the bare foundation of the democracy of Athens as it stood in the time
of Pericles can reasonably be ascribed to Solon. "I gave to the people
(Solon says in one of his short remaining fragments) as much strength as
sufficed for their needs, without either enlarging or diminishing their
dignity: for those too, who possessed power and were noted for wealth, I
took care that no unworthy treatment should be reserved. I stood with
the strong shield cast over both parties so as not to allow an unjust
triumph to either." Again, Aristotle tells us that Solon bestowed upon
the people as much power as was indispensable, but no more: the power to
elect their magistrates and hold them to accountability: if the people
had had less than this, they could not have been expected to remain
tranquil--they would have been in slavery and hostile to the
constitution. Not less distinctly does Herodotus speak, when he
describes the revolution subsequently operated by Clisthenes--the
latter (he tells us) found "the Athenian people excluded from
everything." These passages seem positively to contradict the
supposition, in itself sufficiently improbable, that Solon is the author
of the peculiar democratical institutions of Athens, such as the
constant and numerous dicasts for judicial trials and revision of laws.
The genuine and forward democratical movement of Athens begins only with
Clisthenes, from the moment when that distinguished Alcmæonid, either
spontaneously, or from finding himself worsted in his party strife with
Isagoras, purchased by large popular concessions the hearty coöperation
of the multitude under very dangerous circumstances. While Solon, in his
own statement as well as in that of Aristotle, gave to the people as
much power as was strictly needful--but no more--Clisthenes (to use the
significant phrase of Herodotus), "being vanquished in the party contest
with his rival, _took the people into partnership_." It was, thus, to
the interests of the weaker section, in a strife of contending nobles,
that the Athenian people owed their first admission to political
ascendancy--in part, at least, to this cause, though the proceedings of
Clisthenes indicate a hearty and spontaneous popular sentiment. But such
constitutional admission of the people would not have been so
astonishingly fruitful in positive results, if the course of public
events for the half century after Clisthenes had not been such as to
stimulate most powerfully their energy, their self-reliance, their
mutual sympathies, and their ambition. I shall recount in a future
chapter these historical causes, which, acting upon the Athenian
character, gave such efficiency and expansion to the great democratical
impulse communicated by Clisthenes: at present it is enough to remark
that that impulse commences properly with Clisthenes, and not with
Solon.
But the Solonian constitution, though only the foundation, was yet the
indispensable foundation, of the subsequent democracy. And if the
discontents of the miserable Athenian population, instead of
experiencing his disinterested and healing management, had fallen at
once into the hands of selfish power-seekers like Cylon or
Pisistratus--the memorable expansion of the Athenian mind during the
ensuing century would never have taken place, and the whole subsequent
history of Greece would probably have taken a different course. Solon
left the essential powers of the state still in the hands of the
oligarchy. The party combats between Pisistratus, Lycurgus, and
Megacles, thirty years after his legislation, which ended in the
despotism of Pisistratus, will appear to be of the same purely
oligarchical character as they had been before Solon was appointed
archon. But the oligarchy which he established was very different from
the unmitigated oligarchy which he found, so teeming with oppression and
so destitute of redress, as his own poems testify.
It was he who first gave both to the citizens of middling property and
to the general mass a _locus standi_ against the Eupatrids. He enabled
the people partially to protect themselves, and familiarized them with
the idea of protecting themselves, by the peaceful exercise of a
constitutional franchise. The new force, through which this protection
was carried into effect, was the public assembly called _Heliæa_,
regularized and armed with enlarged prerogatives and further
strengthened by its indispensable ally--the pro-bouleutic, or
pre-considering, senate. Under the Solonian constitution, this force was
merely secondary and defensive, but after the renovation of Clisthenes
it became paramount and sovereign. It branched out gradually into those
numerous popular dicasteries which so powerfully modified both public
and private Athenian life, drew to itself the undivided reverence and
submission of the people, and by degrees rendered the single
magistracies essentially subordinate functions. The popular assembly, as
constituted by Solon, appearing in modified efficiency and trained to
the office of reviewing and judging the general conduct of a past
magistrate--forms the intermediate stage between the passive Homeric
agora and those omnipotent assemblies and dicasteries which listened to
Pericles or Demosthenes. Compared with these last, it has in it but a
faint streak of democracy--and so it naturally appeared to Aristotle,
who wrote with a practical experience of Athens in the time of the
orators; but compared with the first, or with the ante-Solonian
constitution of Attica, it must doubtless have appeared a concession
eminently democratical. To impose upon the Eupatrid archon the necessity
of being elected, or put upon his trial of after-accountability, by the
_rabble_ of freemen (such would be the phrase in Eupatrid society),
would be a bitter humiliation to those among whom it was first
introduced; for we must recollect that this was the most extensive
scheme of constitutional reform yet propounded in Greece, and that
despots and oligarchies shared between them at that time the whole
Grecian world. As it appears that Solon, while constituting the popular
assembly with its pro-bouleutic senate, had no jealousy of the senate of
Areopagus, and indeed, even enlarged its powers, we may infer that his
grand object was, not to weaken the oligarchy generally, but to improve
the administration and to repress the misconduct and irregularities of
the individual archons; and that, too, not by diminishing their powers,
but by making some degree of popularity the condition both of their
entry into office, and of their safety or honor after it.
