CHAPTER XI.

SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION.

We now approach a new era in Grecian history,—the first known example

of a genuine and disinterested constitutional reform, and the first

foundation-stone of that great fabric, which afterwards became the

type of democracy in Greece. The archonship of the eupatrid Solon

dates in 594 B. C., thirty years after that of Drako, and about

eighteen years after the conspiracy of Kylôn, assuming the latter

event to be correctly placed B. C. 612.

The life of Solon by Plutarch and by Diogenês, especially the

former, are our principal sources of information respecting this

remarkable man; and while we thank them for what they have told

us, it is impossible to avoid expressing disappointment that they

have not told us more. For Plutarch certainly had before him both

the original poems, and the original laws, of Solon, and the few

transcripts which he gives from one or the other form the principal

charm of his biography: but such valuable materials ought to have

been made available to a more instructive result than that which he

has brought out. There is hardly anything more to be deplored, amidst

the lost treasures of the Grecian mind, than the poems of Solon; for

we see by the remaining fragments, that they contained notices of

the public and social phenomena before him, which he was compelled

attentively to study,—blended with the touching expression of his own

personal feelings, in the post, alike honorable and difficult, to

which the confidence of his countrymen had exalted him.

Solon, son of Exekestidês, was a eupatrid of middling fortune,[156]

but of the purest heroic blood, belonging to the gens or family of

the Kodrids and Neleids, and tracing his origin to the god Poseidôn.

His father is said to have diminished his substance by prodigality,

which compelled Solon in his earlier years to have recourse to trade,

and in this pursuit he visited many parts of Greece and Asia. He was

thus enabled to enlarge the sphere of his observation, and to provide

material for thought as well as for composition: and his poetical

talents displayed themselves at a very early age, first on light,

afterwards on serious subjects. It will be recollected that there was

at that time no Greek prose writing, and that the acquisitions as

well as the effusions of an intellectual man, even in their simplest

form, adjusted themselves not to the limitations of the period and

the semicolon, but to those of the hexameter and pentameter: nor in

point of fact do the verses of Solon aspire to any higher effect

than we are accustomed to associate with an earnest, touching,

and admonitory prose composition. The advice and appeals which he

frequently addressed to his countrymen[157] were delivered in this

easy metre, doubtless far less difficult than the elaborate prose of

subsequent writers or speakers, such as Thucydidês, Isokratês, or

Demosthenês. His poetry and his reputation became known throughout

many parts of Greece, and he was classed along with Thalês of

Milêtus, Bias of Priênê, Pittakus of Mytilênê, Periander of Corinth,

Kleobulus of Lindus, Cheilôn of Lacedæmon,—altogether forming the

constellation afterwards renowned as the Seven wise men.

[156] Plutarch, Solon, i; Diogen. Laërt. iii, 1; Aristot. Polit.

iv, 9, 10.

[157] Plutarch, Solon, v.

The first particular event in respect to which Solon appears as an

active politician, is the possession of the island of Salamis, then

disputed between Megara and Athens. Megara was at that time able

to contest with Athens, and for sometime to contest with success,

the occupation of this important island,—a remarkable fact, which

perhaps may be explained by supposing that the inhabitants of Athens

and its neighborhood carried on the struggle with only partial aid

from the rest of Attica. However this may be, it appears that the

Megarians had actually established themselves in Salamis, at the

time when Solon began his political career, and that the Athenians

had experienced so much loss in the struggle, as to have formally

prohibited any citizen from ever submitting a proposition for

its reconquest. Stung with this dishonorable abnegation, Solon

counterfeited a state of ecstatic excitement, rushed into the agora,

and there, on the stone usually occupied by the official herald,

pronounced to the crowd around a short elegiac poem,[158] which he

had previously composed on the subject of Salamis. He enforced upon

them the disgrace of abandoning the island, and wrought so powerfully

upon their feelings, that they rescinded the prohibitory law: “Rather

(he exclaimed) would I forfeit my native city, and become a citizen

of Pholegandrus, than be still named an Athenian, branded with the

shame of surrendered Salamis!” The Athenians again entered into the

war, and conferred upon him the command of it,—partly, as we are

told, at the instigation of Peisistratus, though the latter must

have been at this time (600-594 B. C.) a very young man, or rather a

boy.[159]

[158] Plutarch, Solon, viii. It was a poem of one hundred lines,

χαριέντως πάνυ πεποιημένων.

Diogenês tells us, that “Solon read the verses to the people

through the medium of the herald,”—a statement not less deficient

in taste than in accuracy, and which spoils the whole effect of

the vigorous exordium, Ἀυτὸς κήρυξ ἦλθον ἀφ᾽ ἱμερτῆς Σαλαμῖνος,

etc.

[159] Plutarch, _l. c._; Diogen. Laërt. i, 47. Both Herodotus (i,

59) and some authors read by Plutarch ascribed to Peisistratus

an active part in the war against the Megarians, and even the

capture of Nisæa, the port of Megara. Now the first usurpation of

Peisistratus was in 560 B. C., and we can hardly believe that he

can have been prominent and renowned in a war no less than forty

years before.

It will be seen hereafter—see the note on the interview

between Solon and Krœsus, towards the end of this chapter—that

Herodotus, and perhaps other authors also, conceived the Solonian

legislation to date at a period later than it really does;

instead of 594 B. C., they placed it nearer to the usurpation of

Peisistratus.

The stories in Plutarch, as to the way in which Salamis was

recovered, are contradictory as well as apocryphal, ascribing

to Solon various stratagems to deceive the Megarian occupiers;

unfortunately, no authority is given for any of them. According

to that which seems the most plausible, he was directed by the

Delphian god, first to propitiate the local heroes of the island;

and he accordingly crossed over to it by night, for the purpose of

sacrificing to the heroes Periphêmus and Kychreus, on the Salaminian

shore. Five hundred Athenian volunteers were then levied for the

attack of the island, under the stipulation that if they were

victorious they should hold it in property and citizenship.[160] They

were safely landed on an outlying promontory, while Solon, having

been fortunate enough to seize a ship which the Megarians had sent to

watch the proceedings, manned it with Athenians, and sailed straight

towards the city of Salamis, to which the five hundred Athenians who

had landed also directed their march. The Megarians marched out from

the city to repel the latter, and during the heat of the engagement,

Solon, with his Megarian ship, and Athenian crew, sailed directly to

the city: the Megarians, interpreting this as the return of their

own crew, permitted the ship to approach without resistance, and the

city was thus taken by surprise. Permission having been given to the

Megarians to quit the island, Solon took possession of it for the

Athenians, erecting a temple to Enyalius, the god of war, on Cape

Skiradium, near the city of Salamis.[161]

[160] Plutarch, Solon, κυρίους εἶναι τοῦ πολιτεύματος. The strict

meaning of these words refers only to the _government_ of the

island; but it seems almost certainly implied that they would

be established in it as klêruchs, or proprietors of land, not

meaning necessarily that _all_ the preëxisting proprietors would

be expelled.

[161] Plutarch, Solon, 8, 9, 10. Daïmachus of Platæa, however,

denied to Solon any personal share in the Salaminian war

(Plutarch, comp. Solon and Public. c. 4).

Polyænus (i, 20) ascribes a different stratagem to Solon:

compare Ælian, V. H. vii, 19. It is hardly necessary to say that

the account which the Megarians gave of the way in which they

lost the island was totally different: they imputed it to the

treachery of some exiles (Pausan. i, 40, 4): compare Justin, ii,

7.

The citizens of Megara, however, made various efforts for the

recovery of so valuable a possession, so that a war ensued long as

well as disastrous to both parties. At last, it was agreed between

them to refer the dispute to the arbitration of Sparta, and five

Spartans were appointed to decide it,—Kritolaidas, Amompharetus,

Hypsêchidas, Anaxilas, and Kleomenês. The verdict in favor of Athens

was founded on evidence which it is somewhat curious to trace.

Both parties attempted to show that the dead bodies buried in the

island conformed to their own peculiar mode of interment, and both

parties are said to have cited verses from the catalogue of the

Iliad,[162]—each accusing the other of error or interpolation. But

the Athenians had the advantage on two points; first, there were

oracles from Delphi, wherein Salamis was mentioned with the epithet

Ionian; next, Philæus and Eurysakês, sons of the Telamonian Ajax,

the great hero of the island, had accepted the citizenship of

Athens, made over Salamis to the Athenians, and transferred their

own residences to Braurôn and Melitê in Attica, where the deme or

gens Philaidæ still worshipped Philæus as its eponymous ancestor.

Such a title was held sufficient, and Salamis was adjudged by the

five Spartans to Attica,[163] with which it ever afterwards remained

incorporated until the days of Macedonian supremacy. Two centuries

and a half later, when the orator Æschinês argued the Athenian right

to Amphipolis against Philip of Macedon, the legendary elements of

the title were indeed put forward, but more in the way of preface or

introduction to the substantial political grounds.[164] But in the

year 600 B. C., the authority of the legend was more deep-seated and

operative, and adequate by itself to determine a favorable verdict.

[162] Aristot. Rhet. i, 16, 3.

[163] Plutarch, Solon, 10: compare Aristot. Rhet. i, 16.

Alkibiadês traced up his γένος to Eurysakês (Plutarch, Alkibiad.

c. 1); Miltiadês traced up his to Philæus (Herodot. vi, 35).

According to the statement of Hêreas the Megarian, both his

countrymen and the Athenians had the same way of interment:

both interred the dead with their faces towards the west. This

statement, therefore, affords no proof of any peculiarity of

Athenian custom in burial.

The Eurysakeium, or precinct sacred to the hero Eurysakês, stood

in the deme of Melitê (Harpokrat. ad v), which formed a portion

of the city of Athens.

[164] Æschin. Fals. Legat. p. 250, c. 14.

In addition to the conquest of Salamis, Solon increased his

reputation by espousing the cause of the Delphian temple against the

extortionate proceedings of the inhabitants of Kirrha, of which more

will be said in a coming chapter; and the favor of the oracle was

probably not without its effect in procuring for him that encouraging

prophecy with which his legislative career opened.

It is on the occasion of Solon’s legislation, that we obtain our

first glimpse—unfortunately, but a glimpse—of the actual state of

Attica and its inhabitants. It is a sad and repulsive picture,

presenting to us political discord and private suffering combined.

Violent dissensions prevailed among the inhabitants of Attica, who

were separated into three factions,—the pedieis, or men of the

plain, comprising Athens, Eleusis, and the neighboring territory,

among whom the greatest number of rich families were included; the

mountaineers in the east and north of Attica, called diakrii, who

were on the whole the poorest party; and the paralii in the southern

portion of Attica, from sea to sea, whose means and social position

were intermediate between the two.[165] Upon what particular points

these intestine disputes turned we are not distinctly informed; they

were not, however, peculiar to the period immediately preceding the

archontate of Solon; they had prevailed before, and they reappear

afterwards prior to the despotism of Peisistratus, the latter

standing forward as the leader of the diakrii, and as champion, real

or pretended, of the poorer population.

