved the way for the iambics of Athenian drama.

Solon's verses are mainly significant for historical rather than aesthetic reasons, as a personal record of his reforms and attitudes. However, poetry is not an ideal genre for communicating facts and very little detailed information can be derived from the surviving fragments. According to Solon the poet, Solon the reformer was a voice for political moderation in Athens

Athens

at a time when his fellow citizens were increasingly polarized by social and economic differences:

πολλοὶ γὰρ πλουτεῦσι κακοί, ἀγαθοὶ δὲ πένονται:

ἀλλ' ἡμεῖς αὐτοῖς οὐ διαμειψόμεθα

τῆς ἀρετῆς τὸν πλοῦτον: ἐπεὶ τὸ μὲν ἔμπεδον αἰεί,

χρήματα δ' ἀνθρώπων ἄλλοτε ἄλλος ἔχει.

Some wicked men are rich, some good are poor;

We will not change our virtue for their store:

Virtue's a thing that none can take away,

But money changes owners all the day.

Here translated by the English poet John Dryden

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...

, Solon's words define a 'moral high ground' where differences between rich and poor can be reconciled or maybe just ignored. His poetry indicates that he attempted to use his extraordinary legislative powers to establish a peaceful settlement between the country's rival factions:

Before them both I held my shield of might

And let not either touch the other's right.

His attempts evidently were misunderstood:

χαῦνα μὲν τότ' ἐφράσαντο, νῦν δέ μοι χολούμενοι

λοξὸν ὀφθαλμοῖς ὁρῶσι πάντες ὥστε δήϊον.

Formerly they boasted of me vainly; with averted eyes

Now they look askance upon me; friends no more but enemies.

Solon gave voice to Athenian 'nationalism', particularly in the city state's struggle with Megara

Megara

, its neighbour and rival in the Saronic Gulf. Plutarch professes admiration of Solon's elegy urging Athenians to recapture the island of Salamis

Salamis Island

Salamis , is the largest Greek island in the Saronic Gulf, about 1 nautical mile off-coast from Piraeus and about 16 km west of Athens. The chief city, Salamina , lies in the west-facing core of the crescent on Salamis Bay, which opens into the Saronic Gulf...

from Megarian control. The same poem was said by Diogenes Laertios to have stirred Athenians more than any other verses that Solon wrote:

Let us go to Salamis to fight for the island

We desire, and drive away our bitter shame!

It is possible that Solon backed up this poetic bravado with true valour on the battlefield.

Solon and Athenian sexuality

As a regulator of Athenian society, Solon, according to some authors, also formalized its sexual mores. According to a surviving fragment from a work ("Brothers") by the comic playwright Philemon, Solon established publicly funded brothels at Athens in order to "democratize" the availability of sexual pleasure. While the veracity of this comic account is open to doubt, at least one modern author considers it significant that in Classical Athens, three hundred or so years after the death of Solon, there existed a discourse that associated his reforms with an increased availability of heterosexual pleasure.

Ancient authors also say that Solon regulated pederastic relationships

Pederasty in ancient Greece

Pederasty in ancient Greece was a socially acknowledged relationship between an adult and a younger male usually in his teens. It was characteristic of the Archaic and Classical periods...

in Athens; this has been presented as an adaption of custom to the new structure of the polis. According to various authors, ancient lawgivers (and therefore Solon by implication) drew up a set of laws that were intended to promote and safeguard the institution of pederasty and to control abuses against freeborn boys. In particular, the orator Aeschines cites laws excluding slaves from wrestling halls and forbidding them to enter pederastic relationships with the sons of citizens. Accounts of Solon's laws by 4th Century orators like Aeschines, however, are considered unreliable for a number of reasons;

Attic pleaders did not hesitate to attribute to him (Solon) any law which suited their case, and later writers had no criterion by which to distinguish earlier from later works. Nor can any complete and authentic collection of his statutes have survived for ancient scholars to consult.