It is, in my judgment, a mistake to suppose that Solon transferred the
judicial power of the archons to a popular dicastery. These magistrates
still continued self-acting judges, deciding and condemning without
appeal--not mere presidents of an assembled jury, as they afterward came
to be during the next century. For the general exercise of such power
they were accountable after their year of office. Such accountability
was the security against abuse--a very insufficient security, yet not
wholly inoperative. It will be seen, however, presently that these
archons, though strong to coerce, and perhaps to oppress, small and poor
men, had no means of keeping down rebellious nobles of their own rank,
such as Pisistratus, Lycurgus, and Megacles, each with his armed
followers. When we compare the drawn swords of these ambitious
competitors, ending in the despotism of one of them, with the vehement
parliamentary strife between Themistocles and Aristides afterward,
peaceably decided by the vote of the sovereign people and never
disturbing the public tranquillity--we shall see that the democracy of
the ensuing century fulfilled the conditions of order, as well as of
progress, better than the Solonian constitution.
To distinguish this Solonian constitution from the democracy which
followed it, is essential to a due comprehension of the progress of the
Greek mind, and especially of Athenian affairs. That democracy was
achieved by gradual steps. Demosthenes and Æschines lived under it as a
system consummated and in full activity, when the stages of its
previous growth were no longer matter of exact memory; and the dicasts
then assembled in judgment were pleased to hear their constitution
associated with the names either of Solon or of Theseus. Their
inquisitive contemporary Aristotle was not thus misled: but even
commonplace Athenians of the century preceding would have escaped the
same delusion. For during the whole course of the democratical movement,
from the Persian invasion down to the Peloponnesian war, and especially
during the changes proposed by Pericles and Ephialtes, there was always
a strenuous party of resistance, who would not suffer the people to
forget that they had already forsaken, and were on the point of
forsaking still more, the orbit marked out by Solon. The illustrious
Pericles underwent innumerable attacks both from the orators in the
assembly and from the comic writers in the theatre. And among these
sarcasms on the political tendencies of the day we are probably to
number the complaint, breathed by the poet Cratinus, of the desuetude
into which both Solon and Draco had fallen--"I swear (said he in a
fragment of one of his comedies) by Solon and Draco, whose wooden
tablets (of laws) are now employed by people to roast their barley." The
laws of Solon respecting penal offences, respecting inheritance and
adoption, respecting the private relations generally, etc., remained for
the most part in force: his quadripartite census also continued, at
least for financial purposes, until the archonship of Nausinicus in B.C.
377--so that Cicero and others might be warranted in affirming that his
laws still prevailed at Athens: but his political and judicial
arrangements had undergone a revolution not less complete and memorable
than the character and spirit of the Athenian people generally. The
choice, by way of lot, of archons and other magistrates--and the
distribution by lot of the general body of dicasts or jurors into panels
for judicial business--may be decidedly considered as not belonging to
Solon, but adopted after the revolution of Clisthenes; probably the
choice of senators by lot also. The lot was a symptom of pronounced
democratical spirit, such as we must not seek in the Solonian
institutions.
It is not easy to make out distinctly what was the political position of
the ancient gentes and phratries, as Solon left them. The four tribes
consisted altogether of gentes and phratries, insomuch that no one could
be included in any one of the tribes who was not also a member of some
gens and phratry. Now the new pro-bouleutic, or pre-considering, senate
consisted of four hundred members,--one hundred from each of the tribes:
persons not included in any gens or phratry could therefore have had no
access to it. The conditions of eligibility were similar, according to
ancient custom, for the nine archons--of course, also, for the senate of
Areopagus. So that there remained only the public assembly, in which an
Athenian not a member of these tribes could take part: yet he was a
citizen, since he could give his vote for archons and senators, and
could take part in the annual decision of their accountability, besides
being entitled to claim redress for wrong from the archons in his own
person--while the alien could only do so through the intervention of an
avouching citizen or Prostates. It seems, therefore, that all persons
not included in the four tribes, whatever their grade of fortune might
be, were on the same level in respect to political privilege as the
fourth and poorest class of the Solonian census. It has already been
remarked, that even before the time of Solon the number of Athenians not
included in the gentes or phratries was probably considerable: it tended
to become greater and greater, since these bodies were close and
unexpansive, while the policy of the new lawgiver tended to invite
industrious settlers from other parts of Greece and Athens. Such great
and increasing inequality of political privilege helps to explain the
weakness of the government in repelling the aggressions of Pisistratus,
and exhibits the importance of the revolution afterward wrought by
Clisthenes, when he abolished (for all political purposes) the four old
tribes, and created ten new comprehensive tribes in place of them.