[165] Plutarch, Solon, c. 13. The language of Plutarch, in

which he talks of the pedieis as representing the oligarchical

tendency, and the diakrii as representing the democratical,

is not quite accurate when applied to the days of Solon.

Democratical pretensions, as such, can hardly be said to have

then existed.

But in the time of Solon these intestine quarrels were aggravated

by something much more difficult to deal with,—a general mutiny

of the poorer population against the rich, resulting from misery

combined with oppression. The thêtes, whose condition we have already

contemplated in the poems of Homer and Hesiod, are now presented to

us as forming the bulk of the population of Attica,—the cultivating

tenants, metayers, and small proprietors of the country. They are

exhibited as weighed down by debts and dependence, and driven in

large numbers out of a state of freedom into slavery,—the whole mass

of them, we are told, being in debt to the rich, who are proprietors

of the greater part of the soil.[166] They had either borrowed money

for their own necessities, or they tilled the lands of the rich as

dependent tenants, paying a stipulated portion of the produce, and in

this capacity they were largely in arrear.

[166] Plutarch, Solon, 13. Ἅπας μὲν γὰρ ὁ δῆμος ἦν ὑπόχρεως τῶν

πλουσίων· ἢ γὰρ ἐγεώργουν ἐκείνοις ἕκτα τῶν γινομένων τελοῦντες,

ἑκτημόριοι προσαγορευόμενοι καὶ θῆτες· ἢ χρέα λαμβάνοντες ἐπὶ

τοῖς σώμασιν, ἀγώγιμοι τοῖς δανείζουσιν ἦσαν· οἱ μὲν αὐτοῦ

δουλεύοντες, οἱ δὲ ἐπὶ τῇ ξένῃ πιπρασκόμενοι. Πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ

παῖδας ἰδίους ἠναγκάζοντο πωλεῖν, καὶ τὴν πόλιν φεύγειν διὰ

τὴν χαλεπότητα τῶν δανειστῶν. Οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι καὶ ῥωμαλεώτατοι

συνίσταντο καὶ παρεκάλουν ἀλλήλους μὴ περιορᾷν, etc.

Respecting these hektêmori, “tenants paying one-sixth portion,”

we find little or no information: they are just noticed in

Hesychius (v. Ἑκτήμοροι, Ἐπίμορτος) and in Pollux, vii, 151; from

whom we learn that ἐπίμορτος γῆ was an expression which occurred

in one of the Solonian laws. Whether they paid to the landlord

one-sixth, or retained for themselves only one-sixth, has been

doubted (see Photius, Πελάται).

Dionysius Hal. (A. R. ii, 9) compares the thêtes in Attica to the

Roman clients: that both agreed in being relations of personal

and proprietary dependence is certain; but we can hardly carry

the comparison farther, nor is there any evidence in Attica of

that sanctity of obligation which is said to have bound the Roman

patron to his client.

All the calamitous effects were here seen of the old harsh law of

debtor and creditor,—once prevalent in Greece, Italy, Asia, and a

large portion of the world,—combined with the recognition of slavery

as a legitimate status, and of the right of one man to sell himself

as well as that of another man to buy him. Every debtor unable to

fulfil his contract was liable to be adjudged as the slave of his

creditor, until he could find means either of paying it or working

it out; and not only he himself, but his minor sons and unmarried

daughters and sisters also, whom the law gave him the power of

selling.[167] The poor man thus borrowed upon the security of his

body, to translate literally the Greek phrase, and upon that of

the persons of his family; and so severely had these oppressive

contracts been enforced, that many debtors had been reduced from

freedom to slavery in Attica itself,—many others had been sold for

exportation,—and some had only hitherto preserved their own freedom

by selling their children. Moreover, a great number of the smaller

properties in Attica were under mortgage, signified,—according to

the formality usual in the Attic law, and continued down throughout

the historical times,—by a stone pillar erected on the land,

inscribed with the name of the lender and the amount of the loan.

The proprietors of these mortgaged lands, in case of an unfavorable

turn of events, had no other prospect except that of irremediable

slavery for themselves and their families, either in their own native

country, robbed of all its delights, or in some barbarian region

where the Attic accent would never meet their ears. Some had fled the

country to escape legal adjudication of their persons, and earned a

miserable subsistence in foreign parts by degrading occupations: upon

several, too, this deplorable lot had fallen by unjust condemnation

and corrupt judges; the conduct of the rich, in regard to money

sacred and profane, in regard to matters public as well as private,

being thoroughly unprincipled and rapacious.

[167] So the Frisii, when unable to pay the tribute imposed by

the Roman empire, “primo boves ipsos, mox agros, postremo corpora

conjugum et liberorum, servitio tradebant.” (Tacit. Annal. iv,

72.) About the selling of children by parents, to pay the taxes,

in the later times of the Roman empire see Zosimus, ii, 38;

Libanius, t. ii, p. 427, ed. Paris, 1627.

The manifold and long-continued suffering of the poor under this

system, plunged into a state of debasement not more tolerable than

that of the Gallic plebs,—and the injustices of the rich, in whom

all political power was then vested, are facts well attested by

the poems of Solon himself, even in the short fragments preserved

to us:[168] and it appears that immediately preceding the time of

his archonship, the evils had ripened to such a point,—and the

determination of the mass of sufferers, to extort for themselves

some mode of relief, had become so pronounced,—that the existing

laws could no longer be enforced. According to the profound remark

of Aristotle,—that seditions are generated by great causes but out

of small incidents,[169]—we may conceive that some recent events had

occurred as immediate stimulants to the outbreak of the debtors,—like

those which lend so striking an interest to the early Roman annals,

as the inflaming sparks of violent popular movements for which the

train had long before been laid. Condemnations by the archons,

of insolvent debtors, may have been unusually numerous, or the

maltreatment of some particular debtor, once a respected freeman, in

his condition of slavery, may have been brought to act vividly upon

the public sympathies,—like the case of the old plebeian centurion

at Rome,[170]—first impoverished by the plunder of the enemy, then

reduced to borrow, and lastly adjudged to his creditor as an

insolvent,—who claimed the protection of the people in the forum,

rousing their feelings to the highest pitch by the marks of the

slave-whip visible on his person. Some such incidents had probably

happened, though we have no historians to recount them; moreover, it

is not unreasonable to imagine, that that public mental affliction

which the purifier Epimenidês had been invoked to appease, as it

sprung in part from pestilence, so it had its cause partly in years

of sterility, which must of course have aggravated the distress of

the small cultivators. However this may be, such was the condition

of things in 594 B. C., through mutiny of the poor freemen and

thêtes, and uneasiness of the middling citizens, that the governing

oligarchy, unable either to enforce their private debts or to

maintain their political power, were obliged to invoke the well-known

wisdom and integrity of Solon. Though his vigorous protest—which

doubtless rendered him acceptable to the mass of the people—against

the iniquity of the existing system had already been proclaimed in

his poems, they still hoped that he would serve as an auxiliary, to

help them over their difficulties, and they therefore chose him,

nominally, as archon along with Philombrotus, but with power in

substance dictatorial.

[168] See the Fragment περὶ τῆς Ἀθηναίων πολιτείας, No. 2,

Schneidewin.

Δήμου θ᾽ ἡγεμόνων ἄδικος νόος, οἶσιν ἕτοιμος

Ὕβριος ἐκ μεγάλης ἄλγεα πολλὰ παθεῖν.

... Οὔθ᾽ ἱερῶν κτεάνων οὔτε τι δημοσίων

Φειδόμενοι, κλέπτουσιν ἐφ᾽ ἁρπαγῇ ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος,

Οὐδὲ φυλάσσονται σεμνὰ δίκης θέμεθλα.

... Ταῦτα μὲν ἐν δήμῳ στρέφεται κακά· τῶν δὲ πενιχρῶν

Ἱκνεῦνται πολλοὶ γαῖαν ἐς ἀλλοδαπὴν

Πραθέντες, δεσμοῖσι τ᾽ ἀεικελίοισι δεθέντες.

[169] Aristot. Polit. γίγνονται δὲ αἱ στάσεις οὐ περὶ μικρῶν,

ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ μικρῶν.

[170] Livy, ii, 23; Dionys. Hal. A. R. vi, 26: compare Livy, vi,

34-36.

“An placeret, fœnore circumventam plebem, potius quam sorte

creditum solvat, corpus in nervum ac supplicia dare? et gregatim

quotidie de foro addictos duci, et repleri vinctis nobiles domos?

et ubicumque patricius habitet, ibi carcerem privatum esse?”

The exposition of Niebuhr, respecting the old Roman law of debtor

and creditor (Röm. Gesch. i, p. 602, _seq._; Arnold’s Roman

Hist., ch. viii, vol. i, p. 135), and the explanation which he

there gives of the nexi, as distinguished from the addicti, have

been shown to be incorrect by M. von Savigny, in an excellent

Dissertation Über das Altrömische Schuldrecht (Abhandlungen

Berlin Academ. 1833, pp. 70-73), an abstract of which will be

found in an Appendix, at the close of this chapter.

It had happened in several Grecian states, that the governing

oligarchies, either by quarrels among their own members or by the

general bad condition of the people under their government, were

deprived of that hold upon the public mind which was essential to

their power; and sometimes, as in the case of Pittakus of Mitylênê,

anterior to the archonship of Solon, and often in the factions of

the Italian republics in the Middle Ages, the collision of opposing

forces had rendered society intolerable, and driven all parties to

acquiesce in the choice of some reforming dictator. Usually, however,

in the early Greek oligarchies, this ultimate crisis was anticipated

by some ambitious individual, who availed himself of the public

discontent, to overthrow the oligarchy, and usurp the powers of a

despot; and so, probably, it might have happened in Athens, had not

the recent failure of Kylôn, with all its miserable consequences,

operated as a deterring motive. It is curious to read, in the words

of Solon himself, the temper in which his appointment was construed

by a large portion of the community, but most especially by his own

friends: and we are to bear in mind that at this early day, so far

as our knowledge goes, democratical government was a thing unknown in

Greece,—all Grecian governments were either oligarchical or despotic,

the mass of the freemen having not yet tasted of constitutional

privilege. His own friends and supporters were the first to urge him,

while redressing the prevalent discontents, to multiply partisans

for himself personally, and seize the supreme power: they even “chid

him as a madman, for declining to haul up the net when the fish were

already enmeshed.”[171] The mass of the people, in despair with their

lot, would gladly have seconded him in such an attempt, and many even

among the oligarchy might have acquiesced in his personal government,

from the mere apprehension of something worse, if they resisted it.

