Boardman J., Hammond N.G. L. The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 3, Part 3: The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries BC
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SOLON
375
War (see above, pp. 305, 313) over Delphi at the beginning of the sixth
century, and here too Athenian tradition magnified the part played by
Solon. The lead was taken not by him but by the Thessalians and by
Cleisthenes tyrant of Sicyon, but Athens certainly took part and there
is no reason to distrust the entry in the Delphian archives which
according to Plutarch {Sol. 11.2) named as leader of the Athenian
contingent not Solon but Alcmaeon. The war may well have begun just
before Solon's archonship,
c.
595, and later tradition saw it as a crusade
to liberate Delphi from the oppression of Cirrha, the Phocian town in
the plain below; but some lines in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo
(in. 540—5), coupled with study of Delphi's alignment before and after
the war, suggest that 'liberation' included,.a substantial change in the
management of the oracle.
60
Athens' reward was one of the two Ionian
seats on the Amphictiony, both of which originally belonged to the
Euboeans. A generation earlier, the former Delphic regime had
encouraged Cylon, and the discrediting of that regime bolstered the
credit of the Alcmeonidae and damaged that of their opponents. The
chronology is not certain enough to determine whether the Alcmeonidae
returned to Athens before the start of the war, but however we date
Alcmeon's part in the enterprise this is the beginning of the family's
important sixth-century connexion with Delphi.
61
With this intervention
Athens returns to the mainstream of Greek history.
IV.
SOLON
With Solon
we
enter
a
different atmosphere. Enough fragments
of his
verse survive
to
show what manner
of man he was,
what ideals
he
thought
it
important
to
project,
so
that
we
know
him
personally
as we
can never,
for
instance, know Cleisthenes.
In
spite
of the
increase
in
evidence
the
problems remain formidable,
due
mainly
to our
ignorance
of
the
background
to his
reforms,
but the
poems
at
least tell
us
what
kinds
of
solution
we
should look
for or
avoid.
There
can
hardly have been much material
for
ancient writers except
what Solon himself provided. Athenian tradition knew
him as
lawgiver
and sage,
the
latter
the
more interesting topic; that
is
reflected
in
Herodotus' proportions
(1.
29-3
3),
half
a
sentence
on the
laws
to
four
chapters
of
conversation with Croesus.
His
enrolment among
the
Seven
Sages gave rise
to
much low-grade invention (Plut.
Sol. 4-7;
Diog.
Laert.
1.
45-67). Some detail about
his
life could
be
extracted from
his
verse:
fr. 19 is a
clear case (below,
p. 389), but no
other surviving
fragment provides such unequivocal evidence.
The
political poems
evidently yielded much,
but not the
detail
of his
programme
or his
60
E
99- " F 5,
369-71.
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376 43-
THE
GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN STATE
achievement; the situation was familiar to those he addressed and they
did
not
need
to
have
the
facts recited. Accordingly Aristotle
and
Plutarch cite them to illustrate Solon's attitude, not as evidence for what
he did.
A
case
in
point
is the
word
eKrrjfiopos
{hektemoros):
ancient
scholars were curious about its meaning, but though it would
fit
easily
into the metres Solon used no poem is quoted for it. Detail of that kind
was
to
be found
in
his laws. Sceptical opinion has long held that the
wooden
axones
on which they were inscribed must have been destroyed
in the Persian sack of Athens in 480, and that the original code was so
overlaid with later amendment that Solon's share in
it
could no longer
be distinguished.
62
The case rests heavily on the usage of Attic orators
in the fourth century, irresponsibly attaching the name of Solon to laws
manifestly later, and brushes aside the clear evidence (Cratinus
fr.
274
K, from Plut.
Sol.
25.1;
Polemon's tract against Eratosthenes, Harp. s.v.
a£ovi and FGrH 241 F 37b) that wooden
axones,
believed
to
contain
Solon's laws, survived through the fifth century and into the third. Total
certainly
is
impossible, but
it is a
reasonable working hypothesis that
Solon's text was available for study by later scholars,
63
and it is not easy
to see where else some
of
the detail can have come from, though
of
course some citations will be fraudulent or mistaken. The material may
not always have been easy
to
use,
not
only because
of
the archaic
wording but because a reforming law need not give
a
clear picture of
the situation which
it
is intended
to
remedy.