In regard to the regulations of the senate and the assembly of the
people, as constituted by Solon, we are altogether without information:
nor is it safe to transfer to the Solonian constitution the information,
comparatively ample, which we possess respecting these bodies under the
later democracy.
The laws of Solon were inscribed on wooden rollers and triangular
tablets, in the species of writing called _Boustrophedon_ (lines
alternating first from left to right, and next from right to left, like
the course of the ploughman)--and preserved first in the Acropolis,
subsequently in the Prytaneum. On the tablets, called _Cyrbis_, were
chiefly commemorated the laws respecting sacred rites and sacrifices; on
the pillars or rollers, of which there were at least sixteen, were
placed the regulations respecting matters profane. So small are the
fragments which have come down to us, and so much has been ascribed to
Solon by the orators which belongs really to the subsequent times, that
it is hardly possible to form any critical judgment respecting the
legislation as a whole, or to discover by what general principles or
purposes he was guided.
He left unchanged all the previous laws and practices respecting the
crime of homicide, connected as they were intimately with the religious
feelings of the people. The laws of Draco on this subject, therefore,
remained, but on other subjects, according to Plutarch, they were
altogether abrogated: there is, however, room for supposing that the
repeal cannot have been so sweeping as this biographer represents.
The Solonian laws seem to have borne more or less upon all the great
departments of human interest and duty. We find regulations political
and religious, public and private, civil and criminal, commercial,
agricultural, sumptuary, and disciplinarian. Solon provides punishment
for crimes, restricts the profession and status of the citizen,
prescribes detailed rules for marriage as well as for burial, for the
common use of springs and wells, and for the mutual interest of
conterminous farmers in planting or hedging their properties. As far as
we can judge from the imperfect manner in which his laws come before us,
there does not seem to have been any attempt at a systematic order or
classification. Some of them are mere general and vague directions,
while others again run into the extreme of specialty.
By far the most important of all was the amendment of the law of debtor
and creditor which has already been adverted to, and the abolition of
the power of fathers and brothers to sell their daughters and sisters
into slavery. The prohibition of all contracts on the security of the
body was itself sufficient to produce a vast improvement in the
character and condition of the poorer population,--a result which seems
to have been so sensibly obtained from the legislation of Solon, that
Boeckh and some other eminent authors suppose him to have abolished
villeinage and conferred upon the poor tenants a property in their
lands, annulling the seigniorial rights of the landlord. But this
opinion rests upon no positive evidence, nor are we warranted in
ascribing to him any stronger measure in reference to the land than the
annulment of the previous mortgages.
The first pillar of his laws contained a regulation respecting
exportable produce. He forbade the exportation of all produce of the
Attic soil, except olive oil alone. And the sanction employed to enforce
observance of this law deserves notice, as an illustration of the ideas
of the time: the archon was bound, on pain of forfeiting one hundred
drachmas, to pronounce solemn curses against every offender. We are
probably to take this prohibition in conjunction with other objects said
to have been contemplated by Solon, especially the encouragement of
artisans and manufacturers at Athens. Observing (we are told) that many
new immigrants were just then flocking into Attica to seek an
establishment, in consequence of its greater security, he was anxious to
turn them rather to manufacturing industry than to the cultivation of a
soil naturally poor. He forbade the granting of citizenship to any
immigrants, except to such as had quitted irrevocably their former
abodes and come to Athens for the purpose of carrying on some industrial
profession; and in order to prevent idleness, he directed the senate of
Areopagus to keep watch over the lives of the citizens generally, and
punish every one who had no course of regular labor to support him. If a
father had not taught his son some art or profession, Solon relieved the
son from all obligation to maintain him in his old age. And it was to
encourage the multiplication of these artisans that he insured, or
sought to insure, to the residents in Attica, the exclusive right of
buying and consuming all its landed produce except olive oil, which was
raised in abundance, more than sufficient for their wants. It was his
wish that the trade with foreigners should be carried on by exporting
the produce of artisan labor, instead of the produce of land.
