Solon

The reforms of Solon may be divided under three heads— economic, constitutional and miscellaneous. They were necessary owing mainly to the tyrannical attitude of the rich to the poorer classes. Of these many had become slaves in lieu of payment of rent and loans, and thus the land had fallen gradually into the hands of capitalists. It was necessary to readjust the economic balance and to provide against the evil of aristocratic and capital ist predominance.

A. Economic Reforms.

Solon's economic reforms consisted of the Seisachtheia and certain commercial laws (e.g., prevention of export trade except in olive oil, Plut. Solon 24). By far the most important of these was the law encouraging trade and manu factures (Plut. Solon, 22) which laid the foundation of the future commercial greatness of Athens. Even within a century from the time of its making the trade of Athens with Sicily increased, as is shown by archaeological discovery in that island, to such an extent that, though negligible in quantity at the beginning of the century, it almost rivalled that of Corinth at the end of it. (See Grundy, Thucydides and the History of his Age, p. 66 ff.). Among all the problems connected with the Seisachtheia, it is clear (I) that Solon abolished the old Attic law of debt which permitted loans on the security of the debtor's person; (2) that he restored to freedom those who had been enslaved for debt; (3) that he refused the demand for the division of the land ('yijs avaacril6s). As to the cancelling of all debts (Xp€c7o aroKorii) there is some controversy; Gilbert and Busolt maintain that all debts were cancelled ; strong reasons may, however, be advanced against it, amongst others, that the Greek, unlike the Roman revolutionary, though ready to deal freely with the property of others, did not seek to remedy financial difficulties by abolishing debts. It is possible that the statement in the Constitution is a hypothesis to explain the restoration of the slaves to freedom. Further, Solon seems to have regulated the accumulation of land (cf. in Rome the legislation of Tiberius Gracchus) and the rate of inter est ; and to have simplified commerce by replacing the Pheidonian standard by the Euboic, which was in use among the Ionian traders, in commerce with whom he foresaw that prosperity lay.

It is impossible here to enter into the details of the controversy in connection with Solon's land reforms; it must suffice to give the bare outlines of the dispute. There is no question that (I) the distressed class whom Solon sought to relieve were the Hekte moroi, and that (2) the achievement on which he prided himself was the removal of the 6pot or stones which were seen everywhere in Attica, and were symbolic of the slavery of the soil. Almost

all writers say that these &pot were mortgage-pillars : that they were originally boundary stones and that when land was mort gaged the terms of the agreement were carved on the stones, as evidence. Now, firstly, though such mortgage-pillars existed in the time of Demosthenes, none are found earlier than the year 400 B.C., nor is there any reference before that year to this special sense of the word. If then these stones which Solon removed were mortgage-pillars, it is strange that none should have been found till 200 years later. Secondly, it is highly improbable that the terms on which land was then cultivated admitted of mort gaging at all. The Hektemoroi who, according to the Constitution, paid the sixth part of their produce as rent,' were not freeholders but tenants, and therefore, could not mortgage their land at all.

From this it follows that when Solon said he had "removed the stones" he referred to the fatal accumulation of land by land 'Others say they were: (I) labourers who received one-sixth of the produce as wages; (2) tenants who paid five-sixths as rent and kept one-sixth, or (3) tenants who paid one-sixth as rent and kept five sixths. As to (3) it is said such tenants could not have been in real distress, and as to (I) and (2) it is said that such a position would have meant starvation from the first.

owners. The tenants failed to pay rent, were enslaved, and the "boundary stone" of the landowner was moved forward to in clude their land. Thus the removal of the iSpot was a measure against the accumulation of land in the form of enclosures (TEOvn), and fits in with the statement at the end of chapter iv. of the Constitution, "the land was in the hands of a few." It should be noted (I) that from this releasing of the land it follows that Solon's law against lending on the security of the person must have been retrospective (i.e., in order to provide a sufficient number of freeholders for the land released) ; and (2) that it is one of the most remarkable facts in Athenian economic history that when at the end of the Peloponnesian War a proposal was brought forward to limit the franchise to freeholders, it was found that only 5,00o failed to satisfy this requirement. It is noteworthy that the Hektemoroi disappear from history after Solon's time. This looks as if they had been converted into freeholders. Antiquity ever tended to regard the cultivation of land as the best title to its possession, a development of an earlier idea that property in respect to land did not reside in the land itself but in the crop grown on it. The Diacrii of the time of Peisistratus are quite a different class.