Chapter 16

It is said that in consequence of this measure he met with the greatest trouble of his life. As he was meditating how he might put an end to debt, and what words and preambles were best for the introduction of this law, he took counsel with his most intimate friends, such as Konon and Kleinias and Hipponikus, informing them that he had no intention of interfering with the tenure of land, but that he intended to abolishing all existing securities. They instantly took time by the forelock, borrowed large sums from the wealthy, and bought up a great extent of land. Presently the decree came forth, and they remained in enjoyment of these estates, but did not repay their loan to their creditors. This brought Solon into great discredit, for the people believed that he had been their accomplice. But he soon proved that this must be false, by remitting a debt of five talents which he himself had lent; and some state the sum at fifteen talents, amongst whom is Polyzelus of Rhodes. However, his friends were for ever afterwards called "The Swindlers."

XVI. By this measure he pleased neither party, but the rich were dissatisfied at the loss of their securities, and the poor were still more so because the land was not divided afresh, as they hoped it would be, and because he had not, like Lykurgus, established absolute equality.

But Lykurgus was eleventh in direct descent from Herakles, and had reigned in Lacedaemon for many years, and had his own great reputation, friends, and interest to assist him in carrying out his reforms: and although he chose to effect his purpose by violence, so that his eye was actually knocked out, yet he succeeded in carrying that measure, so valuable for the safety and concord of the state, by which it was rendered impossible for any citizen to be either rich or poor. Solon's power could not reach this height, as he was only a commoner and a moderate man; yet he did all that was in his power, relying solely upon the confidence and goodwill of his countrymen.

It is clear that they were disappointed, and expected more from his legislation, from his own verses--

"Once they speculated gaily, what good luck should them befall, Now they look upon me coldly, as a traitor to them all."

Yet he says, if any one else had been in his position,

"He ne'er would have desisted from unsettling the laws, Till he himself got all the cream."

However, not long afterwards, they perceived the public benefits which he had conferred upon them, forgot their private grievances, and made a public sacrifice in honour of the Seisachtheia, or "Relief from burdens." Moreover, they constituted Solon supreme reformer and lawgiver, not over some departments only, but placing everything alike in his hands; magistracies, public assemblies, senate, and law-courts. He had full powers to confirm or abolish any of these, and to fix the proper qualifications for members of them, and their numbers and times of meeting.

XVII. First of all, then, he repealed all the laws of Drakon, except those relating to murder, because of their harshness and the excessive punishments which they awarded. For death was the punishment for almost every offence, so that even men convicted of idleness were executed, and those who stole pot-herbs or fruits suffered just like sacrilegious robbers and murderers. So that Demades afterwards made the joke that Drakon's laws were not written with ink, but with blood. It is said that Drakon himself, when asked why he had fixed the punishment of death for most offences, answered that he considered these lesser crimes to deserve it, and he had no greater punishment for more important ones.

XVIII. In the next place, Solon, who wished to leave all magistracies as he found them, in the hands of the wealthy classes, but to give the people a share in the rest of the constitution, from which they were then excluded, took a census of the wealth of the citizens, and made a first class of those who had an annual income of not less than five hundred medimni of dry or liquid produce; these he called Pentakosiomedimni. The next class were the Hippeis, or knights, consisting of those who were able to keep a horse, or who had an income of three hundred medimni. The third class were the Zeugitae, whose property qualification was two hundred medimni of dry or liquid produce; and the last class were the Thetes, whom Solon did not permit to be magistrates, but whose only political privilege was the right of attending the public assemblies and sitting as jurymen in the law courts. This privilege was at first insignificant, but afterwards became of infinite importance, because most disputes were settled before a jury. Even in those cases which he allowed the magistrates to settle, he provided a final appeal to the people.

Solon moreover is said to have purposely worded his laws vaguely and with several interpretations, in order to increase the powers of these juries, because persons who could not settle their disputes by the letter of the law were obliged to have recourse to juries of the people, and to refer all disputes to them, as being to a certain extent above the laws. He himself notices this in the following verses:

"I gave the people all the strength they needed, Yet kept the power of the nobles strong; Thus each from other's violence I shielded, Not letting either do the other wrong."

Thinking that the weakness of the populace required still further protection, he permitted any man to prosecute on behalf of any other who might be ill-treated. Thus if a man were struck or injured, any one else who was able and willing might prosecute on his behalf, and the lawgiver by this means endeavoured to make the whole body of citizens act together and feel as one. A saying of his is recorded which quite agrees with the spirit of this law. Being asked, what he thought was the best managed city? "That," he answered, "in which those who are not wronged espouse the cause of those who are, and punish their oppressors."