This commercial prohibition is founded on principles substantially
similar to those which were acted upon in the early history of England,
with reference both to corn and to wool, and in other European
countries also. In so far as it was at all operative it tended to lessen
the total quantity of produce raised upon the soil of Attica, and thus
to keep the price of it from rising. But the law of Solon must have been
altogether inoperative, in reference to the great articles of human
subsistence; for Attica imported, both largely and constantly, grain and
salt provisions, probably also wool and flax for the spinning and
weaving of the women, and certainly timber for building. Whether the law
was ever enforced with reference to figs and honey may well be doubted;
at least these productions of Attica were in after times trafficked in,
and generally consumed throughout Greece. Probably also in the time of
Solon the silver mines of Laurium had hardly begun to be worked: these
afterward became highly productive, and furnished to Athens a commodity
for foreign payments no less convenient than lucrative.
It is interesting to notice the anxiety, both of Solon and of Draco, to
enforce among their fellow-citizens industrious and self-maintaining
habits; and we shall find the same sentiment proclaimed by Pericles, at
the time when Athenian power was at its maximum. Nor ought we to pass
over this early manifestation in Attica of an opinion equitable and
tolerant toward sedentary industry, which in most other parts of Greece
was regarded as comparatively dishonorable. The general tone of Grecian
sentiment recognized no occupations as perfectly worthy of a free
citizen except arms, agriculture, and athletic and musical exercises;
and the proceedings of the Spartans, who kept aloof even from
agriculture and left it to their helots, were admired, though they could
not be copied, throughout most of the Hellenic world. Even minds like
Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon concurred to a considerable extent in
this feeling, which they justified on the ground that the sedentary life
and unceasing house-work of the artisan were inconsistent with military
aptitude. The town-occupations are usually described by a word which
carries with it contemptuous ideas, and though recognized as
indispensable to the existence of the city, are held suitable only for
an inferior and semi-privileged order of citizens. This, the received
sentiment among Greeks, as well as foreigners, found a strong and
growing opposition at Athens, as I have already said--corroborated also
by a similar feeling at Corinth. The trade of Corinth, as well as of
Chalcis in Euboea, was extensive, at a time when that of Athens had
scarce any existence. But while the despotism of Periander can hardly
have failed to operate as a discouragement to industry at Corinth, the
contemporaneous legislation of Solon provided for traders and artisans a
new home at Athens, giving the first encouragement to that numerous
town-population both in the city and in the Piræus, which we find
actually residing there in the succeeding century. The multiplication of
such town residents, both citizens and _metics_ (_i.e.,_ resident persons,
not citizens, but enjoying an assured position and civil rights), was a
capital fact in the onward march of Athens, since it determined not
merely the extension of her trade, but also the preëminence of her naval
forces--and thus, as a further consequence, lent extraordinary vigor to
her democratical government. It seems, moreover, to have been a
departure from the primitive temper of Atticism, which tended both to
cantonal residence and rural occupation. We have, therefore, the greater
interest in noting the first mention of it as a consequence of the
Solonian legislation.
To Solon is first owing the admission of a power of testamentary bequest
at Athens in all cases in which a man had no legitimate children.
According to the preëxisting custom, we may rather presume that if a
deceased person left neither children nor blood relations, his property
descended (as at Rome) to his gens and phratry. Throughout most rude
states of society the power of willing is unknown, as among the ancient
Germans--among the Romans prior to the twelve tables--in the old laws of
the Hindus, etc. Society limits a man's interest or power of enjoyment
to his life, and considers his relatives as having joint reversionary
claims to his property, which take effect, in certain determinate
proportions, after his death. Such a law was the more likely to prevail
at Athens, since the perpetuity of the family sacred rites, in which the
children and near relatives partook of right, was considered by the
Athenians as a matter of public as well as of private concern. Solon
gave permission to every man dying without children to bequeath his
property by will as he should think fit; and the testament was
maintained unless it could be shown to have been procured by some
compulsion or improper seduction. Speaking generally, this continued to
be the law throughout the historical times of Athens. Sons, wherever
there were sons, succeeded to the property of their father in equal
shares, with the obligation of giving out their sisters in marriage
along with a certain dowry. If there were no sons, then the daughters
succeeded, though the father might by will, within certain limits,
determine the person to whom they should be married, with their rights
of succession attached to them; or might, with the consent of his
daughters, make by will certain other arrangements about his property. A
person who had no children or direct lineal descendants might bequeath
his property at pleasure: if he died without a will, first his father,
then his brother or brother's children, next his sister or sister's
children succeeded: if none such existed, then the cousins by the
father's side, next the cousins by the mother's side,--the male line of
descent having preference over the female.
Such was the principle of the Solonian laws of succession, though the
particulars are in several ways obscure and doubtful. Solon, it appears,
was the first who gave power of superseding by testament the rights of
agnates and gentiles to succession,--a proceeding in consonance with his
plan of encouraging both industrious occupation and the consequent
multiplication of individual acquisitions.