At this stage
the
continuous text
of
the Athenaion
Politeia
begins,
and
is
our most important single literary source. As one
of
the
158
Constitutions
said
to
have been collected by Aristotle,
it
was composed
not simply
for
general publication but also
to
serve the purposes
of
his school
(cf. Etb.
Nic. n8ibi7),
and
that partly accounts
for its
curious proportions.
In
places shockingly hasty and sometimes over-
compressed,
it
nevertheless draws on a wide range of
sources,
not only
on the Atthidographers: of these, Androtion was the most recent and
authoritative when
the
treatise was written,
and the
text has some
certain points
of
contact with his fragments.
64
Happily the author of
Ath.
Pol. (whether Aristotle himself or one
of
his school) was more
interested in Solon than, for example, in Pericles, and he made full use
of the poems, and surely
of
the laws also though there
is
only one
explicit reference (8.3).
In
these chapters hostile criticism of the work
has been very much based
on
the assumption that when the author
mentions
a
ar)fj.elov
(8.1) or the like, that is the only ground he has for
the statement
for
which the
arjuelov
is
adduced.
65
But we must not
demand that
in
this short treatise he should validate every point with
62
F 63, 278-80; F 68; F 9, 17-27, 303-5.
M
F 66, 1-14;
A
36, 51-5; F 52.
64
FGrH,
Introduction
to
Androtion n. 127.
65
E.g. F 9, 323-4.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SOLON
377
a full indication of his sources: though for us this is the sole survivor
of fourth-century scholarship in this area, in its own time it was one
book among many and by no means the fullest.
66
It was not constructed
to withstand the sort of criticism it often now receives.
Solon was the son of Execestides. Aristotle {Ath. Pol. 5.3) and
Plutarch {Sol. 1.2) assert that he was of high birth, but of middling
wealth and station. The former is illustrated by his connexion with the
family of Critias (Plato, Tim. 2od—e); for the latter Aristotle less
convincingly cites one of
the
poems in which Solon sides with the poor
against the rich.
67
There may have been other evidence in the poems,
even evidence for the widespread view that Solon made trading voyages
in the days before his archonship (Plut. Sol. 2.1-2), but this is an area
where tradition slides easily into romance.
68
If his call for action over
Salamis belongs to his earlier years, this will have forwarded his career,
but otherwise we have no idea how he reached the position where both
sides were prepared to trust him as mediator and lawgiver, or who
his political allies were. The poems, especially the long fr. 4 but also
4a-c and 15, show him campaigning very effectively on behalf of the
oppressed poor, and 36.1—2 speaks of his calling the people together
and making a series of promises to them about the reforms he intended.
The situation was clearly revolutionary, and the upshot was that he was
appointed 'archon and mediator' for the year
J94/3,
69
apparently with
full powers to reform the state and its laws.
1. Economic measures
From the rhetoric of 36.3-17 it is clear that the most important of his
promises was to remedy agrarian distress. His first witness was the land
itself,
which he had freed from servitude by plucking up the
opoi {horoi)
fixed in it in many places; then he speaks of rescuing Athenians who
had been sold or had fled abroad, and of others rescued at home. His
hearers knew in detail what he meant, but we have to guess, and the
word
horoi
does not by itself settle the issue. Most commonly a
horos
marks a boundary, but Solon cannot be saying simply that he abolished
many boundaries. From the fourth century and later we have stone
horoi
placed on land or a house that had been pledged for a stated purpose.
70
A
horos,
then, could mark an encumbrance on land, though the
encumbrances of Solon's time would be very different from those
familiar in the fourth century. In Solon's view these were severe enough
for him to speak of the land itself as enslaved.
66
F 36, I310.
6
' F J, 322-3, 334-5.
68
F 63, 297-3O2.
"* F 2, 93 9; for alternatives see A 31, 145-69; F 9, 316-21; F 5, 323-4.
70
F 56; F 57.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
378 43-
THE
GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN STATE
Prose descriptions give us another term to explain,
hektemoros,
which
was wholly obsolete in the Classical period. Aristotle (Atb.
Pol.
2) says
that there was a long struggle between the upper class and the people,
that the regime was totally oligarchic, and in particular the poor were
in servitude
to
the rich
(eSovAevov,
which
in
the context cannot mean
literal slavery), with their children and their wives. He then gives two
names for them, TreXdrai (pelatai)
KCU
eKTr/fiopoi (hektemoroi), without
making
it
clear whether these are two names for the same class or two
separate classes.