Besides the alleged legislative aspect of Solon's involvement with pederasty, there were also suggestions of personal involvement. According to some ancient authors Solon had taken the future tyrant

Tyrant

Peisistratus

Peisistratos (Athens)

as his eromenos. Aristotle

Aristotle

, writing around 330 BC, attempted to refute that belief, claiming that "those are manifestly talking nonsense who pretend that Solon was the lover of Peisistratus, for their ages do not admit of it," as Solon was about thirty years older than Peisistratus. Nevertheless the tradition persisted. Four centuries later Plutarch ignored Aristotle's skepticism and recorded the following anecdote, supplemented with his own conjectures:

And they say Solon loved [Peisistratus]; and that is the reason, I suppose, that when afterwards they differed about the government, their enmity never produced any hot and violent passion, they remembered their old kindnesses, and retained "Still in its embers living the strong fire" of their love and dear affection.

A century after Plutarch, Aelian

Claudius Aelianus

Claudius Aelianus , often seen as just Aelian, born at Praeneste, was a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric who flourished under Septimius Severus and probably outlived Elagabalus, who died in 222...

also said that Peistratus had been Solon's eromenos. Despite its persistence, however, it is not known whether the account is historical or fabricated. It has been suggested that the tradition presenting a peaceful and happy coexistence between Solon and Peisistratus was cultivated during the latter's dominion, in order to legitimize his own rule, as well as that of his sons. Whatever its source, later generations lent credence to the narrative. Solon's presumed pederastic desire was thought in antiquity to have found expression also in his poetry, which is today represented only in a few surviving fragments. The authenticity of all the poetic fragments attributed to Solon is however uncertain - in particular, pederastic aphorisms ascribed by some ancient sources to Solon have been ascribed by other sources to Theognis

Theognis

Theognis was a member of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens . Lysias was able to escape from the house of Damnippus, where Theognis was guarding other aristocrats rounded up by the Thirty....

instead. (See also Solon the reformer and poet.)

Anecdotes

Details about Solon's personal life have been passed down to us by ancient authors such as Plutarch

Plutarch

and Herodotus

Herodotus

. Herodotus is sometimes referred to both as 'the father of history' and 'the father of lies'. Plutarch, by his own admission, did not write histories so much as biographies; he believed that a jest or a phrase could reveal more about a person's character than could a battle that cost thousands of lives.

According to Plutarch, Solon was related to the tyrant

Tyrant

Pisistratus

Peisistratos (Athens)

(their mothers were cousins). Solon's father Execestides could trace his ancestry back to Codrus

Codrus

Codrus was the last of the semi-mythical Kings of Athens . He was an ancient exemplar of patriotism and self-sacrifice. He was succeeded by his son Medon, who ruled not as king but as the first Archon of Athens....

, the last King of Athens

King of Athens

Before the Athenian democracy, the tyrants, and the Archons, the city-state of Athens was ruled by kings. Most of these are probably mythical or only semi-historical...

. Solon's family belonged to a noble or Eupatrid clan yet it possessed only moderate wealth. and Solon was therefore drawn into an unaristocratic pursuit of commerce. According to Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...

, he had a brother named Dropidas and was an ancestor (six generations removed) of Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

.

Solon was given leadership of the Athenian war against Megara on the strength of a poem he wrote about Salamis Island

Salamis Island

. Supported by Pisistratus, he defeated the Megarians either by means of a cunning trick or more directly through heroic battle. The Megarians however refused to give up their claim to the island. The dispute was referred to the Spartans, who eventually awarded possession of the island to Athens on the strength of the case that Solon put to them.

When he was archon, Solon discussed his intended reforms with some friends. Knowing that he was about to cancel all debts, these friends took out loans and promptly bought some land. Suspected of complicity, Solon complied with his own law and released his own debtors, amounting to 5 talents (or 15 according to some sources). His friends never repaid their debts.

After he had finished his reforms, he travelled abroad for ten years, so that the Athenians could not induce him to repeal any of his laws. His first stop was Egypt. There, according to Herodotus he visited the Pharaoh of Egypt Amasis II

Amasis II

Amasis II or Ahmose II was a pharaoh of the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt, the successor of Apries at Sais. He was the last great ruler of Egypt before the Persian conquest.-Life:...

