As soon as he was at the head of affairs, Solon liberated the people
once and for all, by prohibiting all loans on the security of the
debtor's person: and in addition he made laws by which he cancelled all
debts, public and private. This measure is commonly called the
Seisachtheia [= removal of burdens], since thereby the people had their
loads removed from them. In connexion with it some persons try to
traduce the character of Solon. It so happened that, when he was about
to enact the Seisachtheia, he communicated his intention to some
members of the upper class, whereupon, as the partisans of the popular
party say, his friends stole a march on him; while those who wish to
attack his character maintain that he too had a share in the fraud
himself. For these persons borrowed money and bought up a large amount
of land, and so when, a short time afterwards, all debts were
cancelled, they became wealthy; and this, they say, was the origin of
the families which were afterwards looked on as having been wealthy
from primeval times. However, the story of the popular party is by far
the most probable. A man who was so moderate and public-spirited in all
his other actions, that when it was within his power to put his
fellow-citizens beneath his feet and establish himself as tyrant, he
preferred instead to incur the hostility of both parties by placing his
honour and the general welfare above his personal aggrandisement, is
not likely to have consented to defile his hands by such a petty and
palpable fraud. That he had this absolute power is, in the first place,
indicated by the desperate condition the country; moreover, he mentions
it himself repeatedly in his poems, and it is universally admitted. We
are therefore bound to consider this accusation to be false.