It is
only the latter that he explains:
for at this rent [jr. the sixth part implicit in
hektemoros]
they worked the fields
of
the
rich. The whole land was in the hands of
a
few
(Si*
bXiywv);
and if they
did not pay their rents they could be sold into slavery, themselves and their
children. And all borrowing was on the security of
personal
liberty till Solon's
time;
he was the first champion of the people. The heaviest and most bitter
element for the many was their servitude.
The clause
on
borrowing
is
ambiguous,
in
that
it is
not made clear
whether the borrowers are
a
class separate from the
hektemoroi,
but
Aristotle has called the obligation
of
the latter ' rent' as
if
they were
tenants not borrowers, and the corresponding passage in Plutarch
{Sol.
13.4) distinguishes between
hektemoroi
who farmed for the rich, paying
them
a
sixth
of
the produce, and debtors who had borrowed
on
the
security of their liberty. This shows how Plutarch understood Aristotle,
or Aristotle's sources.
The term
hektemoros
and some clue
to its
meaning were almost
certainly to be found in the text
of
Solon's law. Pollux
(VII.
151) cites
from Solon
the
word enifiopros
(epimortos)
for
land worked
on a
share-cropping basis,
and
[i.bpTt]
(morte)
for the
share paid
by the
cultivator. Share-cropping had given way
to
money rents
in
Classical
Athens, but that change could not take place till there was more money
in circulation than there was
at
any time
in
the sixth century;
it is a
reasonable guess that Solon found
it
advisable to regulate the system,
and that
his
regulation made
it
clear what
the
system was.
It is
presumably from
the
same ultimate source that Hesychius
(s.v.
kvifiopTos) got the information that the word could be used not only
for the land but
for
the man who cultivated
it
on
a
share basis; and
his final
note,
.KO.1 kKTrjfj,opoi 01
TO
CKTOV
TCXOVVTCS, appears to mean that
hektemoroi
were
a
special case
of
the class share-croppers, though
of
course
a
very common case since
it
had generated
a
specific name.
Hektemoroi
and slavery are at the centre of Aristotle's description of
the crisis,
horoi
and slavery at the centre of Solon's solution. There must
be
a
close connexion, and the simplest answer
is
likely
to
be correct,
that the
horoi
marked the fact that the cultivator was bound to pay over
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SOLON 379
a sixth of the produce to another. But the rate of payment is an obstacle
to regarding the system as oppressive, for one sixth is an improbably
low rate for share-cropping, though parallels of a kind have been found,
and though no doubt this like any system could be made oppressive
by powerful and unscrupulous men. Theories of the origin of the system
must take account of this abnormality.
The trouble has usually been understood to arise from borrowing.
With variations, the pattern that
is
imagined has smallholders borrowing
on the security of their land after a bad year, and then a second bad
year brought default and slavery. Solon's
horoi
can then be treated as
records of something like mortgage. This is a long way from the prose
descriptions we have, but Solon's Athens was remote from Aristotle's
and it might have been misunderstood; and Aristotle describes Solon's
remedy as cancellation, xpetui'
aTTOKOTT-q,
which to the fourth century
would certainly mean remission of debts incurred by borrowing. That
is not decisive either: Aristotle and Plutarch make it clear that, quite
apart from the
hektemoroi,
there were debts to remit, and in any case
XP*°s
is a term which could cover not only debts due to borrowing but
also the payments due from the
hektemoroi,
however they arose. The low
rate of a sixth tells against borrowing, and so does the uniform rate;
it is hard enough to see why any rich man should lend to the poor for
so slight a return, and still harder to see why so many should have
adopted an identical rate that their debtors acquired this specific
designation.
These earlier theories assumed debt in coined money, and the impact
of the recent invention of coinage has been made responsible for the
whole crisis.
71
It is now agreed, with a few dissentients, that Athenian
coinage did not begin till some 50 years after Solon's archonship,
72
and
it is most unlikely that Aeginetan coinage was available in any quantity
in Solon's Athens; in any case, it was only in the fifth century that small
change was produced in enough volume to serve the transactions of
the poor. These considerations also rule out the divergent version of
Androtion (324 F 34, from Plut.
