From my old notes, excerpts out of From Solon to Socrates: Greek History and Civilization during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. by Victor Ehrenberg. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1968.
From the introductory material...
The period between Solon and Socrates includes the sixth and fifth centuries [B.C.], that is to say, the culmination and the end of the archaic age, and the finest flowering of the classical age. I do not include the fourth century, in spite of Plato and Praxiteles, because of the decline and change in politics during that period.
Solon was a poet and a statesman; he is the first Greek politician who still speaks to us....
With [Socrates] one epoch ends, and another begins. His execution was the first unforgivable crime of the restored democracy, which traced its origins back to Solon.
The two men [Solon and Socrates], neither of them an extremist, tried to create new bonds between the extremes in society....
Solon was a poet and a statesman; he is the first Greek politician who still speaks to us....
With [Socrates] one epoch ends, and another begins. His execution was the first unforgivable crime of the restored democracy, which traced its origins back to Solon.
The two men [Solon and Socrates], neither of them an extremist, tried to create new bonds between the extremes in society....
From Hesiod onward oppression and injustice were causes of growing complaint.
The community needed a stronger supreme authority, a unified domestic and foreign policy, and above all social peace and economic prosperity. In various cities the opportunity was seized by individual leaders, strong personalities who gained power by usurpation. The Greeks called them 'tyrants'....
Athenian pottery had flourished in the ninth and eighth centuries; after that there is no evidence that Athens was of importance till the time of Solon.
The nobility were the large landowners, mainly corn-growers and to some extent cattle-breeders, later cultivators of olives and vines.... These wealthy families were a clear minority of the people, but they held most of the fertile land in the Attic plains, while the small farmers generally lived on the poorer land in the hills.
The nobility, firmly entrenched in the security of their political power and their bonds of kinship, cult, and neighbourhood, and so far not yet seriously affected by the slow rise of the peasantry, were to face an economic and social crisis which not only undermined their own power but also severely shook the whole community....
The enmities among the noble families and the blood-bath that ended the Cylonian affair were symptoms rather than causes of general conditions otherwise hardly known to us.... 'After that,' Aristotle writes, 'there was for a long time civic struggle between the nobles and the people.'
In general, the lower classes were in a sorry plight; what their situation exactly was depends on some facts which cannot be regarded as clearly established. One thing we do know is that down to Solon, money economy hardly began to exert any influence at Athens. It was a question of land and its produce.
Solon seems to have given a law to prevent the unlimited accumulation of land....
...the fact that the plight of the peasantry was so widespread, and also that Athens did not send out colonies, makes it likely that there was no bar to dividing the ordinary lot, except that it may frequently have been too small for further division. Thus the number of very small farms would increase and make it more likely that so many peasants fell into debt.
Aristotle maintains that loans were on the security of the persons of the debtor and his family. Sale into slavery was the ultimate consequence of that rule.
When a peasant tried to get help from a wealthy neighbour, it was quite common, as Solon expressly states, for the rich to make the most unfair use of their opportunities. Solon reproached them for 'avarice and arrogance', thus condemning on moral grounds what, he knows, was at the same time a grave social danger.
Solon was elected archon for the year 594-593 and was given full power. The foremost thing he did was to free the debtors and their land. He did this by cancelling all debts, and this was called seisachtheia, the 'shaking off of burdens'. It certainly was a radical measure, but the loss for the creditors did not touch the substance of their wealth. At the same time he forbade for the future all loans on the security of the person so that never again could a man, or his wife and family, be enslaved for debt. It is possible that he cancelled thereby a law of Dracon's....
Solon was a man of the middle road. That will have been a trend of his nature, but it was also the result of a reasoned approach to politics rather than an a priori principle. Solon learnt the wisdom that 'in great things it is hard to please everybody'. He proudly claimed, 'To the demos I have given such honour as is sufficient, neither taking away nor granting them more. For those who had power and were great in riches, I equally cared that they should suffer nothing wrong. Thus I stood, holding my strong shield over both, and I did not allow either side to prevail over justice.'
The community needed a stronger supreme authority, a unified domestic and foreign policy, and above all social peace and economic prosperity. In various cities the opportunity was seized by individual leaders, strong personalities who gained power by usurpation. The Greeks called them 'tyrants'....
Athenian pottery had flourished in the ninth and eighth centuries; after that there is no evidence that Athens was of importance till the time of Solon.
The nobility were the large landowners, mainly corn-growers and to some extent cattle-breeders, later cultivators of olives and vines.... These wealthy families were a clear minority of the people, but they held most of the fertile land in the Attic plains, while the small farmers generally lived on the poorer land in the hills.
The nobility, firmly entrenched in the security of their political power and their bonds of kinship, cult, and neighbourhood, and so far not yet seriously affected by the slow rise of the peasantry, were to face an economic and social crisis which not only undermined their own power but also severely shook the whole community....
The enmities among the noble families and the blood-bath that ended the Cylonian affair were symptoms rather than causes of general conditions otherwise hardly known to us.... 'After that,' Aristotle writes, 'there was for a long time civic struggle between the nobles and the people.'
In general, the lower classes were in a sorry plight; what their situation exactly was depends on some facts which cannot be regarded as clearly established. One thing we do know is that down to Solon, money economy hardly began to exert any influence at Athens. It was a question of land and its produce.
Solon seems to have given a law to prevent the unlimited accumulation of land....
...the fact that the plight of the peasantry was so widespread, and also that Athens did not send out colonies, makes it likely that there was no bar to dividing the ordinary lot, except that it may frequently have been too small for further division. Thus the number of very small farms would increase and make it more likely that so many peasants fell into debt.
Aristotle maintains that loans were on the security of the persons of the debtor and his family. Sale into slavery was the ultimate consequence of that rule.
When a peasant tried to get help from a wealthy neighbour, it was quite common, as Solon expressly states, for the rich to make the most unfair use of their opportunities. Solon reproached them for 'avarice and arrogance', thus condemning on moral grounds what, he knows, was at the same time a grave social danger.
Solon was elected archon for the year 594-593 and was given full power. The foremost thing he did was to free the debtors and their land. He did this by cancelling all debts, and this was called seisachtheia, the 'shaking off of burdens'. It certainly was a radical measure, but the loss for the creditors did not touch the substance of their wealth. At the same time he forbade for the future all loans on the security of the person so that never again could a man, or his wife and family, be enslaved for debt. It is possible that he cancelled thereby a law of Dracon's....
Solon was a man of the middle road. That will have been a trend of his nature, but it was also the result of a reasoned approach to politics rather than an a priori principle. Solon learnt the wisdom that 'in great things it is hard to please everybody'. He proudly claimed, 'To the demos I have given such honour as is sufficient, neither taking away nor granting them more. For those who had power and were great in riches, I equally cared that they should suffer nothing wrong. Thus I stood, holding my strong shield over both, and I did not allow either side to prevail over justice.'
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"Solon ... canceled all land debts, freed those already enslaved because of debt, and placed a limit on the amount of land any one person could own." -- Paul Thomas Welty & Miriam Greenblatt, The Human Expression: World Regions and Cultures
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