That Solon might easily have made himself despot, admits of little

doubt; and though the position of a Greek despot was always perilous,

he would have had greater facility for maintaining himself in it than

Peisistratus possessed after him; so that nothing but the combination

of prudence and virtue which marks his lofty character, restricted

him within the trust specially confided to him. To the surprise of

every one,—to the dissatisfaction of his own friends,—under the

complaints alike, as he says, of various extreme and dissentient

parties, who required him to adopt measures fatal to the peace of

society,[172]—he set himself honestly to solve the very difficult and

critical problem submitted to him.

[171] See Plutarch, Solon, 14; and above all the Trochaic

tetrameters of Solon himself, addressed to Phôkus, Fr. 24-26,

Schneidewin:—

Οὐκ ἔφυ Σόλων βαθύφρων, οὐδὲ βουλήεις ἀνήρ,

Ἐσθλὰ γὰρ θεοῦ δίδοντος, αὐτὸς οὐκ ἐδέξατο.

Περιβαλὼν δ᾽ ἄγραν, ἀγασθεὶς οὐκ ἀνέσπασεν μέγα

Δίκτυον, θυμοῦ θ’ ἁμαρτῆ καὶ φρενῶν ἀποσφαλείς.

[172] Aristides, Περὶ τοῦ Παραφθέγματος, ii, p. 397; and Fragm.

29, Schn. of the Iambics of Solon:—

... εἰ γὰρ ἤθελον

Ἃ τοῖς ἐναντίοισιν ἥνδανεν τότε,

Αὖθις δ᾽ ἃ τοῖσιν ἁτέροις δρᾶσαι ...

Πολλῶν ἂν ἀνδρῶν ἥδ᾽ ἐχηρώθη πόλις.

Of all grievances, the most urgent was the condition of the poorer

class of debtors; and to their relief Solon’s first measure, the

memorable seisachtheia, or shaking off of burdens, was directed. The

relief which it afforded was complete and immediate. It cancelled

at once all those contracts in which the debtor had borrowed on the

security of either his person or of his land: it forbade all future

loans or contracts in which the person of the debtor was pledged

as security: it deprived the creditor in future of all power to

imprison, or enslave, or extort work from his debtor, and confined

him to an effective judgment at law, authorizing the seizure of

the property of the latter. It swept off all the numerous mortgage

pillars from the landed properties in Attica, and left the land

free from all past claims. It liberated, and restored to their

full rights, all those debtors who were actually in slavery under

previous legal adjudication; and it even provided the means—we do

not know how—of repurchasing in foreign lands, and bringing back to

a renewed life of liberty in Attica, many insolvents who had been

sold for exportation.[173] And while Solon forbade every Athenian to

pledge or sell his own person into slavery, he took a step farther

in the same direction, by forbidding him to pledge or sell his son,

his daughter, or an unmarried sister under his tutelage,—excepting

only the case in which either of the latter might be detected in

unchastity.[174] Whether this last ordinance was contemporaneous

with the seisachtheia, or followed as one of his subsequent reforms,

seems doubtful.

[173] See the valuable fragment of his Iambics, preserved by

Plutarch and Aristidês, the expression of which is rendered more

emphatic by the appeal to the _personal Earth_, as having passed

by his measures from slavery into freedom (compare Plato, Legg.

v, pp. 740-741):—

Συμμαρτυροίη ταῦτ᾽ ἂν ἐν δίκῃ Χρόνου

Μήτηρ, μεγίστη δαιμόνων Ὀλυμπίων,

Ἄριστα, Γῆ μέλαινα, τῆς ἐγώ ποτε

Ὅρους ἀνεῖλον πολλαχῇ πεπηγότας,

Πρόσθεν δὲ δουλεύουσα, νῦν ἐλευθέρα.

Πολλοὺς δ᾽ Ἀθήνας, πατρίδ᾽ εἰς θεόκτιτον

Ἀνήγαγον πραθέντας, ἄλλον ἐκδίκως,

Ἄλλον δικαίως· τοὺς δ᾽ ἀναγκαίης ὕπο

Χρειοῦς φυγόντας, γλῶσσαν οὔκετ᾽ Ἀττικὴν

Ἱέντας, ὡς ἂν πολλαχῇ πλανωμένους·

Τοὺς δ’ ἐνθάδ᾽ αὐτοῦ δουλίην ἀεικέα

Ἔχοντας, ἤδη δεσπότας τρομευμένους,

Ἐλευθέρους ἔθηκα.

also Plutarch, Solon, c. 15.

[174] Plutarch, Solon, c. 23: compare c. 13. The statement

in Sextus Empiricus (Pyrrhon. Hypot. iii, 24, 211), that

Solon enacted a law permitting fathers to kill (φονεύειν)

their children, cannot be true, and must be copied from some

untrustworthy authority: compare Dionys. Hal. A. R. ii, 26, where

he contrasts the prodigious extent of the _patria potestas_ among

the early Romans, with the restrictions which all the Greek

legislators alike,—Solon, Pittakus, Charondas,—either found

or introduced: he says, however, that the Athenian father was

permitted to disinherit legitimate male children, which does not

seem to be correct.

Meier (Der Attische Prozess, iii, 2, p. 427) rejects the

above-mentioned statement of Sextus Empiricus, and farther

contends that the exposure of new-born infants was not only

rare, but discountenanced as well by law as by opinion; the

evidence in the Latin comedies to the contrary, he considers

as manifestations of Roman, and not of Athenian, manners. In

this latter opinion I do not think that he is borne out, and I

agree in the statement of Schömann (Ant. J. P. Græc. sect. 82),

that the practice and feeling of Athens as well as of Greece

generally, left it to the discretion of the father whether he

would consent, or refuse, to bring up a new-born child.

By this extensive measure the poor debtors,—the thêtes, small

tenants, and proprietors,—together with their families, were rescued

from suffering and peril. But these were not the only debtors in

the state: the creditors and landlords of the exonerated thêtes

were doubtless in their turn debtors to others, and were less able

to discharge their obligations in consequence of the loss inflicted

upon them by the seisachtheia. It was to assist these wealthier

debtors, whose bodies were in no danger,—yet without exonerating them

entirely,—that Solon resorted to the additional expedient of debasing

the money standard; he lowered the standard of the drachma in a

proportion something more than twenty-five per cent., so that one

hundred drachmas of the new standard contained no more silver than

seventy-three of the old, or one hundred of the old were equivalent

to one hundred and thirty-eight of the new. By this change, the

creditors of these more substantial debtors were obliged to submit

to a loss, while the debtors acquired an exemption, to the extent of

about twenty-seven per cent.[175]

[175] Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. See the full exposition given of

this debasement of the coinage, in Boeckh’s Metrologie, ch. ix,

p. 115.

M. Boeckh thinks (ch. xv, s. 2) that Solon not only debased the

coin, but also altered the weights and measures. I dissent from

his opinion on this latter point, and have given my reasons for

so doing, in a review of his valuable treatise in the Classical

Museum, No. 1.

Lastly, Solon decreed that all those who had been condemned by the

archons to atīmy (civil disfranchisement) should be restored to their

full privileges of citizens,—excepting, however, from this indulgence

those who had been condemned by the ephetæ, or by the areopagus, or

by the phylo-basileis (the four kings of the tribes), after trial

in the prytaneium, on charges either of murder or treason.[176] So

wholesale a measure of amnesty affords strong grounds for believing

that the previous judgments of the archons had been intolerably

harsh; and it is to be recollected that the Drakonian ordinances were

then in force.

[176] Plutarch, Solon, c. 19. In the general restoration of

exiles throughout the Greek cities, proclaimed first by order of

Alexander the Great, afterwards by Polysperchon, exception is

made of men exiled for sacrilege or homicide (Diodor. xvii, 109;

xviii, 8-46).

Such were the measures of relief with which Solon met the dangerous

discontent then prevalent. That the wealthy men and leaders of the

people, whose insolence and iniquity he has himself so sharply

denounced in his poems, and whose views in nominating him he had

greatly disappointed,[177] should have detested propositions which

robbed them without compensation of so many of their legal rites,

it is easy to imagine. But the statement of Plutarch, that the poor

emancipated debtors were also dissatisfied, from having expected that

Solon would not only remit their debts, but also redivide the soil of

Attica, seems utterly incredible; nor is it confirmed by any passage

now remaining of the Solonian poems.[178] Plutarch conceives the

poor debtors as having in their minds the comparison with Lykurgus,

and the equality of property at Sparta, which, as I have already

endeavored to show,[179] is a fiction; and even had it been true,

as matter of history long past and antiquated, would not have been

likely to work upon the minds of the multitude of Attica in the

forcible way that the biographer supposes. The seisachtheia must have

exasperated the feelings and diminished the fortunes of many persons;

but it gave to the large body of thêtes and small proprietors all

that they could possibly have hoped. And we are told that after a

short interval it became eminently acceptable in the general public

mind, and procured for Solon a great increase of popularity,—all

ranks concurring in a common sacrifice of thanksgiving and

harmony.[180] One incident there was which occasioned an outcry of

indignation. Three rich friends of Solon, all men of great family

in the state, and bearing names which will hereafter reappear in

this history as borne by their descendants,—Konôn, Kleinias, and

Hipponikus,—having obtained from Solon some previous hint of his

designs, profited by it, first, to borrow money, and next, to make

purchases of lands; and this selfish breach of confidence would have

disgraced Solon himself, had it not been found that he was personally

a great loser, having lent money to the extent of five talents.

We should have been glad to learn what authority Plutarch had for

this anecdote, which could hardly have been recorded in Solon’s own

poems.[181]

[177] Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. οὐδὲ μαλακῶς, οὐδ᾽ ὑπείκων τοῖς

δυναμένοις, οὐδὲ πρὸς ἡδονὴν τῶν ἑλομένων, ἔθετο τοὺς νόμους, etc.

[178] Plutarch, Solon, c. 16.

[179] See above, vol. ii, part ii, ch. vi.

[180] Plutarch, _l. c._ ἔθυσάν τε κοινῇ, Σεισάχθειαν τὴν θυσίαν

ὀνομάζοντες, etc.

[181] The anecdote is again noticed, but without specification of

the names of the friends, in Plutarch, Reipub. Gerend. Præcep. p.

807.

In regard to the whole measure of the seisachtheia, indeed, though

the poems of Solon were open to every one, ancient authors gave

different statements, both of its purport and of its extent. Most

of them construed it as having cancelled indiscriminately all money

contracts; while Androtion, and others, thought that it did nothing

more than lower the rate of interest and depreciate the currency

to the extent of twenty-seven per cent., leaving the letter of the

contracts unchanged. How Androtion came to maintain such an opinion

we cannot easily understand, for the fragments now remaining from

Solon seem distinctly to refute it, though, on the other hand,

they do not go so far as to substantiate the full extent of the

opposite view entertained by many writers,—that all money contracts

indiscriminately were rescinded:[182] against which there is also

a farther reason, that, if the fact had been so, Solon could have

had no motive to debase the money standard. Such debasement supposes

that there must have been _some_ debtors, at least, whose contracts

remained valid, and whom, nevertheless, he desired partially to

assist. His poems distinctly mention three things: 1. The removal

of the mortgage pillars. 2. The enfranchisement of the land. 3. The

protection, liberation, and restoration of the persons of endangered

or enslaved debtors. All these expressions point distinctly to the

thêtes and small proprietors, whose sufferings and peril were the

most urgent, and whose case required a remedy immediate as well as

complete: we find that his repudiation of debts was carried far

enough to exonerate them, but no farther.

