During his year in power in Athens Solon also made new laws for the Athenians. The pre-Solonian laws were allegedly the product of a mostly legendary lawgiver called Draco whose supposed code became proverbial for its liberal use of the death penalty (Plut. Sol. 17). Very little can be said of Draco, though the homicide law (Fornara, Nr. 15) which the Athenians continued to use from Solon's time on down was always ascribed to him.
Although Solon's laws were publicly displayed, no systematic collection has been transmitted in the ancient literature. Moreover, the Athenians were in the habit of attributing any and every law to Solon, whether or not he can have had anything to do with it (for examples, see Hignett 1952: 18-19, in Further Reading). Proving that a particular law attributed to Solon is genuinely Solonian therefore presents challenges, but occasionally an argument can be made in favor of authenticity.
For example, Plutarch speaks of one of Solon's laws as follows:
Olive oil was the only produce that Solon allowed to be exported, but otherwise he forbade exportation. He decreed that any offender against this law should be cursed by the archon or else should pay one hundred drachmas into the public treasury.
(Plut. Sol. 24 = T 5 and Fr. 65 Ruschenbusch)
The two punishments immediately suggest that the text of the law has been tampered with - that is, one punishment is original and the second was added at a later date. In this case the monetary fine has obviously been added because in the time of Solon, who measured wealth in terms of bushels of grain, coinage had not yet been introduced. The genuinely Solonian punishment is the solemn curse by the archon. In a later age, when the Athenians placed less faith in the ability of an archon's curse to deter criminal activity, a new punishment was added to the old law. In fact, the use of the archon's curse as a punishment in and of itself suggests that this particular law was written in the early period, i. e., is highly likely to be genuinely Solonian. This sort of argument, however, has to be made for each allegedly Solonian law one by one.
Solon’s purpose in introducing the new Council of 400, according to his own poems, was to give the less wealthy in Athens a share in the government. Plutarch (Sol. 19) paraphrases one of Solon’s poems which referred to the two councils - the old Council of the Areopagus and the new Council of 400 - as “a double anchor” which would hold the state steady before buffeting from both sides (i. e., rich and poor). The Council of the Areopagus represented the interests of the rich, as it consisted of all former archons (Plut. l. c.), and only the two wealthiest classes, Pentacosiomedimni and Hippeis, were eligible for the archonship ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 26,2; otherwise, however, 7,3). The archons,
According to the genuine Aristotle (Pol. 1273b-1274a), were moreover elected (otherwise [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 8,1). In premodern societies elections are almost entirely a matter of organizing supporters - that is to say, something which only the wealthy can manage. Elections in Athens inherently favored the wealthy and were avoided whenever possible by the later democracy. If either of the two councils, then, was to meet the demands of the “poor,” it must have been the Council of 400. Members of the third class, the Zeugitae, could serve on this council (Plut. Sol. 18). The Thetes themselves were entitled to attend the Assembly and to serve as jurors (Plut. l. c.), but were barred from playing any other role.
This reconstruction accords with Solon’s known sentiments that while the “poor” did deserve some say in government, the “rich” deserved a far greater one:
For to the People I gave as much power as was sufficient for them, neither taking away from what was owed to them nor adding to it. (Fr. 5 West, lines 1-2)
. . . I did not see fit that the nobles should with the base have an equal share of our country’s rich soil. (Fr. 34 West, lines 8-9)
Solon made no pretence at egalitarianism, and his constitution reflected his bias.
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