. According to Plutarch, he spent some time and discussed philosophy with two Egyptian priests, Psenophis of Heliopolis

Heliopolis (ancient)

Heliopolis was one of the oldest cities of ancient Egypt, the capital of the 13th Lower Egyptian nome that was located five miles east of the Nile to the north of the apex of the Nile Delta...

and Sonchis of Sais

Sonchis of Sais

Sonchis of Sais was an Egyptian priest who is mentioned in Greek writings as relating the account of Atlantis. His status as a historical figure is a matter of debate....

.
According to Plato's dialogues Timaeus

Timaeus (dialogue)

Timaeus is one of Plato's dialogues, mostly in the form of a long monologue given by the title character, written circa 360 BC. The work puts forward speculation on the nature of the physical world and human beings. It is followed by the dialogue Critias.Speakers of the dialogue are Socrates,...

and Critias

Critias

Critias , born in Athens, son of Callaeschrus, was an uncle of Plato, and a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants, and one of the most violent. He was an associate of Socrates, a fact that did not endear Socrates to the Athenian public. He was noted in his day for his tragedies, elegies and prose...

, he visited Neith

Neith

In Egyptian mythology, Neith was an early goddess in the Egyptian pantheon. She was the patron deity of Sais, where her cult was centered in the Western Nile Delta of Egypt and attested as early as the First Dynasty...

's temple at Sais

SAIS

SAIS can refer to:* Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, part of The Johns Hopkins University.* Sharjah American International School* Southern Association of Independent Schools...

and received from the priests there an account of the history of Atlantis

Atlantis

Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....

. Next Solon sailed to Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

, where he oversaw the construction of a new capital for a local king, in gratitude for which the king named it Soloi.

Solon's travels finally brought him to Sardis

Sardis

Sardis or Sardes was an ancient city at the location of modern Sart in Turkey's Manisa Province...

, capital of Lydia

Lydia

Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....

. According to Herodotus and Plutarch, he met with Croesus

Croesus

Croesus was the king of Lydia from 560 to 547 BC until his defeat by the Persians. The fall of Croesus made a profound impact on the Hellenes, providing a fixed point in their calendar. "By the fifth century at least," J.A.S...

and gave the Lydian king advice, which however Croesus failed to appreciate until it was too late. Croesus had considered himself to be the happiest man alive and Solon had advised him, "Count no man happy until he be dead", because at any minute, fortune might turn on even the happiest man and make his life miserable. It was only after he had lost his kingdom to the Persian king Cyrus

Cyrus the Great

Cyrus II of Persia , commonly known as Cyrus the Great, also known as Cyrus the Elder, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much...

, while awaiting execution, that Croesus acknowledged the wisdom of Solon's advice.

After his return to Athens, Solon became a staunch opponent of Pisistratus. In protest and as an example to others, Solon stood outside his own home in full armour, urging all who passed to resist the machinations of the would-be tyrant. But his efforts were in vain. Solon died shortly after Pisistratus usurped by force the autocratic power that Athens had once freely bestowed upon him. According to one account, he died in Cyprus and, in accordance with his will, his ashes were scattered around Salamis, the island where he was born.

The travel writer, Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...

, listed Solon among the seven sages

Seven Sages of Greece

The Seven Sages or Seven Wise Men was the title given by ancient Greek tradition to seven early 6th century BC philosophers, statesmen and law-givers who were renowned in the following centuries for their wisdom.-The Seven Sages:Traditionally, each of the seven sages represents an aspect of worldly...

whose aphorisms adorned Apollo's temple in Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...

. Stobaeus

Stobaeus

Joannes Stobaeus , from Stobi in Macedonia, was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. The work was originally divided into two volumes containing two books each...

in the Florilegium relates a story about a symposium, where Solon's young nephew was singing a poem of Sappho

Sappho

Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

's; Solon, upon hearing the song, asked the boy to teach him to sing it. When someone asked, "Why should you waste your time on it?" Solon replied , "So that I may learn it then die." Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus was a fourth-century Roman historian. He wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Antiquity...

however told a similar story about Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

and the poet Stesichorus

Stesichorus

Stesichorus was the first great poet of the Greek West. He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres but he is also famous for some ancient traditions about his life, such as his opposition to the tyrant Phalaris, and the blindness he is said to have incurred and cured by composing...