Sol.
15.3—5), that the Seisachtheia was
not a remission of debt but a lightening of the coinage which reduced
the amount the debtor had to pay
—
never a plausible theory, but the
statement is useful in elucidating Solon's reform of the weight system
(below). Some other issues that were once controversial might now be
left out of account. The payment of the
hektemoroi
was one sixth, not
five sixths:
73
Aristotle and Plutarch leave no doubt on that, and the
71
A 44, 593 4, cf.
505-12;
F
5
I, }2 6.
72
H 48, 58; cf. D 52, D 80; contra A 30, 661; H. A. Cahn, Kleine Schrijten %ur Mun^kunde und
Arcbaologie
(Basel,
1975), 81-97.
73
A 13, 11 109 n. 2; F 72,
44-50.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
380 43-
THE
GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN STATE
support
for
five sixths that
has
been claimed from etymology
and the
lexicographers
is
insubstantial.
74
The
view that land
was
then
the
inalienable property
of
the
family,
so
that
it
could
not be
pledged
by
an individual, still
has its
supporters,
75
but
much
of
the evidence cited
tells against absolute and continuing inalienability; especially, early laws
forbidding alienation imply that land
was
already being alienated.
76
It seems that
we
have
to
look elsewhere
for a
situation that might
encourage
the
rich
to
do
something
for the
poor cultivator
for
which
one sixth
of
the
produce would
be a
reasonable return.
It
has
been
suggested that
the
sixths were originally dues paid
by the
weak
to
the
powerful
for
protection in unsettled times, and resented when protection
was
no
longer
so
urgently needed;
77
and
this
is not
altogether
implausible.
But a
less remote origin is suggested
by
what we
now
learn
about
the
condition
of
Attic agriculture
in
the
Dark
Age.
Settlement
had been spread fairly evenly over
the
arable area
in
the
Mycenaean
period,
but
much
of it
was
abandoned thereafter:
78
reclamation
had
made
a
significant start
by the
first half
of
the
ninth century,
but the
process
was not
evenly continued
or
rapidly completed,
if
half
of
the
rural cemeteries known from
the
eighth century contained
no
burial
earlier than that time
(C^4HIII.I
2
,
ch. 16, p. 687). The pattern of village
settlement characteristic
of
Classical Attica
was
then
in
large measure
the creation
of
the eighth century.
We may
assume that
the
aristocracy
took
the
lead
in
this movement,
as
they
did
in
the
colonial ventures
which
in
other parts
of
Greece took some
of
the
surplus population
overseas
in
this same century.
The
growing population could provide
the needed labour. There
is no
knowing what kind
of
rights anyone
may have
had
over
the
still unreclaimed land,
but it is not
hard
to
imagine that powerful
and
enterprising families found
it
possible
to
assign plots
of
land hitherto untilled
to
pioneers
on the
basis that, once
established, they should
pay a
proportion
of
the crop
to the
noble
who
had assigned the plot. One sixth, implausible as interest on a loan, makes
more sense
if
the
land
had
previously produced
no
return
at
all.
It
is
likely also that
the
noble family would keep some
of
the
land
under
its
direct control.
In
Classical times
the
labour would have been
provided
by
slaves,
but
before
the
full development
of
chattel slavery
we should expect rather some form
of
dependent free labour. That
might
be the
pelatai
of
Ath.
Pol.
2.2
(above),
if
they
are
distinct from
the
hektemoroi.
The
various senses
of
this word found
in
tragedy
do not
fit
here,
but in the
only other instance from Classical prose, Plato,
Eutbypbro 4c, thepe/ates is a free
man in
contrast with
the
o'lKerrjs
(oiketes)
whom
he
was
accused
of
murdering,
and he
worked
as a
labourer
74
F 59- "
F
7*,
74-87;
F
5<5; A3'.
'
5
3-6o.
76
F j8,
153-60.
" F 60,
97-105.
78
H 25,
336.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SOLON 381
(edr/revev)
with Euthyphron's family when they were farming in Naxos.
Ancient commentators took
pelates
to mean one who worked for his
keep,
or for pay, and Plato's usage allows us to reject those lexicographers
who simply equate
pelatai
with
hektemoroi.