XIX. He established the senate of the Areopagus of those who had held the yearly office of archon, and himself became a member of it because he had been archon. But in addition to this, observing that the people were becoming turbulent and unruly, in consequence of their relief from debt, he formed a second senate, consisting of a hundred men selected from each of the four tribes, to deliberate on measures in the first instance, and he permitted no measures to be proposed before the general assembly, which had not been previously discussed in this senate. The upper senate he intended to exercise a general supervision, and to maintain the laws, and he thought that with these two senates as her anchors, the ship of the state would ride more securely, and that the people would be less inclined to disorder. Most writers say that Solon constituted the senate of the Areopagus, as is related above; and this view is supported by the fact that Drakon nowhere mentions or names the Areopagites, but in all cases of murder refers to the Ephetai. However, the eighth law on the thirteenth table of the laws of Solon runs thus:--

"All citizens who were disfranchised before the magistracy of Solon shall resume their rights, except those who have been condemned by the Areopagus, or by the Ephetai, or by the king--archons, in the prytaneum, for murder or manslaughter, or attempts to overthrow the government and who were in exile when this law was made."

This again proves that the senate of the Areopagus existed before the time of Solon; for who could those persons be who were condemned by the court of the Areopagus, if Solon was the first who gave the senate of the Areopagus a criminal jurisdiction; though perhaps some words have been left out, or indistinctly written, and the law means "all those who had been condemned on the charges which now are judged by the court of the Areopagus, the Ephetai, or the Prytanies, when this law was made, must remain disfranchised, though the others become enfranchised?" Of these explanations the reader himself must consider which he prefers.

XX. The strangest of his remaining laws is that which declared disfranchised a citizen who in a party conflict took neither side; apparently his object was to prevent any one regarding home politics in a listless, uninterested fashion, securing his own personal property, and priding himself upon exemption from the misfortunes of his country, and to encourage men boldly to attach themselves to the right party and to share all its dangers, rather than in safety to watch and see which side would be successful. That also is a strange and even ludicrous provision in one of his laws, which permits an heiress, whose husband proves impotent, to avail herself of the services of the next of kin to obtain an heir to her estate. Some, however, say that this law rightly serves men who know themselves to be unfit for marriage, and who nevertheless marry heiresses for their money, and try to make the laws override nature; for, when they see their wife having intercourse with whom she pleases, they will either break off the marriage, or live in constant shame, and so pay the penalty of their avarice and wrong-doing. It is a good provision also, that the heiress may not converse with any one, but only with him whom she may choose from among her husband's relations, so that her offspring may be all in the family. This is pointed at by his ordinance that the bride and bridegroom should be shut in the same room and eat a quince together, and that the husband of an heiress should approach her at least thrice in each month. For even if no children are born, still this is a mark of respect to a good wife, and puts an end to many misunderstandings, preventing their leading to an actual quarrel.

In other marriages he suppressed dowries, and ordered the bride to bring to her husband three dresses and a few articles of furniture of no great value; for he did not wish marriages to be treated as money bargains or means of gain, but that men and women should enter into marriage for love and happiness and procreation of children. Dionysius, the despot of Syracuse, when his mother wished to be married to a young citizen, told her that he had indeed broken the laws of the state when he seized the throne, but that he could not disregard the laws of nature so far as to countenance such a monstrous union. These disproportioned matches ought not to be permitted in any state, nor should men be allowed to form unequal loveless alliances, which are in no sense true marriages. A magistrate or lawgiver might well address an old man who marries a young girl in the words of Sophokles: "Poor wretch, a hopeful bridegroom you will be;" and if he found a young man fattening like a partridge in the house of a rich old woman, he ought to transfer him to some young maiden who is without a husband. So much for this subject.

XXI. Besides these, Solon's law which forbids men to speak evil of the dead is much praised. It is good to think of the departed as sacred, and it is only just to refrain from attacking the absent, while it is politic, also, to prevent hatred from being eternal. He also forbade people to speak evil of the living in temples, courts of justice, public buildings, or during the national games; and imposed a fine of three drachmas to the person offended, and two to the state. His reason for this was that it shows a violent and uncultivated nature not to be able to restrain one's passion in certain places and at certain times, although it is hard to do so always, and to some persons impossible; and a legislator should frame his laws with a view to what he can reasonably hope to effect, and rather correct a few persons usefully than punish a number to no purpose.