[182] Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. The statement of Dionysius of Hal.,

in regard to the bearing of the seisachtheia, is in the main

accurate,—χρεῶν ἄφεσιν ψηφισαμένην τοῖς ~ἀπόροις~ (v, 65),—to the

debtors who were liable on the security of their bodies and their

lands, and who were chiefly poor,—not to _all_ debtors.

Herakleidês Pontic. (Πολιτ. c. 1) and Dio Chrysostom (Or. xxxi,

p. 331) express themselves loosely.

Both Wachsmuth (Hell. Alterth. v. i, p. 249) and K. F. Hermann

(Gr. Staats Alter. c. s. 106) quote the heliastic oath, and its

energetic protest against repudiation, as evidence of the bearing

of the Solonian seisachtheia. But that oath is referable only

to a later period; it cannot be produced in proof of any matter

applicable to the time of Solon; the mere mention of the senate

of Five Hundred in it, shows that it belongs to times subsequent

to the Kleisthenean revolution. Nor does the passage from Plato

(Legg. iii, p. 684) apply to the case.

Both Wachsmuth and Hermann appear to me to narrow too much

the extent of Solon’s measure in reference to the clearing of

debtors. But on the other hand, they enlarge the effect of his

measures in another way, without any sufficient evidence,—they

think that he raised _the villein tenants_ into _free

proprietors_. Of this I see no proof, and think it improbable. A

large proportion of the small debtors whom Solon exonerated were

probably free proprietors before; the existence of the ὅροι, or

mortgage pillars, upon their land proves this.

It seems to have been the respect entertained for the character

of Solon which partly occasioned these various misconceptions of

his ordinances for the relief of debtors: Androtion in ancient,

and some eminent critics in modern times, are anxious to make out

that he gave relief without loss or injustice to any one. But this

opinion is altogether inadmissible: the loss to creditors, by the

wholesale abrogation of numerous prëexisting contracts, and by the

partial depreciation of the coin, is a fact not to be disguised.

The seisachtheia of Solon, unjust so far as it rescinded previous

agreements, but highly salutary in its consequences, is to be

vindicated by showing that in no other way could the bonds of

government have been held together, or the misery of the multitude

alleviated. We are to consider, first, the great personal cruelty of

these preëxisting contracts, which condemned the body of the free

debtor and his family to slavery; next, the profound detestation

created by such a system in the large mass of the poor, against both

the judges and the creditors by whom it had been enforced, which

rendered their feelings unmanageable, so soon as they came together

under the sentiment of a common danger, and with the determination to

insure to each other mutual protection. Moreover, the law which vests

a creditor with power over the person of his debtor, so as to convert

him into a slave, is likely to give rise to a class of loans, which

inspire nothing but abhorrence,—money lent with the foreknowledge

that the borrower will be unable to repay it, but also in the

conviction that the value of his person as a slave will make good

the loss; thus reducing him to a condition of extreme misery, for

the purpose sometimes of aggrandizing, sometimes of enriching, the

lender. Now the foundation on which the respect for contracts rests,

under a good law of debtor and creditor, is the very reverse of this;

it rests on the firm conviction that such contracts are advantageous

to both parties as a class, and that to break up the confidence

essential to their existence would produce extensive mischief

throughout all society. The man whose reverence for the obligation of

a contract is now the most profound, would have entertained a very

different sentiment if he had witnessed the dealings of lender and

borrower at Athens, under the old ante-Solonian law. The oligarchy

had tried their best to enforce this law of debtor and creditor,

with its disastrous series of contracts, and the only reason why

they consented to invoke the aid of Solon, was because they had lost

the power of enforcing it any longer, in consequence of the newly

awakened courage and combination of the people. That which they could

not do for themselves, Solon could not have done for them, even had

he been willing; nor had he in his possession the means either of

exempting or compensating those creditors, who, separately taken,

were open to no reproach; indeed, in following his proceedings, we

see plainly that he thought compensation due, not to the creditors,

but to the past sufferings of the enslaved debtors, since he redeemed

several of them from foreign captivity, and brought them back to

their home. It is certain that no measure, simply and exclusively

prospective, would have sufficed for the emergency: there was an

absolute necessity for overruling all that class of preëxisting

rights which had produced so violent a social fever. While

therefore, to this extent, the seisachtheia cannot be acquitted of

injustice, we may confidently affirm that the injustice inflicted

was an indispensable price, paid for the maintenance of the peace

of society, and for the final abrogation of a disastrous system as

regarded insolvents.[183] And the feeling as well as the legislation

universal in the modern European world, by interdicting beforehand

all contracts for selling a man’s person or that of his children into

slavery, goes far to sanction practically the Solonian repudiation.

[183] That which Solon did for the Athenian people in regard to

debts, is less than what was _promised_ to the Roman plebs (at

the time of its secession to the Mons Sacer in 491 B. C.) by

Menenius Agrippa, the envoy of the senate, to appease them, but

which does not seem to have been ever _realized_ (Dionys. Hal.

vi, 83). He promised an abrogation of all the debts of debtors

unable to pay, without exception,—if the language of Dionysius is

to be trusted, which probably it cannot be.

Dr. Thirlwall justly observes respecting Solon, “He must be

considered as an arbitrator, to whom all the parties interested

submitted their claims, with the avowed intent that they should

be decided by him, not upon the footing of legal right, but

according to his own view of the public interest. It was in this

light that he himself regarded his office, and he appears to have

discharged it faithfully and discreetly.” (History of Greece, ch.

xi. vol. ii, p. 42.)

One thing is never to be forgotten in regard to this measure,

combined with the concurrent amendments introduced by Solon in the

law,—it settled finally the question to which it referred. Never

again do we hear of the law of debtor and creditor as disturbing

Athenian tranquillity. The general sentiment which grew up at Athens,

under the Solonian money-law, and under the democratical government,

was one of high respect for the sanctity of contracts. Not only was

there never any demand in the Athenian democracy for new tables or

a depreciation of the money standard, but a formal abnegation of

any such projects was inserted in the solemn oath taken annually by

the numerous diakasts, who formed the popular judicial body, called

hêliæa, or the hêliastic jurors,—the same oath which pledged them to

uphold the democratical constitution, also bound them to repudiate

all proposals either for an abrogation of debts or for a redivision

of the lands.[184] There can be little doubt that under the Solonian

law, which enabled the creditor to seize the property of his debtor,

but gave him no power over the person, the system of money-lending

assumed a more beneficial character: the old noxious contracts,

mere snares for the liberty of a poor freeman and his children,

disappeared, and loans of money took their place, founded on the

property and prospective earnings of the debtor, which were in the

main useful to both parties, and therefore maintained their place in

the moral sentiment of the public. And though Solon had found himself

compelled to rescind all the mortgages on land subsisting in his

time, we see money freely lent upon this same security, throughout

the historical times of Athens, and the evidentiary mortgage pillars

remaining ever after undisturbed.

[184] Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. οὐδὲ τῶν χρεῶν τῶν

ἰδίων ἀποκοπὰς, οὐδὲ γῆς ἀναδασμὸν τῆς Ἀθηναίων, οὐδ᾽ οἰκιῶν

(ψηφιοῦμαι): compare Dio Chrysostom, Orat. xxxi, p. 332, who

also dwells upon the anxiety of various Grecian cities to fix a

curse upon all propositions for χρεῶν ἀποκοπὴ and γῆς ἀναδασμός.

What is not less remarkable is, that Dio seems not to be aware

of any one well-authenticated case in Grecian history, in which

a redivision of lands had ever actually taken place—ὃ μηδ᾽ ὅλως

ἴσμεν εἴ ποτε συνέβη. (_l. c._)

For the law of debtor and creditor, as it stood during the times

of the Orators at Athens, see Heraldus, Animadv. ad Salmasium,

pp. 174-286; Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, b. iii,

c. 2, p. 497, _seqq._ (though I doubt the distinction which they

there draw between χρέος and δανεῖον); Platner, Prozess und

Klagen, b. ii, absch. 11, pp. 349, 361.

There was one exceptional case, in which the Attic law always

continued to the creditor that power over the person of the

insolvent debtor which all creditors had possessed originally,—it

was when the creditor had lent money for the express purpose of

ransoming the debtor from captivity (Dêmosthen. cont. Nikostr. p.

1249),—analogous to the actio depensi in the old Roman law.

Any citizen who owed money to the public treasury, and whose debt

became overdue, was deprived for the time of all civil rights

until he had cleared it off.

Diodorus (i, 79) gives us an alleged law of the Egyptian king

Bocchoris, releasing the persons of debtors and rendering their

properties only liable, which is affirmed to have served as

an example for Solon to copy. If we can trust this historian,

lawgivers in other parts of Greece still retained the old severe

law enslaving the debtor’s person: compare a passage in Isokratês

(Orat. xiv, Plataicus, p. 305; p. 414, Bek.)

In the sentiment of an early society, as in the old Roman law,

a distinction is commonly made between the principal and the

interest of a loan, though the creditors have sought to blend them

indissolubly together. If the borrower cannot fulfil his promise to

repay the principal, the public will regard him as having committed

a wrong which he must make good by his person; but there is not the

same unanimity as to his promise to pay interest: on the contrary,

the very exaction of interest will be regarded by many in the same

light in which the English law considers usurious interest, as

tainting the whole transaction. But in the modern mind, principal,

and interest within a limited rate, have so grown together, that we

hardly understand how it can ever have been pronounced unworthy of an

honorable citizen to lend money on interest; yet such is the declared

opinion of Aristotle, and other superior men of antiquity; while the

Roman Cato, the censor, went so far as to denounce the practice as a

heinous crime.[185] It was comprehended by them among the worst of

the tricks of trade,—and they held that all trade, or profit derived

from interchange, was unnatural, as being made by one man at the

expense of another: such pursuits, therefore, could not be commended,

though they might be tolerated to a certain extent as matter of

necessity, but they belonged essentially to an inferior order of

citizens.[186] What is remarkable in Greece is, that the antipathy

of a very early state of society against traders and money-lenders

lasted longer among the philosophers than among the mass of the

people,—it harmonized more with the social _idéal_ of the former,

than with the practical instincts of the latter.

[185] Aristot. Polit. i, 4, 23; Cato ap. Cicero. de Offic. ii,

25. Plato, in his Treatise de Legg. (v, p. 742) forbids all

lending on interest: indeed, he forbids any private citizen to

possess either gold or silver.

