Soon after 600, however, it became clear that Draco’s laws had not resolved the underlying tensions of Athenian society. Urgent action had to be taken to avoid civil war. In 594, by a process that is not recorded, the city appointed one Solon to be archon (magistrate) with full powers to reform the state and its laws. Later sources claimed that Solon was of high birth but of moderate wealth. He is supposed to have been busy in trade, travelled widely, even to Egypt, and to have gained his reputation by encouraging the Athenians to seize the offshore island of Salamis from their neighbour, the city of Megara.
Solon left a lively if fragmentary account of his experiences in poetry. Today this would seem a rather esoteric way of writing one’s memoirs, but in the early sixth century poetry was the only literary form (prose writing only began slightly later in Ionia) and it was an entirely appropriate way for a statesman to record his exploits. The 300 lines that remain confirm the portrait of a man with a broad vision and fully developed sense of humanity. He records his view that the roots of Athens’s problems lay in the greediness of the rich, and he tells of public meetings at which he was urged to become a tyrant in order to overthrow aristocratic privilege. However, he claims he had the vision and integrity to refuse and always acted constitutionally. It was not an easy path to take. It was inevitable that any programme of reform that had a reasonable chance of bringing stability was likely to raise resentments among the powerful and frustrate the hopes of the poor, and Solon later described his experience of office as akin to that of a wolf set upon by a pack of hounds.
Solon was in fact a superb political operator, a true statesman, perhaps the first in the history of the west. He seems to have been inspired by the cunning and ingenuity of Homer’s Odysseus. Despite a voiced commitment to the poor, once in power he shifted his ground to portray himself as a mediator between the two sides, holding, as he put it, a strong shield over them so that the honour of neither was slighted. The rich were slated for their greed. ‘To destroy a great city by their thoughtlessness is the wish of those citizens won over by riches.’ Crucially he sensed the importance of taking an abstract principle, dike, ‘justice’ or ‘righteousness’, to guide him. He argued that dike was something achievable by human beings. The final objective is eunomia, ‘good order’.
Eunomia makes all things well ordered and fitted and often puts chains on the unjust;
She smooths the rough, puts an end to excess, blinds insolence, withers the flowers of unrighteousness;
Straightens crooked judgements and softens deeds of arrogance,
Puts an end to works of faction
And to the anger of painful strife; under her
All men’s actions are fitting and wise.
(Translation: Oswyn Murray)
This is the moment perhaps more than any other when politics, the belief that human beings could consciously hammer out their own way of living together according to external values, was born. Solon stressed that human behaviour had consequences, good or ill, for the community but that one could provide a setting in which excesses were controlled and new energies released.
Solon first set himself the task of destroying the privileged position of the aristocracy. All forms of debt ownership were abolished, and Solon even claims that he searched overseas for Athenians who had been sold abroad. The payment of a part of any produce also ended, and Solon rejoices over the tearing up of the stones that marked the land subject to the dues. While inequalities of wealth remained no Athenian citizen was subject to another. Next followed the opening up of government to a wider class of citizens. Here again Solon’s steadiness and good sense prevailed. He sensed that too radical a reform would lead either to chaos or to an aristocratic reaction. His response was to divide the citizen body into four classes on the basis of wealth. The richest class, the pentakosiomedimnoi, was made up of those with land that yielded 500 or more measures of grain, oil, or wine. It extended beyond the old aristocratic class. Below it the hippeis was made up of men with 300 measures of yield. The name suggests that they were seen as capable of raising their own horses for war. The next class, the zeugitai, with 200 measures or more, corresponded to those with enough wealth to equip themselves as hoplites. The lowest class, the thetes, were those with access to little or no land and so could not afford the weapons and armour to serve as hoplites.
By now the city appointed nine archons, or magistrates, annually. Forty candidates from the pentakosiomedimnoi were elected by tribal groups and the nine
Were chosen from these by lot. The breadth of thepentakosionmedimnoi class and the introduction of selection by lot probably ensured that the aristocracy defined by nobility of birth was swamped in numbers by the new rich. Lesser offices were open to the next two classes, but the thetes were excluded from office. They had to wait another hundred years, when the desperate need to use them as rowers in the expanding Athenian navy finally earned them a full place in democratic government.
The thetes did, however, in their capacity as citizens, have a role to play, as members of the Assembly. This body was the traditional one found in most aristocratic communities, with the power to express its feelings for and against any major proposal. It may have had, or been given by Solon, the power to listen to appeals for justice by aggrieved citizens either against convictions or the acts of magistrates and so set the precedent for the trials by jury that were such an important feature of life in classical Athens. A Council of 400 citizens was set up by Solon to oversee its business. Later the Council and the Assembly were to be the central institutions of Athenian democracy, but this was never part of Solon’s plan. Full democracy was inconceivable at this time. The Council’s role may have been designed as a moderating one, to make sure that powerful popular forces expressed through the Assembly did not threaten the stability of the state. The demos, the ‘people’, were given ‘as much privilege as they needed’, as Solon put it diplomatically. The Areopagus retained its role as the guardian of the laws, the supervisor of the archons, and with general control of the state’s affairs. Aristocratic influence, even though tempered by the admission of the new rich to political power, remained strong but the aristocracy grudgingly accepted the diminution of their power. A possible symbol of protest was the placing of kouroi on aristocratic graves, a practice that began about this time (see further below, p. 189).
As important as his other reforms was Solon’s new law code. It was inscribed for all to see on wooden tablets set in rotating frames that were still intact 300 years later. In a semi-literate community, this was in itself an important move, as it gave public space to law within the city. This, not the whim of individuals, was to be the new reference point and Solon stressed that the law was equal for all, good and bad. Cleverly he linked his reforms to the cult of Athena, the patroness of the city. She would protect those who put the community first but the laws must be made by the community not by the gods. Almost every aspect of human conduct, from murder, prostitution, and vagrancy to the correct marking of boundaries between neighbours, is dealt with in the code. Interestingly, economic policy is also covered. The export of grain, for instance, is forbidden, no doubt in an attempt to stop greedy landowners selling such a precious commodity to Athens’s neighbours at the expense of the poorer citizens. Athenian citizenship is offered to those with a craft skill who come to live permanently with their families in the city.
After Solon left office (probably by 590), legend says he went abroad for at least ten years, uncertain that his reforms would survive. It was certainly not obvious that he would have a lasting legacy. His insistence on the primacy of the law was, after all, a direct challenge to the concept of tyranny where an individual acted
Above the law. Yet Solon had shown that an abstract principle instituted by human beings could bring harmony. It was a remarkable achievement to be able to conceptualize a ‘just’ community and find a measured way of achieving it. This is the birthplace of the liberal tradition.
At first, however, it appeared he was right to be uncertain. Athenian politics entered a confused period of struggles between different aristocratic factions. In some years conflict was so intense that no archons could be appointed. (The word anarchia, hence the English ‘anarchy, was used to describe the result.) The factions were based on local allegiances and are recorded as parties of ‘the Plain’ or ‘the Coast’. It was into this debilitating struggle that a tyrant, Peisistratus, forced his way. His rise to power was a chequered one. Over fifteen years after 560 he alternated between control of the city and exile. It was only in 546 that he was secure, living to hand on the tyranny to his sons, Hippias and Hipparchus, in 528.
World History
