by espousing the cause of the Delphian temple against the extortionate
proceedings of the inhabitants of Cirrha, 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 Diacrii, 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. Upon what particular points these intestine disputes
turned we are not distinctly informed. They were not, however, peculiar
to the period immediately preceding the archonship of Solon. They had
prevailed before, and they reappear afterward prior to the despotism of
Pisistratus; the latter standing forward as the leader of the Diacrii,
and as champion, real or pretended, of the poorer population.
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 Thetes, 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 were proprietors of the greater part of the soil. 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.
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. The poor man thus borrowed upon the
security of his body (to translate literally the Greek phrase) and upon
that of the persons in his family. 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.
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. 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--we may conceive that some recent events had
occurred as immediate stimulants to the outbreak of the debtors, like
those which lent 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--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 Epimenides 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 B.C. 594 through mutiny of the poor freemen and
_Thetes_, 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. They therefore chose him, nominally as archon along with
Philombrotus, but with power in substance dictatorial.
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. Sometimes--as in the case of Pittacus of Mitylene 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 Cylon, 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 more
especially by his own friends: bearing 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 mad-man, for declining to haul up the net when the fish
were already enmeshed." The mass of the people, in despair with their
lot, would gladly have seconded him in such an attempt; while 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 Pisistratus
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--he set himself honestly to
solve the very difficult and critical problem submitted to him.
Of all grievances, the most urgent was the condition of the poorer class
of debtors. 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 either
of 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,
leaving the land free from all past claims. It liberated and restored to
their full rights all debtors 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.
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. Whether this last ordinance was
contemporaneous with the Seisachtheia, or followed as one of his
subsequent reforms, seems doubtful.
By this extensive measure the poor debtors--the Thetes, 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 Thetes 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 of something more
than 25 per cent., so that 100 drachmas of the new standard contained no
more silver than 73 of the old, or 100 of the old were equivalent to 138
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 27 per cent.
Lastly, Solon decreed that all those who had been condemned by the
archons to _atimy_ (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
Prytaneum, on charges either of murder or treason. 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 Draconian ordinances were then in force.
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 severely denounced
in his poems, and whose views in nominating him he had greatly
disappointed--should have detested propositions which robbed them
without compensation of many legal rights, 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.
Plutarch conceives the poor debtors as having in their minds the
comparison with Lycurgus and the equality of property at Sparta, which,
in my opinion, is clearly a matter of fiction; and even had it been true
as a 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 Thetes and small proprietors all that they could
possibly have hoped. 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. 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 appear in
history as borne by their descendants--namely: Conon, Cleinias, and
Hipponicus--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.
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 27 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--against which there is also a
further 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 Thetes 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.
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 seems
inadmissible. The loss to creditors by the wholesale abrogation of
numerous preëxisting 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 position 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 debtor, since he redeemed several of them
from foreign captivity, and brought them back to their homes. 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. 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.
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 Dicasts, who
formed the popular judicial body called Heliæa or the Heliastic 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. 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.
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 at Rome, Cato the censor went so far as to denounce the
practice as a heinous crime. 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 a matter of necessity, but
they belonged essentially to an inferior order of citizens. 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.