He gained credit also by his law about wills. Before his time these were not permitted at Athens, but the money and lands of a deceased person were inherited by his family in all cases. Solon, however, permitted any one who had no children to leave his property to whom he would, honouring friendship more than nearness of kin, and giving a man absolute power to dispose of his inheritance. Yet, on the other hand, he did not permit legacies to be given without any restrictions, but disallowed all that were obtained by the effects of disease or by administration of drugs to the testator, or by imprisonment and violence, or by the solicitations of his wife, as he rightly considered that to be persuaded by one's wife against one's better judgment is the same as to submit to force. For Solon held that a man's reason was perverted by deceit as much as by violence, and by pleasure no less than by pain.

He regulated, moreover, the journeys of the women, and their mournings and festivals. A woman was not allowed to travel with more than three dresses, nor with more than an obolus' worth of food or drink, nor a basket more than a cubit in length; nor was she to travel at night, except in a waggon with a light carried in front of it. He abolished the habits of tearing themselves at funerals, and of reciting set forms of dirges, and of hiring mourners. He also forbade them to sacrifice an ox for the funeral feast, and to bury more than three garments with the body, and to visit other persons' graves. Most of these things are forbidden by our own laws also; with the addition, that by our laws those who offend thus are fined by the gynaeconomi, or regulators of the women, for giving way to unmanly and womanish sorrow.

XXII. Observing that the city was filled with men who came from all countries to take refuge in Attica, that the country was for the most part poor and unproductive, and that merchants also are unwilling to despatch cargoes to a country which has nothing to export, he encouraged his countrymen to embark in trade, and made a law that a son was not obliged to support his father, if his father had not taught him a trade. As for Lykurgus, whose city was clear of strangers, and whose land was "unstinted, and with room for twice the number," as Euripides says, and who above all had all the Helots, throughout Lacedaemon, who were best kept employed, in order to break their spirit by labour and hardship, it was very well that his citizens should disdain laborious handicrafts and devote their whole attention to the art of war.

But Solon had not the power to change the whole life of his countrymen by his laws, but rather was forced to suit his laws to existing circumstances, and, as he saw that the soil was so poor that it could only suffice for the farmers, and was unable to feed a mass of idle people as well, he gave great honour to trade, and gave powers to the senate of the Areopagus to inquire what each man's source of income might be, and to punish the idle. A harsher measure was that of which we are told by Herakleides of Pontus, his making it unnecessary for illegitimate children to maintain their father. Yet if a man abstains from an honourable marriage, and lives with a woman more for his own pleasure in her society than with a view to producing a family, he is rightly served, and cannot upbraid his children with neglecting him, because he has made their birth their reproach.

XXIII. Altogether Solon's laws concerning women are very strange. He permitted a husband to kill an adulterer taken in the act; but if any one carried off a free woman and forced her, he assessed the penalty at one hundred drachmas. If he obtained her favours by persuasion, he was to pay twenty drachmas, except in the case of those who openly ply for hire, alluding to harlots; for they come to those who offer them money without any concealment. Moreover, he forbade men to sell their sisters and daughters, except in the case of unchastity. Now to punish the same offence at one time with unrelenting severity, and at another in a light and trifling manner, by imposing so slight a fine, is unreasonable, unless the scarcity of specie in the city at that period made fines which were paid in money more valuable than they would now be; indeed, in the valuation of things for sacrifice, a sheep and a drachma were reckoned as each equal to a medimnus of corn. To the victor at the Isthmian games he appointed a reward of a hundred drachmas, and to the victor in the Olympian, five hundred. He gave five drachmas for every wolf that was killed, and one drachma for every wolf's whelp; and we are told by Demetrius of Phalerum that the first of these sums was the price of an ox, and the second that of a sheep. The prices of choice victims, which he settled in his sixteenth tablet of laws, would naturally be higher than those of ordinary beasts, but even thus they are cheap compared with prices at the present day. It was an ancient practice among the Athenians to destroy the wolves, because their country was better fitted for pasture than for growing crops. Some say that the Athenian tribes derive their names, not from the sons of Ion, but from the different professions in which men were then divided: thus the fighting men were named Hoplites, and the tradesmen Ergadeis; the two remaining ones being the Geleontes, or farmers, and the Aigikoreis, or goat-herds and graziers. With regard to water, as the country is not supplied with either rivers or lakes, but the people depend chiefly upon artificial wells, he made a law, that wherever there was a public well within four furlongs, people should use it, but if it were farther off, then they must dig a private well for themselves; but if a man dug a depth of sixty feet on his own estate without finding water, then he was to have the right of filling a six-gallon pitcher twice a day at his neighbour's well; for Solon thought it right to help the distressed, and yet not to encourage laziness. He also made very judicious regulations about planting trees, ordering that they should not be planted within five feet of a neighbour's property, except in the case of olives and fig-trees, which were not to be planted within nine feet; for these trees spread out their roots farther than others, and spoil the growth of any others by taking away their nourishment and by giving off hurtful juices. Trenches and pits he ordered to be dug as far away from another man's property as they were deep; and no hive of bees was to be placed within three hundred feet of those already established by another man.

