Chapter XI: Solonian Laws and Constitution (2)

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.

[211] Herodot. i, 29; Plutarch, Solon, c. 25. Aulus Gellius
affirms that the Athenians swore, under strong religious
penalties, to observe them forever (ii, 12).

[212] Livy iii, 34.

If we examine the facts of the case, we shall see that nothing more than the bare foundation of the democracy of Athens as it stood in the time of Periklês, can reasonably be ascribed to Solon. “I gave to the people,” Solon says, in one of his short remaining fragments,[213] “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 no greater measure of power than was barely necessary,[214]—to elect their magistrates and to 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 Kleisthenês—the latter, he tells us, found “the Athenian people excluded from everything.”[215] 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 dikasts for judicial trials and revision of laws. The genuine and forward democratical movement of Athens begins only with Kleisthenês, from the moment when that distinguished Alkmæônid, 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,—Kleisthenês (to use the significant phrase of Herodotus), “being vanquished in the party contest with his rival, _took the people into partnership_.”[216] 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 ascendency,—in part, at least, to this cause, though the proceedings of Kleisthenês 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 Kleisthenês 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 those historical causes, which, acting upon the Athenian character, gave such efficiency and expansion to the great democratical impulse communicated by Kleisthenês: at present, it is enough to remark that that impulse commences properly with Kleisthenês, and not with Solon.

[213] Solon, Fragm. ii, 3, ed. Schneidewin:—

Δήμῳ μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκα τόσον κράτος, ὅσσον ἐπαρκεῖ,
Τιμῆς οὔτ᾽ ἀφελὼν, οὔτ᾽ ἐπορεξάμενος·
Οἳ δ᾽ εἶχον δύμαμιν καὶ χρήμασιν ἦσαν ἀγητοὶ,
Καὶ τοῖς ἐφρασάμην μηδὲν ἀεικὲς ἔχειν.
Ἔστην δ᾽ ἀμφιβαλὼν κρατερὸν σάκος ἀμφοτέροισι,
Νικᾷν δ᾽ οὐκ εἴασ᾽ οὐδετέρους ἀδίκως.

The reading ἐπαρκεῖ in the first line is not universally
approved: Brunck adopts ἐπαρκεῖν, which Niebuhr approves. The
latter construes it to mean, “I gave to the people only so much
power as could not be withheld from them.” (Röm. Geschicht. t.
ii, p. 346, 2d ed.) Taking the first two lines together, I think
Niebuhr’s meaning is substantially correct, though I give a more
literal translation myself. Solon seems to be vindicating himself
against the reproach of having been too democratical, which was,
doubtless, addressed to him in every variety of language.

[214] Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 4. Ἐπεὶ Σόλων γ᾽ ἔοικε τὴν
ἀναγκαιοτάτην ἀποδιδόναι τῷ δημῳ δύναμιν, τὸ τὰς ἀρχὰς αἱρεῖσθαι
καὶ εὐθύνειν· μηδὲ γὰρ τούτου κύριος ὢν ὁ δῆμος, δοῦλος ἂν εἴη
λαὶ πολέμιος.

In this passage respecting Solon (containing sections 2, 3, 4
of the edition of M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire), Aristotle first
gives the opinion of certain critics who praised Solon, with the
reasons upon which it is founded; next, the opinion of certain
critics who blamed him, with _their_ reasons; thirdly, his own
judgment. The first of these three contains sect. 2 (from Σόλωνα
δ᾽ ἔνιοι, down to τὰ δικαστήρια ποιήσας ἐκ πάντων). The second
contains the greater part of sect. 3 (from Διὸ καὶ μέμφονταί
τινες αὐτῷ, down to τὴν νῦν δημοκρατίαν). The remainder is his
own judgment. I notice this, because sections 2 and 3 are not to
be taken as the opinion of Aristotle himself, but of those upon
whom he was commenting, who considered Solon as the author of the
dikasteries selected by lot.

[215] Herodot. v, 69. τὸν Ἀθηναίων δῆμον, πρότερον ἀπωσμένον
πάντων, etc.

[216] Herodot. v, 66-69. Οὗτοι οἱ ἄνδρες (Kleisthenês and
Isagoras) ἐστασίασαν περὶ δυνάμεως· ἑσσούμενος δὲ ὁ Κλεισθένης
τὸν δῆμον προσεταιρίζεται ...