, quoting the philosopher's rapture in almost identical terms: "ut aliquid sciens amplius e vita discedam".

Literature

A. Andrews, Greek Society, Penguin, 1967
J. Blok and A. Lardinois (eds), Solon of Athens: New Historical and Philological Approaches, Leiden, Brill, 2006
Cary, Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. III, Cambridge Uni. Press, 1925
Connor, The New Politicians of Fifth-Century Athens, Princeton, 1971
W. Connor et al. Aspects of Athenian Democracy, Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanam P., 1990
R. Develin, Historia, Vol. 26, 1977
V. Ehrenberg, From Solon to Socrates: Greek History and Civilization, Routledge, 1973
J. Ellis and G. Stanton, Phoenix, Vol. 22, 1968, 95-99
G. Forrest, 'Greece: The History of the Archaic Period', in The Oxford History of the Classical World, ed. Boardman J., Griffin J. and Murray O., Oxford Uni. Press, New York, 1995
Frost, 'Tribal Politics and the Civic State', AJAH, 1976
P. Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in Graeco-Roman World, Cambridge Uni. Press, 1988
J. Goldstein, Historia, Vol. 21, 1972
M. Grant, The Rise of the Greeks. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988
E. Harris, 'A New Solution to the Riddle of the Seisachtheia', in The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece, eds. L. Mitchell and P. Rhodes, Routledge, 1997
C. Hignett, A History of the Athenian Constitution to the End of the Fifth Century B.C., Oxford, 1952
K. Hubbard, Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: a sourcebook of basic documents, Uni. California Press, 2003
H. Innis, Empire and Communications, Rowman and Littlefield, 2007
G. Kirk, Historia, Vol. 26, 1977
D. Lewis, 'Cleisthenes and Attica', Historia, 12, 1963
M. Miller, Arethusa, Vol. 4, 1971
I. Morris, The Growth of City States in the First Millennium BC, Stanford, 2005
C. Mosse, 'Comment s'elabore un mythe politique: Solon', Annales, ESC XXXIV, 1979
M. Ostwald, From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of the Law: Law, Society and Politics in Fifth-Century Athens, Berkeley, 1986
P. Rhodes, A History of the Greek City States, Berkeley, 1976
P. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenian Politeia, Oxford Uni. Press, 1981
K. Robb, Literacy and Paideia in Ancient Greece, Oxford Uni. Press, 1994
B. Sealey, 'Regionalism in Archaic Athens', Historia, 9, 1960
G. R. Stanton, Athenian Politics c. 800–500 BC: A Sourcebook, London, Routledge, 1990
M. L. West (ed.), Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati2: Callinus. Mimnermus. Semonides. Solon. Tyrtaeus. Minora adespota, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972, revised edition, 1992
W. Woodhouse, 'Solon the Liberator: A Study of the Agrarian Problem', in Attika in the Seventh Century, Oxford, 1938

Collections of Solon's surviving verses

Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West is an internationally recognised scholar in classics, classical antiquity and philology...

, Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati2 : Callinus. Mimnermus. Semonides. Solon. Tyrtaeus. Minora adespota,, Oxonii: e typographeo Clarendoniano 1972, revised edition 1992 x + 246 pp.
T. Hudaon-Williams, Early Greek Elegy: Ekegiac Fragments of Callinus, Archilochus, Mimmermus, Tyrtaeus, Solon, Xenophanes, and Others, # Taylor and Francis (1926), ISBN 0-8240-7773-3.
Christoph Mülke, Solons politische Elegien und Iamben : (Fr. 1 - 13, 32 - 37 West), Munich (2002), ISBN 3-598-77726-4.
Eberhard Ruschenbusch Nomoi : Die Fragmente d. Solon. Gesetzeswerkes, Wiesbaden : F. Steiner (1966).
H. Miltner Fragmente / Solon, Vienna (1955)
Eberhard Preime, Dichtungen : Sämtliche Fragmente / Solon Munich (1940).

External links

Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Solon

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