To illustrate the marked difference made in the early Roman

law, between the claim for the principal and that for the

interest, I insert in an Appendix, at the end of this chapter,

the explanation given by M. von Savigny, of the treatment of the

nexi and addicti,—connected as it is by analogy with the Solonian

seisachtheia.

[186] Aristot. Polit. i, 4, 23. Τὴς δὲ μεταβλητικῆς ~ψεγομένης

διακίως~ (οὐ γὰρ κατὰ φύσιν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ἀλλήλων ἔστιν), εὐλογώτατα

μισεῖται ἡ ὀβολοστατική, etc. Compare Ethic. Nikom. iv, 1.

Plutarch borrows from Aristotle the quibble derived from the

word ~τόκος~ (the Greek expression for interest), which has

given birth to the well-known dictum of Aristotle,—that money

being naturally _barren_, to extract _offspring_ from it must

necessarily be _contrary to nature_ (see Plutarch, De Vit. Ær.

Al. p. 829).

In a rude condition, such as that of the ancient Germans described

by Tacitus, loans on interest are unknown: habitually careless of

the future, the Germans were gratified both in giving and receiving

presents, but without any idea that they thereby either imposed or

contracted an obligation.[187] To a people in this state of feeling,

a loan on interest presents the repulsive idea of making profit out

of the distress of the borrower; moreover, it is worthy of remark,

that the first borrowers must have been for the most part men driven

to this necessity by the pressure of want, and contracting debt as a

desperate resource, without any fair prospect of ability to repay:

debt and famine run together, in the mind of the poet Hesiod.[188]

The borrower is, in this unhappy state, rather a distressed man

soliciting aid, than a solvent man capable of making and fulfilling

a contract; and if he cannot find a friend to make him a free gift

in the former character, he will not, under the latter character,

obtain a loan from a stranger, except by the promise of exorbitant

interest,[189] and by the fullest eventual power over his person

which he is in a condition to grant. In process of time a new class

of borrowers rise up, who demand money for temporary convenience or

profit, but with full prospect of repayment,—a relation of lender

and borrower quite different from that of the earlier period, when

it presented itself in the repulsive form of misery on the one side,

set against the prospect of very large profit on the other. If the

Germans of the time of Tacitus had looked to the condition of the

poor debtors in Gaul, reduced to servitude under a rich creditor,

and swelling by hundreds the crowd of his attendants, they would not

have been disposed to regret their own ignorance of the practice of

money-lending.[190] How much the interest of money was then regarded

as an undue profit extorted from distress, is powerfully illustrated

by the old Jewish law; the Jew being permitted to take interest

from foreigners (whom the lawgiver did not think himself obliged to

protect), but not from his own countrymen.[191] The Koran follows

out this point of view consistently, and prohibits the taking of

interest altogether. In most other nations, laws have been made

to limit the rate of interest, and at Rome, especially, the legal

rate was successively lowered,—though it seems, as might have been

expected, that the restrictive ordinances were constantly eluded. All

such restrictions have been intended for the protection of debtors;

an effect which large experience proves them never to produce,

unless it be called protection to render the obtaining of money on

loan impracticable for the most distressed borrowers. But there was

another effect which they _did_ tend to produce,—they softened down

the primitive antipathy against the practice generally, and confined

the odious name of usury to loans lent above the fixed legal rate.

[187] Tacit. Germ. 26. “Fœnus agitare et in usuras extendere,

ignotum: ideoque magis servatur quam si vetitum esset,” (c.

21.) “Gaudent muneribus: sed nec data imputant, nec acceptis

obligantur.”

[188] Hesiod, Opp. Di. 647, 404. Βούληαι χρέα τε προφυγεῖν, καὶ

λιμὸν ἀτερπῆ. Some good observations on this subject are to be

found in the excellent treatise of M. Turgot, written in 1763,

“Mémoire sur les Prêts d’Argent:”—

“Les causes qui avoient autrefois rendu odieux le prêt à

intérêt, ont cessé d’agir avec tant de force.... De toutes ces

circonstances réunies, il est résulté que les emprunts faits

par le pauvre pour subsister ne sont plus qu’un objet à peine

sensible dans la somme totale d’emprunts: que la plus grande

partie des prêts se font à l’homme riche, ou du moins à l’homme

industrieux, qui espère se procurer de grands profits par

l’emploi de l’argent qu’il emprunte.... Les prêteurs sur gage

à gros intérêt, les seuls qui prêtent véritablement au pauvre

pour ses besoins journaliers et non pour le mettre en état de

gagner, ne font point le même mal que les anciens usuriers qui

conduisoient par degrés à la misère et à l’esclavage les pauvres

citoyens auxquels ils avoient procuré des secours funestes....

Le créancier qui pouvait réduire son débiteur en esclavage y

trouvait un profit: c’étoit un esclave qu’il acquérait: mais

aujourd’hui le créancier sait qu’en privant son débiteur de la

liberté, il n’y gagnera autre chose que d’être obligé de le

nourrir en prison: aussi ne s’avise-t-on pas de faire contracter

à un homme qui n’a rien, et qui est réduit à emprunter pour

vivre, des engagemens qui emportent la contrainte par corps. La

seule sûreté vraiment solide contre l’homme pauvre est le gage:

et l’homme pauvre s’estime heureux de trouver un secours pour le

moment sans autre danger que de perdre ce gage. Aussi le peuple

a-t-il plutôt de la reconnoissance pour ces petits usuriers qui

le secourent dans son besoin, quoiqu’ils lui vendent assez cher

ce secours.” (Mémoire sur les Prêts d’Argent, in the collection

of Œuvres de Turgot, by Dupont de Nemours, vol. v, sects. xxx,

xxxi, pp. 326, 327, 329, written in 1763.)

[189] “In Bengal (observes Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, b. i,

ch. 9, p. 143, ed. 1812) money is frequently lent to the farmers

at 40, 50, and 60 per cent., and the succeeding crop is mortgaged

for the payment.”

Respecting this commerce at Florence in the Middle Ages, M.

Depping observes: “Il semblait que l’esprit commercial fût inné

chez les Florentins: déjà aux 12me et 13me siècles, on les

voit tenir des banques et prêter de l’argent aux princes. Ils

ouvrirent partout des maisons de prêt, marchèrent de pair avec

les Lombards, et, il faut le dire, ils furent souvent maudits,

comme ceux-ci, par leurs débiteurs, à cause de leur rapacité.

Vingt pour cent par an était le taux ordinaire des prêteurs

Florentins: et il n’était pas rare qu’ils en prissent trente

et quarante.” Depping, Histoire du Commerce entre le Levant et

l’Europe, vol. i, p. 235.

Boeckh (Public Economy of Athens, book i, ch. 22) gives from

12 to 18 per cent. per annum as the common rate of interest at

Athens in the time of the orators.

The valuable Inscription (No. 1845, in his Corpus Inser. Pars

viii, p. 23, sect. 3) proves, that at Korkyra a rate of 2 per

cent. per month, or 24 per cent. per annum, might be obtained

from perfectly solvent and responsible borrowers. For this is a

decree of the Korkyræan government, prescribing what shall be

done with a sum of money given to the state for the Dionysiac

festivals,—placing that money under the care of certain men of

property and character, and directing them to lend it out exactly

at 2 per cent. per month, _neither more nor less_, until a given

sum shall be accumulated. This Inscription dates about the third

or second century B. C., according to Boeckh’s conjecture.

The Orchomenian Inscription, No. 1569, to which Boeckh refers in

the passage above alluded to, is unfortunately defective in the

words determining the rate of interest payable to Eubulus: but

there is another, the Theræan Inscription (No. 2446), containing

the Testament of Epiktêta, wherein the annual sum payable in lieu

of a principal sum bequeathed, is calculated at 7 per cent.;

a rate which Boeckh justly regards as moderate considered in

reference to ancient Greece.

[190] Cæsar, B. G. i, 4, respecting the Gallic chiefs and

plebs: “Die constitutâ causæ dictionis, Orgetorix ad judicium

omnem suam familiam, ad hominum millia decem, undique coëgit:

et omnes clientes, _obœratos_que suos, quorum magnum numerum

habebat, eodem conduxit: per eos, ne caussam diceret, se

eripuit.” Ibid. vi, 13: “Plerique, cum aut _ære alieno_, aut

magnitudine tributorum, aut injuriâ potentiorum, premuntur, sese

in servitutem dicant nobilibus. In hos eadem omnia sunt jura, quæ

dominis in servos.” The wealthy Romans cultivated their large

possessions partly by the hands of adjudged debtors, in the time

of Columella (i, 3, 14): “More præpotentium, qui possident fines

gentium, quos ... aut occupatos nexu civium, aut ergastulis,

tenent.”

According to the Teutonic codes also, drawn up several centuries

subsequently to Tacitus, it seems that the insolvent debtor

falls under the power of his creditor and is subject to personal

fetters and chastisement (Grimm, Deutsche Rechts Alterthümer, pp.

612-615): both he and Von Savigny assimilate it to the terrible

process of personal execution and addiction in the old law of

Rome, against the insolvent debtor on loan. King Alfred exhorts

the creditor to lenity (Laws of King Alfred, Thorpe, Ancient Laws

of England, vol. i, p. 53, law 35).

A striking evidence of the alteration of the character and

circumstances of debtors, between the age of Solon and that of

Plutarch, is afforded by the treatise of the latter, “De Vitando

Ære Alieno,” wherein he sets forth in the most vehement manner

the miserable consequences of getting into debt. “_The poor_” he

says, “_do not get into debt, for no one will lend them money_

(τοῖς γὰρ ἀπόροις οὐ δανείζουσιν, ἀλλὰ βουλομένοις εὐπορίαν τινα

ἑαυτοῖς κτᾶσθαι καὶ μάρτυρα δίδωσι καὶ βεβαιώτην ἄξιον, ὅτι ἔχει

πιστεύεσθαι): the borrowers are men who have still some property

and some security to offer, but who wish to keep up a rate of

expenditure beyond what they can afford, and become utterly

ruined by contracting debts.” (Plut. pp. 827, 830.) This shows

how intimately the multiplication of poor debtors was connected

with the liability of their persons to enslavement. Compare

Plutarch, De Cupidine Divitiarum, c. 2, p. 523.

[191] Levitic. 25: 35-36; Deuteron. 23: 20. This enactment

seems sufficiently intelligible; yet M. Salvador (Histoire des

Institutions de Moïse, liv. iii, ch. 6) puzzles himself much

to assign to it some far-sighted commercial purpose. “Unto thy

brother thou shalt not lend upon _usury_, but unto a stranger

thou mayst lend upon _usury_:”—it is of more importance to remark

that the word here translated _usury_ really means _any interest_

for money, great or small;—see the opinion of the Sanhedrim of

seventy Jewish doctors, assembled at Paris in 1807, cited in M.