XXIV. Oil was the only product of the country which he allowed to be exported, everything else being forbidden; and he ordered that if any one broke this law the archon was to solemnly curse him, unless he paid a hundred drachmas into the public treasury. This law is written on the first of his tablets. From this we see that the old story is not altogether incredible, that the export of figs was forbidden, and that the men who informed against those who had done so were therefore called sycophants. He also made laws about damage received from animals, one of which was that a dog who had bitten a man should be delivered up to him tied to a stick three cubits long, an ingenious device for safety.

One is astounded at his law of adopting foreigners into the state, which permits no one to become a full citizen in Athens unless he be either exiled for life from his native city, or transfers himself with his whole family to Athens to practise his trade there. It is said that his object in this was not so much to exclude other classes of people from the city, as to assure these of a safe refuge there; and these he thought would be good and faithful citizens, because the former had been banished from their own country, and the latter had abandoned it of their own freewill. Another peculiarity of Solon's laws was the public dining-table in the prytaneum. Here he did not allow the same person to dine often, while he punished the man who was invited and would not come, because the one seemed gluttonous, and the other contemptuous.

XXV. He ordered that all his laws should remain in force for a hundred years, and he wrote them upon triangular wooden tablets, which revolved upon an axis in oblong recesses, some small remains of which have been preserved in the prytaneum down to the present day. These, we are told by Aristotle, were called _Kurbeis_. The comic poet Kratinus also says,

"By Solon and by Draco, mighty legislators once, Whose tablets light the fire now to warm a dish of pulse."

Some say that the term _Kurbeis_ is only applied to those on which are written the laws which regulate religious matters.

The senate swore by a collective oath that it would enforce Solon's laws; and each of the Thesmothetae took an oath to the same effect at the altar in the market-place, protesting that, if he transgressed any of the laws, he would offer a golden statue as big as himself to the temple at Delphi.

Observing the irregularity of the months, and that the motions of the moon did not accord either with the rising or setting of the sun, but that frequently she in the same day overtakes and passes by him, he ordered that day to be called "the old and the new," and that the part of it before their conjunction should belong to the old month, while the rest of the day after it belonged to the new one, being, it seems, the first to rightly interpret the verse of Homer--

"The old month ended and the new began."

He called the next day that of the new moon. After the twentieth, he no longer reckoned forwards, but backwards, as the moon decreased, until the thirtieth of the month.

When Solon had passed all his laws, as people came to him every day to praise or blame, or advise him to add or take away from what he had written, while innumerable people wanted to ask questions, and discuss points, and kept bidding him explain what was the object of this or that regulation, he, feeling that he could not do all this, and that, if he did not, his motives would be misunderstood; wishing, moreover, to escape from troubles and the criticism and fault-finding of his countrymen [for, as he himself writes, it is "Hard in great measures every one to please"], made his private commercial business an excuse for leaving the country, and set sail after having obtained from the Athenians leave of absence for ten years. In this time he thought they would become used to his laws.

XXVI. He first went to Egypt, where he spent some time, as he himself says,

"At Nilus' outlets, by Canopus' strand."

And he also discussed points of philosophy with Psenophis of Heliopolis, and with Sonchis of Sais, the most distinguished of the Egyptian priests. From them he heard the tale of the island Atlantis, as we are told by Plato, and endeavoured to translate it into a poetical form for the enjoyment of his countrymen. He next sailed to Cyprus, where he was warmly received by Philocyprus, one of the local sovereigns, who ruled over a small city founded by Demophon, the son of Theseus, near the river Klarius, in a position which was easily defended, but inconvenient.

As a fair plain lay below, Solon persuaded him to remove the city to a pleasanter and less contracted site, and himself personally superintended the building of the new city, which he arranged so well both for convenience and safety, that many new settlers joined Philocyprus, and he was envied by the neighbouring kings. For this reason, in honour of Solon, he named the new city Soloi, the name of the old one having been Aipeia. Solon himself mentions this event, in one of his elegiac poems, in which he addresses Philocyprus, saying--

"Long may'st thou reign, Ruling thy race from Soloi's throne with glory, But me may Venus of the violet crown Send safe away from Cyprus famed in story. May Heaven to these new walls propitious prove, And bear me safely to the land I love."