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intended to relieve the poor of their encumbrances, and to restore some who had been dispossessed of their estates, and others who had been actually banished or sold as slaves into foreign lands.130 In these measures there was nothing so intemperate as to contradict the laws; neither the security of debts nor the force of contracts was destroyed; while such was the moderation pursued in liberating the imprisoned and restoring the outlawed, that, though the creditor or the noble might be offended, the debtors and the inferior ranks in general were scarcely satisfied.131 Through some means of which we are ignorant, the Athenians were finally persuaded to abide by the proposals of their mediator, as he was rightly named; and it was apparently in the first moments of their gratitude, that they again declared him their lawgiver and their reformer. 132

Solon might have risen to still higher authority, had he been pleased to obey the entreaties of a party that trusted in the advantages which a ruler with his intentions would leave open to themselves. He was urged, either at this time or at the beginning of his Archonship, to become the tyrant of Athens, and to employ the power he would then exclusively possess in fulfilling the enterprise to which a great resistance was likely to be aroused. There were, besides, instan

when set at liberty, to discharge their obligations, which, it is plain, continued binding. See Plut., Sol.,

15.

130 Plut., Sol., 15, 19.

131 Plutarch quotes some touching lines from Solon himself, expressive of his failure, at first, to please his countrymen. Sol., 16.

132 Plut., Sol., 16. Cf. 14.

ces, recent and distant, of others in his position, who, not merely from selfish, but sometimes, perhaps, from generous motives, had put themselves at the head of cities or states, which gladly submitted to any firm dominion, so that their boisterous factions might be controlled. But Solon was unmoved, either by example or by argument, to do a wrong to the freedom he loved and upheld, as we shall hereafter see, to the last. "It does not shame me," he wrote, "to have preserved my country without laying hold of a tyranny or staining its fame":133 yet he was derided by a multitude of men, unable to conceive his purity of ambition.

After thus persuading his fellow-citizens to do one another justice, and facing, himself, the strongest temptation which, in his times, could well assail him, there were still a thousand things for Solon to attempt, or, at the least, to intend. Of all these, nothing was so difficult as the troubles he had already overcome; and it is pardonable in those who sincerely admire his character, that they should be hurried on to regard the Athenian institutions of a later day as the unbroken achievement of the first and the last true lawgiver whom Athens received. No one, indeed, was fitter than Solon to lay the foundations of liberty amongst his countrymen; but he was not a man to raise its towers towards the clouds, even had his people been more numerous and more prepared to aid him in a plan so really impracticable. He cer

133 Plut., Sol., 14, 15.

tainly appears to have proposed the elevation of the lower classes, as his especial aim; and there was quite sufficient light to show the truth, that it was vain to strike off the poor man's fetters or restore his patch of land, if he were then to be left in the same inferior and dejected condition as that from which he was already fallen. Accordingly, Solon remodelled the whole system of divisions and ranks, upon which the aristocracy of Athens had hitherto securely rested, by introducing a new scale, adapted neither to descent nor to occupation, but to a simple census 134 of the taxes which each man paid into the public treasury. In this way, four classes, entitled equally to the lower rights of citizenship, were formed: one, whose income amounted to the highest sum assigned, being alone eligible to the Archonship and the priesthood; a second and a third, united with the first, as a body from whom the other magistracies were to be filled; and a fourth, comprising such as had not yet been regarded as freemen,135 but were now, though still unequal to any direct contributions, entitled to a

134 The census, Tiunua, which we," says Boeckh (Polit. Econ. of the Athen., Book IV. ch. 5), "shall call the taxable capital, is not to be confounded with the entire value of any individual property, nor is it at all the same with the taxes themselves." It would act, says Mr. Grote (Hist. Greece, Vol. III. p. 157), "like a graduated incometax, 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." The reader is referred to either of these works for further details.

135 Dion. Hal., II. 9.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus completed his history or Archæology of Rome, where he had resided and labored for twenty-two years, in A. C. 7.

place in the popular tribunals to be presently described.136 The old divisions of Tribe, Fraternity, and Name were virtually at an end; and it was perhaps at this time that the Trittyes and Naucraries,137 or bodies of householders, were, if not instituted, at least substituted in place of the older orders, that had been regulated by birth, and not by industry or property or public services; so that the rise from one class to another was inevitable to him who prospered in his duties. The most unpretending account of this reform in the Athenian constitution, the stepping-stone, as it proved, to succeeding development, is obliged to bear some witness against the misunderstanding of which Solon has been made the victim. He intended to make every class a class of citizens, but, at the same time, to confine the exercise of the higher political rights to the higher classes, whose services to the state were the largest and the most important.138 Yet there was an especial law to pre

136 The first class was called the ПIEVтакоσιоμéдivot, their income amounting to 500 measures (700 of our bushels) of produce. The second, the 'Iñπeîs (knights), had an income of 300 measures or upwards, and were able to support a horse besides. The third, Zevyíraı (yokemen), had 200 measures or more, and kept a yoke of cattle, or a pair of horses or mules. The fourth, enres, were partly of the poorest citizens, and partly of those whose income did not reach 200 measures;

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vent the increase of landed property beyond certain limits; 139 while, on the other hand, there was a law equally stringent to compel the father to provide some occupation for his children, and further, to secure the punishment of such as were content to remain unemployed.140 As far as government or legislation could protect the labor of a people, to the advantage of the lowest and to the control of the highest, it was done.

It is only reasonable to suppose, that, if Solon thus actually remoulded the whole substance of the Athenian institutions, he was little concerned with the forms in which its political operation might be cast. The Archonship and the Areopagus, however, in which both civil and priestly authority had hitherto been concentrated, would scarcely seem so trustworthy to Solon that he would be willing to confide the interests he had espoused to them; and the institution of appeal from the judicial decisions of the Archons to the public tribunals 141 he established testifies to his intention of preventing the magistrates of elder date from exercising any undue authority. The places in the Archonship and the Areopagus, like all the high offices of the state, were held under strict responsibility to

duties imposed on a certain assessed class; namely, military service, liturgies, and even extraordinary taxes upon property." Hase, Anc. Greeks, p. 241, Eng. transl.

139 Arist., Pol., II. 4. 4. See Schömann's Assemblies of the Athen., p. 9, Eng. transl.

140 Plut., Sol., 22. Cf. Herod., II. 177; and Boeckh, Pol. Econ., Book IV. ch. 7. See the article Argias Graphe in the Dict. Gr. and Rom. Ant., ed. Smith, 2d edit.

141 Εἰς τὸ δικαστήριον. Plut., Sol., 18.

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