... Ὡς γὰρ δὴ τὸν Ἀθηναίων δῆμον, πρότερον ἀπωσμένον πάντων,
τότε πρὸς τὴν ἑωϋτοῦ μοίρην προσεθήκατο, (Kleisthenês) τὰς φυλὰς
μετωνόμασε ... ἦν δὲ, τὸν δῆμον προσθέμενος πολλῷ κατύπερθε τῶν
ἀντιστασιώτεων.

As to the marked democratical tendency of the proceedings of
Kleisthenês, see Aristot. Polit. vi, 2, 11; iii, 1, 10.

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 Kylôn or Peisistratus, 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, and the party combats—to be recounted hereafter—between Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megaklês, thirty years after his legislation, which ended in the despotism of Peisistratus, will appear to be of the same purely oligarchical character as they had been before he 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,[217] regularized and armed with enlarged prerogatives, and farther 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 Kleisthenês, it became paramount and sovereign; it branched out gradually into those numerous popular dikasteries 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 dikasteries which listened to Periklês or Dêmosthenês. 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.

[217] Lysias cont. Theomnest. A. c. 5, p. 357, who gives ἐὰν
μὴ προστιμήσῃ ἡ Ἡλίαια as a Solonian phrase; though we are led
to doubt whether Solon can ever have employed it, when we find
Pollux (vii, 5, 22) distinctly stating that Solon used the word
ἐπαίτια to signify what the orators called προστιμήματα.

The original and proper meaning of the word Ἡλίαια is, the public
assembly (see Tittmann, Griech. Staatsverfass. pp. 215-216); in
subsequent times we find it signifying at Athens—1. The aggregate
of six thousand dikasts chosen by lot annually and sworn, or the
assembled people considered as exercising judicial functions; 2.
Each of the separate fractions into which this aggregate body was
in practice subdivided for actual judicial business. Ἐκκλησία
became the term for the public deliberative assembly properly
so called, which could never be held on the same day that the
dikasteries sat (Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 21, p. 726): every
dikastery is in fact always addressed as if it were the assembled
people engaged in a specific duty.

I imagine the term Ἡλίαια in the time of Solon to have been
used in its original meaning,—the public assembly, perhaps
with a connotation of employment in judicial proceeding. The
fixed number of six thousand does not date before the time of
Kleisthenês, because it is essentially connected with the ten
tribes; while the subdivision of this body of six thousand into
various bodies of jurors for different courts and purposes
did not commence, probably, until after the first reforms of
Kleisthenês. I shall revert to this point when I touch upon the
latter, and his times.

It is, in my judgment, a mistake to suppose that Solon transferred the judicial power of the archons to a popular dikastery; these magistrates still continued self-acting judges, deciding and condemning without appeal,—not mere presidents of an assembled jury, as they afterwards came to be during the next century.[218] For the general exercise of such power they were accountable after their year of office; and this 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 Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megaklês, 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 Themistoklês and Aristeidês afterwards, 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.

[218] The statement of Plutarch, that Solon gave an appeal
from the decision of the archon to the judgment of the popular
dikastery (Plutarch, Solon, 18), is distrusted by most of the
expositors, though Dr. Thirlwall seems to admit it, justifying it
by the analogy of the ephetæ, or judges of appeal, constituted by
Drako (Hist. of Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, p. 46).

To me it appears that the Drakonian ephetæ were not really
judges in _appeal_: but be that as it may, the supposition of
an appeal from the judgment of the archon is inconsistent with
the known course of Attic procedure, and has apparently arisen
in Plutarch’s mind from confusion with the Roman _provocatio_,
which really was an appeal from the judgment of the consul to
that of the people. Plutarch’s comparison of Solon with Publicola
leads to this suspicion,—Καὶ τοῖς φεύγουσι δίκη, ἐπικαλεῖσθαι
τὸν δῆμον, ὥσπερ ὁ Σόλων τοὺς δικαστὰς, ἔδωκε (Publicola). The
Athenian archon was first a judge without appeal; and afterwards,
ceasing to be a judge, he became president of a dikastery,
performing only those preparatory steps which brought the case to
an issue fit for decision: but he does not seem ever to have been
a judge subject to appeal.

It is hardly just to Plutarch to make him responsible for
the absurd remark that Solon rendered his laws intentionally
obscure, in order that the dikasts might have more to do and
greater power: he gives the remark, himself, only with the saving
expression λέγεται, “it is said;” and we may well doubt whether
it was ever seriously intended even by its author, whoever he may
have been.