Salvador’s work, _l. c._

The Mosaic law, therefore, (as between Jew and Jew, or even

as between Jew and the μέτοικος, or _resident stranger_,

distinguished from the _foreigner_,) went as far as the Koran

in prohibiting all taking of interest. That its enactments were

not much observed, any more than those of the Koran, we have one

proof at least in the proceeding of Nehemiah at the building of

the second temple,—which presents so curious a parallel in many

respects to the Solonian seisachtheia, that I transcribe the

account of it from Prideaux, Connection of Sacred and Profane

History, part i, b. 6, p. 290:—

“The burden which the people underwent in the earning on of

this work, and the incessant labor which they were enforced to

undergo to bring it to so speedy a conclusion, being very great,

... care was taken to relieve them from a much greater burden,

the oppression of usurers; which they then in great misery lay

under, and had much greater reason to complain of. For the

rich, taking advantage of the necessities of the meaner sort,

had exacted heavy usury of them, making them pay the centesima

for all moneys lent them; that is, 1 per cent. for every month,

which amounted to 12 per cent. for the whole year; so that they

were forced to mortgage their lands, and sell their children

into servitude, to have wherewith to buy bread for the support

of themselves and their families; which being a manifest breach

of the law of God, given them by Moses (for that forbids all the

race of Israel to take usury of any of their brethren), Nehemiah,

on his hearing hereof, resolved forthwith to remove so great an

iniquity; in order whereto he called a general assembly of all

the people, where having set forth unto them the nature of the

offence, how great a breach it was of the divine law, and how

heavy an oppression upon their brethren, and how much it might

provoke the wrath of God against them, he caused it to be enacted

by the general suffrage of that whole assembly, that all should

return to their brethren whatsoever had been exacted of them upon

usury, and also _release all the lands, vineyards, olive-yards,

and houses_, which had been taken of them upon _mortgage_ on the

account hereof.”

The measure of Nehemiah appears thus to have been not merely a

seisachtheia such as that of Solon, but also a παλιντοκία, or

refunding of interest paid by the debtor in past time,—analogous

to the proceeding of the Megarians on emancipating themselves

from their oligarchy, as recounted above, chapter ix, p. 44.

In this way alone could they operate beneficially, and their

tendency to counterwork the previous feeling was at that time not

unimportant, coinciding as it did with other tendencies arising

out of the industrial progress of society, which gradually

exhibited the relation of lender and borrower in a light more

reciprocally beneficial, and less repugnant to the sympathies of the

bystander.[192]

[192] In every law to limit the rate of interest, it is of course

implied that the law not only ought to fix, but can fix, the

maximum rate at which money is to be lent. The tribunes at Rome

followed out this proposition with perfect consistency: they

passed successive laws for the reduction of the rate of interest,

until at length they made it illegal to take any interest at

all: “Gemecium, tribunum plebis, tulisse ad populum, ne fœnerari

liceret.” (Liv. vii, 42.) History shows that the law, though

passed, was not carried into execution.

At Athens, the more favorable point of view prevailed throughout

all the historical times,—the march of industry and commerce, under

the mitigated law which prevailed subsequently to Solon, had been

sufficient to bring it about at a very early period, and to suppress

all public antipathy against lenders at interest.[193] We may remark,

too, that this more equitable tone of opinion grew up spontaneously,

without any legal restriction on the rate of interest,—no such

restriction having ever been imposed, and the rate being expressly

declared free by a law ascribed to Solon himself.[194] The same may

probably be said of the communities of Greece generally,—at least

there is no information to make us suppose the contrary. But the

feeling against lending money at interest remained in the bosoms of

the philosophical men long after it had ceased to form a part of the

practical morality of the citizens, and long after it had ceased to

be justified by the appearances of the case as at first it really had

been. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,[195] and Plutarch, treat the practice

as a branch of that commercial and money-getting spirit which they

are anxious to discourage; and one consequence of this was, that

they were less disposed to contend strenuously for the inviolability

of existing money-contracts. The conservative feeling on this

point was stronger among the mass than among the philosophers.

Plato even complains of it as inconveniently preponderant,[196]

and as arresting the legislator in all comprehensive projects of

reform. For the most part, indeed, schemes of cancelling debts and

redividing lands were never thought of except by men of desperate

and selfish ambition, who made them stepping-stones to despotic

power. Such men were denounced alike by the practical sense of the

community and by the speculative thinkers; but when we turn to the

case of the Spartan king Agis the Third, who proposed a complete

extinction of debts and an equal redivision of the landed property

of the state, not with any selfish or personal views, but upon pure

ideas of patriotism, well or ill understood, and for the purpose

of renovating the lost ascendency of Sparta,—we find Plutarch[197]

expressing the most unqualified admiration of this young king and

his projects, and treating the opposition made to him as originating

in no better feelings than meanness and cupidity. The philosophical

thinkers on politics conceived—and to a great degree justly, as I

shall show hereafter—that the conditions of security, in the ancient

world, imposed upon the citizens generally the absolute necessity

of keeping up a military spirit and willingness to brave at all

times personal hardship and discomfort; so that increase of wealth,

on account of the habits of self-indulgence which it commonly

introduces, was regarded by them with more or less of disfavor. If

in their estimation any Grecian community had become corrupt, they

were willing to sanction great interference with preëxisting rights

for the purpose of bringing it back nearer to their ideal standard:

and the real security for the maintenance of these rights lay in the

conservative feelings of the citizens generally, much more than in

the opinions which superior minds imbibe from the philosophers.

[193] Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, b. i, ch. 22, p. 128)

thinks differently,—in my judgment, contrary to the evidence: the

passages to which he refers, especially that of Theophrastus,

are not sufficient to sustain his opinion, and there are other

passages which go far to contradict it.

[194] Lysias cont. Theomnêst. A. c. 5, p. 360.

[195] Cicero, De Officiis, i, 42.

[196] Plato, Legg. iii, p. 684. ὡς ἐπιχειροῦντι δὴ νομοθέτῃ

κινεῖν τῶν τοιούτων τι πᾶς ἀπαντᾷ, λέγων, μὴ κινεῖν τὰ ἀκίνητα,

καὶ ἐπαρᾶται γῆς τε ἀναδασμοὺς εἰσηγούμενον καὶ χρεῶν ἀποκοπὰς,

ὥστ᾽ εἰς ἀπορίαν καθίστασθαι πάντα ἄνδρα, etc.: compare also

v, pp. 736-737, where similar feelings are intimated not less

emphatically.

Cicero lays down very good principles about the mischief of

destroying faith in contracts; but his admonitions to this effect

seem to be accompanied with an impracticable condition: the

lawgiver is to take care that debts shall not be contracted to

an extent hurtful to the state: “Quamobrem ne sit æs alienum,

quod reipublicæ noceat, providendum est (quod _multis rationibus_

caveri potest): non, si fuerit, ut locupletes suum perdant,

debitores lucrentur alienum,” etc. What the _multæ rationes_

were, which Cicero had in his mind, I do not know: compare his

opinion about _fœneratores_, Offic. i, 42 ii, 25.

[197] See Plutarch’s Life of Agis, especially ch. 13, about the

bonfire in which the κλάρια, or mortgage-deeds, of the creditors

were all burnt, in the agora of Sparta: compare also the

comparison of Agis with Gracchus, c. 2.

Those conservative feelings were in the subsequent Athenian

democracy peculiarly deep-rooted: the mass of the Athenian people

identified inseparably the maintenance of property, in all its

various shapes, with that of their laws and constitution. And it is

a remarkable fact, that though the admiration entertained at Athens

for Solon, was universal, the principle of his seisachtheia, and

of his money-depreciation, was not only never imitated, but found

the strongest tacit reprobation; whereas at Rome, as well as in

most of the kingdoms of modern Europe, we know that one debasement

of the coin succeeded another,—the temptation, of thus partially

eluding the pressure of financial embarrassments, proved, after one

successful trial, too strong to be resisted, and brought down the

coin by successive depreciations from the full pound of twelve ounces

to the standard of half an ounce. It is of some importance to take

notice of this fact, when we reflect how much “Grecian faith” has

been degraded by the Roman writers into a byword for duplicity in

pecuniary dealings.[198] The democracy of Athens,—and, indeed, the

cities of Greece generally, both oligarchies and democracies,—stands

far above the senate of Rome, and far above the modern kingdoms of

France and England, until comparatively recent times, in respect

of honest dealing with the coinage:[199] moreover, while there

occurred at Rome several political changes which brought about new

tables,[200] or at least a partial depreciation of contracts, no

phenomenon of the same kind ever happened at Athens, during the

three centuries between Solon and the end of the free working of

the democracy. Doubtless there were fraudulent debtors at Athens,

and the administration of private law, though it did not in any way

connive at their proceedings, was far too imperfect to repress them

as effectually as might have been wished. But the public sentiment

on the point was just and decided, and it may be asserted with

confidence, that a loan of money at Athens was quite as secure as

it ever was at any time or place of the ancient world,—in spite

of the great and important superiority of Rome with respect to

the accumulation of a body of authoritative legal precedent, the

source of what was ultimately shaped into the Roman jurisprudence.

Among the various causes of sedition or mischief in the Grecian

communities,[201] we hear little of the pressure of private debt.

[198] “Græcâ fide mercari.” Polybius puts the Greeks greatly

below the Romans in point of veracity and good faith (vi, 56); in

another passage, he speaks not quite so confidently (xviii, 17).

Even the testimony of the Roman writers is sometimes given in

favor of Attic good faith, not against it—“ut semper et in omni

re, quicquid sincerâ fide gereretur, id Romani, _Atticâ fieri_,

prædicarent.” (Velleius Paterc. ii, 23.)

The language of Heffter (Athenäische Gerichts Verfassung, p.

466), especially, degrades very undeservedly the state of good

faith and credit at Athens.

The whole tone and argument of the Oration of Dêmosthenês

against Leptinês is a remarkable proof of the respect of the

Athenian dikastery for vested interests, even under less obvious

forms than that of pecuniary possession. We may add a striking

passage of Dêmosthenês cont. Timokrat. wherein he denounces the

rescinding of past transactions (τὰ πεπραγμένα λῦσαι, contrasted

with prospective legislation) as an injustice peculiar to an

oligarchy, and repugnant to the feelings of a democracy (cont.

Timokrat. c. 20, p. 724; c. 36, 747).

[199] A similar credit, in respect to monetary probity, may be

claimed for the republic of Florence. M. Sismondi says, “Au

milieu des révolutions monétaires de tous les pays voisins et

tandis que la mauvaise foi des gouvernemens altéroit le numéraire

d’une extrémité à l’autre de l’Europe, le florin ou séquin de

Florence est toujours resté le même: il est du même poids, du

même titre: il porte la même empreinte que celui qui fut battu en

1252.” (Républiques Italiennes, vol. iii, ch. 18, p. 176.)

M. Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, i, 6; iv, 19), while

affirming, justly and decidedly, that the Athenian republic

always set a high value on maintaining the integrity of their

silver money,—yet thinks that the gold pieces which were coined

in Olymp. 93, 2, (408 B. C.) under the archonship of Antigenês

(out of the golden ornaments in the acropolis, and at a time of

public embarrassments) were debased and made to pass for more

than their value. The only evidence in support of this position

appears to be the passage in Aristophanês (Ran. 719-737) with

the Scholia; but this very passage seems to me rather to prove

the contrary. “The Athenian people (says Aristophanês) deal

with their public servants as they do with their coins: they

prefer the new and bad to the old and good.” If the people were

so exceedingly, and even extravagantly, desirous of obtaining

the new coins, this is a strong proof that they were _not_

depreciated, and that no loss was incurred by giving the old

coins in exchange for them.

[200] “Sane vetus Urbi fœnebre malum (says Tacitus, Ann. vi, 16)

et seditionum discordiarumque creberrima causa,” etc: compare

Appian, Bell. Civil. Præfat.; and Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois,

l. xxii, c. 22.

The constant hopes and intrigues of debtors at Rome, to get rid

of their debts by some political movement, are nowhere more

forcibly brought out than in the second Catilinarian Oration of

Cicero, c. 8-9: read also the striking harangue of Catiline to

his fellow-conspirators (Sallust, B. Catilin. c. 20-21).

[201] The insolvent debtor, in some of the Bœotian towns, was

condemned to sit publicly in the agora with a basket on his head,

and then disfranchised (Nikolaus Damaskenus, Frag. p. 152, ed.

Orelli).

According to Diodorus, the old severe law against the body of

a debtor, long after it had been abrogated by Solon at Athens,

still continued in other parts of Greece (i, 79).

By the measures of relief above described,[202] Solon had

accomplished results surpassing his own best hopes. He had healed the

prevailing discontents; and such was the confidence and gratitude

which he had inspired, that he was now called upon to draw up a

constitution and laws for the better working of the government

in future. His constitutional changes were great and valuable:

respecting his laws, what we hear is rather curious than important.

[202] Solon, Frag. 27, ed. Schneid.—

Ἃ μὲν ἄελπτα σὺν θεοῖσιν ἤνυσ᾽, ἄλλα δ’ οὐ μάτην

Ἔρδον.

It has been already stated that, down to the time of Solon, the

classification received in Attica was that of the four Ionic tribes,

comprising in one scale the phratries and gentes, and in another

scale the three trittyes and forty-eight naukraries,—while the

eupatridæ, seemingly a few specially respected gentes, and perhaps

a few distinguished families in all the gentes, had in their hands

all the powers of government. Solon introduced a new principle of

classification, called, in Greek, the timocratic principle. He

distributed all the citizens of the tribes, without any reference

to their gentes or phratries, into four classes, according to the

amount of their property, which he caused to be assessed and entered

in a public schedule. Those whose annual income was equal to five

hundred medimni of corn (about seven hundred imperial bushels) and

upwards,—one medimnus being considered equivalent to one drachma in

money,—he placed in the highest class; those who received between

three hundred and five hundred medimni, or drachms, formed the

second class; and those between two hundred and three hundred, the

third.[203] The fourth and most numerous class comprised all those

who did not possess land yielding a produce equal to two hundred

medimni. The first class, called pentakosiomedimni, were alone

eligible to the archonship and to all commands: the second were

called the knights or horsemen of the state, as possessing enough

to enable them to keep a horse and perform military service in that

capacity: the third class, called the zeugitæ, formed the heavy-armed

infantry, and were bound to serve, each with his full panoply.

Each of these three classes was entered in the public schedule as

possessed of a taxable capital, calculated with a certain reference

to his annual income, but in a proportion diminishing according to

the scale of that income,—and a man paid taxes to the state according

to the sum for which he stood rated in the schedule; so that this

direct taxation acted really like a graduated income-tax. The

ratable property of the citizens belonging to the richest class, the

pentakosiomedimnus, was calculated and entered on the state-schedule

at a sum of capital equal to twelve times his annual income: that

of the hippeus, or knight, at a sum equal to ten times his annual

income: that of the zeugite, at a sum equal to five times his annual

income. Thus a pentakosiomedimnus, whose income was exactly five

hundred drachms, the minimum qualification of his class, stood rated

in the schedule for a taxable property of six thousand drachms, or

one talent, being twelve times his income,—if his annual income

were one thousand drachms, he would stand rated for twelve thousand

drachms, or two talents, being the same proportion of income to

ratable capital. But when we pass to the second class, or knights,

the proportion of the two is changed,—the knight possessing an

income of just three hundred drachms, or three hundred medimni,

would stand rated for three thousand drachms, or ten times his real

income, and so in the same proportion for any income above three

hundred and below five hundred. Again, in the third class. or below

three hundred, the proportion is a second time altered,—the zeugite

possessing exactly two hundred drachms of income, was rated upon a

still lower calculation, at one thousand drachms, or a sum equal to

five times his income; and all incomes of this class, between two

hundred and three hundred drachms, would in like manner be multiplied

by five in order to obtain the amount of ratable capital. Upon these

respective sums of scheduled capital, all direct taxation was levied:

if the state required one per cent, of direct tax, the poorest

pentakosiomedimnus would pay (upon six thousand drachms) sixty

drachms; the poorest hippeus would pay (upon three thousand drachms)

thirty; the poorest zeugite would pay (upon one thousand drachms)

ten drachms. And thus this mode of assessment would operate like

a _graduated_ income-tax, looking at it in reference to the three

different classes,—but as an _equal_ income-tax, looking at it in

reference to the different individuals comprised in one and the same

class.[204]

[203] Plutarch, Solon, 18-23; Pollux, viii. 130; Aristot. Polit.

ii, 9, 4; Aristot. Fragm. περὶ Πολιτείων, Fr. 51, ed. Neumann;

Harpokration and Photius, v. Ἱππάς; Etymolog. Mag. Ζευγίσιον,

Θητικόν; the Etym. Mag. Ζευγίσιον, and the Schol. Aristoph.

Equit. 627, recognize only three classes.

He took a medimnus (of wheat or barley?) as equivalent to a

drachm, and a sheep at the same value (_ib._ c. 23).

The medimnus seems equal to about 1 2/5 (1·4) English imperial

bushel: consequently 500 medimni = 700 English imperial bushels,

or 87 1/2 quarters.

[204] The excellent explanation of the Solonian (τίμημα)

property-schedule and graduated qualification, first given by

Boeckh, in his Staatshaushaltung der Athener (b. iii, c. 5), has

elucidated a subject which was, before him, nothing but darkness

and mystery. The statement of Pollux (viii, 130), given in very

loose language, had been, before Boeckh, erroneously apprehended;

ἀνήλισκον εἰς τὸ δημόσιον, does not mean the sums which the

pentakosiomedimnus, the hippeus, or the zeugite, _actually paid_

to the state, but the sums for which each was rated, or which

each was _liable_ to pay, if called upon: of course, the state

does not call for _the whole_ of a man’s rated property, but

exacts an equal proportion of it from each.

On one point I cannot concur with Boeckh. He fixes the pecuniary

qualification of the third class, or zeugites, at one hundred and

fifty drachms, not at two hundred. All the positive testimonies

(as he himself allows, p. 31) agree in fixing two hundred, and

not one hundred and fifty; and the inference drawn from the old

law, quoted in Dêmosthenês (cont. Makartat. p. 1067) is too

uncertain to outweigh this concurrence of authorities.

Moreover, the whole Solonian schedule becomes clearer and

more symmetrical if we adhere to the statement of two hundred

drachms, and not one hundred and fifty, as the lowest scale

of zeugite income; for the scheduled capital is then, in all

the three scales, a definite and exact multiple of the income

returned,—in the richest class it is twelve times,—in the middle

class, ten times,—in the poorest, five times the income. But this

correspondence ceases, if we adopt the supposition of Boeckh,

that the lowest zeugite income was one hundred and fifty drachms;

for the sum of one thousand drachms (at which the lowest zeugite

was rated in the schedule) is no exact multiple of one hundred

and fifty drachms. In order to evade this difficulty, Boeckh

supposes that the adjustment of income to scheduled capital was

effected in a way both roundabout and including nice fractions:

he thinks that the income of each was converted into capital

by multiplying by twelve, and that, in the case of the richest

class, or pentakosiomedimni, the _whole_ sum so obtained was

entered in the schedule,—in the case of the second class, or

hippeis, five-sixths of the sum,—and in the case of the third

class, or zeugites, five-ninths of the sum. Now this process

seems to me rather complicated, and the employment of a fraction

such as five-ninths (both difficult and not much above the simple

fraction of one-half) very improbable: moreover, Boeckh’s own

table, p. 41, gives fractional sums in the third class, when none

appear in the first or second.

Such objections, of course, would not be admissible, if there

were any positive evidence to prove the point. But in this case

they are in harmony with all the positive evidence, and are

amply sufficient, in my judgment, to countervail the presumption

arising from the old law on which Boeckh relies.

All persons in the state whose annual income amounted to less than

two hundred medimni, or drachms, were placed in the fourth class,

and they must have constituted the large majority of the community.

They were not liable to any direct taxation, and, perhaps, were not

at first even entered upon the taxable schedule, more especially as

we do not know that any taxes were actually levied upon this schedule

during the Solonian times. It is said that they were all called

thêtes, but this appellation is not well sustained, and cannot be

admitted: the fourth compartment in the descending scale was indeed

termed the thetic census, because it contained all the thêtes, and

because most of its members were of that humble description; but

it is not conceivable that a proprietor whose land yielded to him

a clear annual return of one hundred, one hundred and twenty, one

hundred and forty, or one hundred and eighty drachms, could ever have

been designated by that name.[205]

[205] See Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, _ut suprà_.

Pollux gives an Inscription describing Anthemion son of

Diphilus,—Θητικοῦ ἀντὶ τέλους ἱππάδ᾽ ἀμειψάμενος. The word

τελεῖν does not necessarily mean _actual_ payment, but “the

being included in a class with a certain aggregate of duties and

liabilities,”—equivalent to _censeri_ (Boeckh, p. 36).

Plato, in his treatise De Legibus, admits a quadripartite census

of citizens, according to more or less of property (Legg. v,

p. 744; vi, p. 756). Compare Tittmann, Griechische Staats

Verfassungen pp. 648, 653; K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Gr. Staats

Alt. § 108.

Such were the divisions in the political scale established by

Solon, called by Aristotle a timocracy, in which the rights,

honors, functions, and liabilities of the citizens were measured

out according to the assessed property of each. Though the scale is

stated as if nothing but landed property were measured by it, yet we

may rather presume that property of other kinds was intended to be

included, since it served as the basis of every man’s liability to

taxation. The highest honors of the state,—that is, the places of

the nine archons annually chosen, as well as those in the senate of

areopagus, into which the past archons always entered,—perhaps also

the posts of prytanes of the naukrari,—were reserved for the first

class: the poor eupatrids became ineligible; while rich men, not

eupatrids, were admitted. Other posts of inferior distinction were

filled by the second and third classes, who were, moreover, bound to

military service, the one on horseback, the other as heavy-armed

soldiers on foot. Moreover, the liturgies of the state, as they

were called,—unpaid functions, such as the trierarchy, chorêgy,

gymnasiarchy, etc., which entailed expense and trouble on the holder

of them,—were distributed in some way or other between the members

of the three classes, though we do not know how the distribution was

made in these early times. On the other hand, the members of the

fourth or lowest class were disqualified from holding any individual

office of dignity,—performed no liturgies, served in case of war

only as light-armed, or with a panoply provided by the state, and

paid nothing to the direct property-tax, or eisphora. It would be

incorrect to say that they paid _no_ taxes; for indirect taxes, such

as duties on imports, fell upon them in common with the rest; and we

must recollect that these latter were, throughout a long period of

Athenian history, in steady operation, while the direct taxes were

only levied on rare occasions.

But though this fourth class, constituting the great numerical

majority of the free people, were shut out from individual office,

their collective importance was in another way greatly increased.

They were invested with the right of choosing the annual archons, out

of the class of pentakosiomedimni; and what was of more importance

still, the archons and the magistrates generally, after their year of

office, instead of being accountable to the senate of areopagus, were

made formally accountable to the public assembly sitting in judgment

upon their past conduct. They might be impeached and called upon to

defend themselves, punished in case of misbehavior, and debarred from

the usual honor of a seat in the senate of areopagus.

Had the public assembly been called upon to act alone, without aid

or guidance, this accountability would have proved only nominal. But

Solon converted it into a reality by another new institution, which

will hereafter be found of great moment in the working out of the

Athenian democracy. He created the pro-bouleutic or pre-considering

senate, with intimate and especial reference to the public

assembly,—to prepare matters for its discussion, to convoke and

superintend its meetings, and to insure the execution of its decrees.

This senate, as first constituted by Solon, comprised four hundred

members, taken in equal proportions from the four tribes,—not chosen

by lot, as they will be found to be in the more advanced stage of the

democracy, but elected by the people, in the same way as the archons

then were,—persons of the fourth or poorest class of the census,

though contributing to elect, not being themselves eligible.

But while Solon thus created the new pre-considering senate,

identified with and subsidiary to the popular assembly, he manifested

no jealousy of the preëxisting areopagitic senate: on the contrary,

he enlarged its powers, gave to it an ample supervision over the

execution of the laws generally, and imposed upon it the censorial

duty of inspecting the lives and occupations of the citizens, as well

as of punishing men of idle and dissolute habits. He was himself, as

past archon, a member of this ancient senate, and he is said to have

contemplated that, by means of the two senates, the state would be

held fast, as it were with a double anchor, against all shocks and

storms.[206]

[206] Plutarch, Solon, 18, 19, 23; Philochorus, Frag. 60, ed.

Didot. Athenæus, iv, p. 168; Valer. Maxim. ii, 6.

Such are the only new political institutions, apart from the laws

to be noticed presently, which there are grounds for ascribing to

Solon, when we take proper care to discriminate what really belongs

to Solon and his age, from the Athenian constitution as afterwards

remodelled. It has been a practice common with many able expositors

of Grecian affairs, and followed partly, even by Dr. Thirlwall,[207]

to connect the name of Solon with the whole political and judicial

state of Athens as it stood between the age of Periklês and that of

Dêmosthenês,—the regulations of the senate of five hundred, the

numerous public dikasts or jurors taken by lot from the people, as

well as the body annually selected for law-revision, and called

nomothets, and the prosecution, called the graphê paranomôn, open

to be instituted against the proposer of any measure illegal,

unconstitutional, or dangerous. There is, indeed, some countenance

for this confusion between Solonian and post-Solonian Athens, in

the usage of the orators themselves; for Dêmosthenês and Æschinês

employ the name of Solon in a very loose manner, and treat him as

the author of institutions belonging evidently to a later age for

example, the striking and characteristic oath of the heliastic

jurors, which Demosthenês[208] ascribes to Solon, proclaims itself

in many ways as belonging to the age after Kleisthenês, especially

by the mention of the senate of five hundred, and not of four

hundred. Among the citizens who served as jurors or dikasts, Solon

was venerated generally as the author of the Athenian laws; and

the orator, therefore, might well employ his name for the purpose

of emphasis, without provoking any critical inquiry whether the

particular institution, which he happened to be then impressing upon

his audience, belonged really to Solon himself or to the subsequent

periods. Many of those institutions, which Dr. Thirlwall mentions in

conjunction with the name of Solon, are among the last refinements

and elaborations of the democratical mind of Athens,—gradually

prepared, doubtless, during the interval between Kleisthenês and

Periklês, but not brought into full operation until the period of

the latter (460-429 B. C.); for it is hardly possible to conceive

these numerous dikasteries and assemblies in regular, frequent,

and long-standing operation, without an assured payment to the

dikasts who composed them. Now such payment first began to be made

about the time of Periklês, if not by his actual proposition;[209]

and Dêmosthenês had good reason for contending that, if it were

suspended, the judicial as well as the administrative system of

Athens would at once fall to pieces.[210] And it would be a marvel,

such as nothing short of strong direct evidence would justify us

in believing, that in an age when even partial democracy was yet

untried, Solon should conceive the idea of such institutions: it

would be a marvel still greater, that the half-emancipated thêtes and

small proprietors, for whom he legislated,—yet trembling under the

rod of the eupatrid archons, and utterly inexperienced in collective

business,—should have been found suddenly competent to fulfil these

ascendent functions, such as the citizens of conquering Athens in

the days of Periklês,—full of the sentiment of force and actively

identifying themselves with the dignity of their community,—became

gradually competent, and not more than competent, to exercise with

effect. To suppose that Solon contemplated and provided for the

periodical revision of his laws by establishing a nomothetic jury,

or dikastery, such as that which we find in operation during the

time of Dêmosthenês, would be at variance, in my judgment, with any

reasonable estimate either of the man or of the age. Herodotus says

that Solon, having exacted from the Athenians solemn oaths that

_they_ would not rescind any of his laws for ten years, quitted

Athens for that period, in order that he might not be compelled

to rescind them himself: Plutarch informs us that he gave to his

laws force for a century absolute.[211] Solon himself, and Drako

before him, had been lawgivers, evoked and empowered by the special

emergency of the times; the idea of a frequent revision of laws, by a

body of lot-selected dikasts, belongs to a far more advanced age, and

could not well have been present to the minds of either. The wooden

rollers of Solon, like the tables of the Roman decemvirs,[212] were

doubtless intended as a permanent “fons omnis publici privatique

juris.”

[207] Meursius, Solon, _passim_; Sigonius, De Republ. Athen. i,

p. 39 (though in some passages he makes a marked distinction

between the time before and after Kleisthenês, p. 28). See

Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, vol. i, sects. 46, 47;

Tittmann, Griechische Staatsverfassungen, p. 146; Platner, Der

Attische Prozess, book ii, ch. 5, pp 28-38; Dr. Thirlwall,

History of Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, pp. 46-57.

Niebuhr, in his brief allusions to the legislation of Solon,

keeps duly in view the material difference between Athens

as constituted by Solon, and Athens as it came to be after

Kleisthenês; but he presumes a closer analogy between the Roman

patricians and the Athenian eupatridæ than we are entitled to

count upon.

[208] Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. Æschinês ascribes this

oath to ὁ νομοθέτης (c. Ktesiphon. p. 389).

Dr. Thirlwall notices the oath as prescribed by Solon (History of

Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, p. 47).

So again Dêmosthenês and Æschinês, in the orations against

Leptinês (c. 21, p. 486) and against Timokrat. pp.

706-707,—compare Æschin. c. Ktesiph. p. 429,—in commenting upon

the formalities enjoined for repealing an existing law and

enacting a new one, while ascribing the whole to Solon,—say,

among other things, that Solon directed the proposer “to post up

his project of law before the eponymi,” (ἐκθεῖναι πρόσθεν τῶν

Ἐπωνύμων): now the eponymi were (the statues of) the heroes from

whom the ten Kleisthenean tribes drew their names, and the law

making mention of these statues, proclaims itself as of a date

subsequent to Kleisthenês. Even the law defining the treatment

of the condemned murderer who returned from exile, which both

Dêmosthenês and Doxopater (ap. Walz. Collect. Rhetor. vol. ii, p.

223) call a law of Drako, is really later than Solon, as may be

seen by its mention of the ἄξων (Dêmosth. cont. Aristok. p. 629).

Andokidês is not less liberal in his employment of the name of

Solon (see Orat. i, De Mysteriis, p. 13), where he cites as a law

of Solon, an enactment which contains the mention of the tribe

Æantis and the senate of five hundred (obviously, therefore,

subsequent to the revolution of Kleisthenês), besides other

matters which prove it to have been passed even subsequent to

the oligarchical revolution of the four hundred, towards the

close of the Peloponnesian war. The prytanes, the proëdri, and

the division of the year into ten portions of time, each called

by the name of _a prytany_,—so interwoven with all the public

proceedings of Athens,—do not belong to the Solonian Athens, but

to Athens as it stood after the ten tribes of Kleisthenês.

Schömann maintains emphatically, that the sworn nomothetæ,

as they stood in the days of Dêmosthenês, were instituted by

Solon; but he admits at the same time that all the allusions of

the orators to this institution include both words and matters

essentially post-Solonian, so that modifications subsequent to

Solon must have been introduced. This admission seems to me fatal

to the cogency of his proof: see Schömann, De Comitiis, ch. vii,

pp. 266-268; and the same author, Antiq. J. P. Att. sect. xxxii.

His opinion is shared by K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech.

Staats Alterth. sect. 131; and Platner, Attischer Prozess, vol.

ii, p. 38.

Meier, De Bonis Damnatorum, p. 2, remarks upon the laxity

with which the orators use the name of Solon: “Oratores

Solonis nomine sæpe utuntur, ubi omnino legislatorem quemquam

significare volunt, etiamsi a Solone ipso lex lata non est.”

Herman Schelling, in his Dissertation De Solonis Legibus ap.

Oratt. Attic. (Berlin, 1842), has collected and discussed

the references to Solon and to his laws in the orators. He

controverts the opinion just cited from Meier, but upon arguments

no way satisfactory to me (pp. 6-8); the more so, as he himself

admits that the dialect in which the Solonian laws appear in the

citation of the orators can never have been the original dialect

of Solon himself (pp. 3-5), and makes also substantially the same

admission at Schömann, in regard to the presence of post-Solonian

matters in the supposed Solonian laws (pp. 23-27).

[209] See Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, book ii, c. 15.

[210] Demosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 26, p. 731: compare

Aristophanês Ekklesiazus. 302.