Plato like Aristotle expected
that the word would be understood, and it had vitality enough to
survive as the standard translation of the Latin
cliens.
It does not look
as if there were many
pelatai
in Classical Attica, but the concept was
firmly rooted, suggesting that at one time, before the growth of slavery,
there had been many more of them.
Like all explanations of the agrarian situation at the end of the seventh
century, this is highly speculative, but it can account for the low rate
of payment, and for most elements in Aristotle's description. Necessarily
ignorant of the evidence modern archaeology has unearthed, Aristotle
would naturally take the
morte
as a kind of rent paid to an owner, and
it is then a short step to assuming that the whole land was in the hands
of the few. This cannot be quite right: in his concentration on the plight
of the
hektemoroi,
Aristotle has pushed out of sight Solon's class of
^eugitai
(below), whose land produced 200 measures. More important,
ownership may not have been as clear-cut as it
was
to the fourth century.
The noble had his right to the sixths, and it is likely that the
hektemoros
was bound to remain on the land and pay the sixth, but in such a system
it is also probable that he could not be removed so long as he paid.
Both parties thus had rights over the land, but not of ownership as
Aristotle understood it.
This then was a system rather favourable than not to the cultivator,
and the question is what went wrong. Solon blamed the rapacity of the
rich, and after some generations they might indeed feel that they were
not getting enough from land in which they had a family interest.
Rapacity would do more for a man at the end of the seventh century
than at its beginning. Increasing foreign trade brought increased
awareness of what could be bought for silver; we cannot date precisely
the stages by which Greece took to using silver as a medium of
exchange, but the change certainly began well before the first intro-
duction of
coinage.
Consequently there was more motive for exploiting
the possibilities of oppression, which in this context means enslaving
the
hektemoros,
either with a view to keeping him on the land on much
harsher terms, or in order to sell him for what he would fetch. We need
not assume that enslavement for default was an original feature of the
scheme, but when Solon says (fr. 36.9-10) that some had been enslaved
€K8LKWS,
others Si/catcoj, that should mean that there was some positive
law on the point, and that might be one of the harsh features of Dracon's
code.
In any case we cannot easily set limits to what a powerful man
might do at this stage of the development of the law.
Solon's remedy was cancellation,
xp*<*>
v
OLTTOKOTT^.
AS regards simple
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382 43-
THE
GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN STATE
debt, that means that the creditor was merely deprived and had
to
be
content with the fact that
a
threatened revolution had been averted. For
the
hektemoroi,
cancellation can only mean that the payment
of
sixths
was abolished, and Solon's boast about the
horoi
points
in
the same
direction. That would leave the
hektemoros
on the land he cultivated,
with no remaining limitation
on
his rights over
it,
rights that would
easily develop into ownership
in
the Classical sense.
It
might be held
that this is excluded by fr. 34, quoted by Ath. Pol. 12.3 to show Solon's
resistance
to
proposals
to
redivide
the
land: ov8e iruiprjs x^
ov
°S
TTarpidos
KOLKOIOIV
eodXovs laofioiplrjv ex
€iv
- But there
is a
very great
difference
of
tone between this and earlier poems which expressed his
sympathy for the oppressed poor. The men addressed in fr. 34 did not
want just release from 'slavery'; they were after plunder, apnayq, the
same word that was used earlier (fr. 4.13)
for
the crimes
of
the rich,
and their hope was that Solon,
in
spite of his mild professions, would
make himself tyrant and them wealthy,
as in
the violent confiscation
of Bacchiad property
at
Corinth
a
generation earlier (Hdt. v. 92.62).
Solon rejected that, but there is no inconsistency in supposing that he
freed the land tilled by the
hektemoroi
from the dues owed to the rich:
that was not
to
put the base on
a
level with the noble.
One may wonder how Solon was able
to
rescue Athenians sold
abroad, especially those so long away that they had lost their native
dialect (fr. 36.10—12). But we may accept that he abolished slavery for
debt {Ath. Pol. 6.1, where
in
contrast
to
2.2 only debt
is
mentioned,
not the fate of the
hektemoroi),
since there is no sign of it later in Athens.
It was later believed that Solon had reformed measures, weights and
coinage, but Ath. Pol. 10, where Aristotle speaks of an 'increase' in all
three, is unhappily one of
his
most opaque chapters;
79
and
if
the view
taken
on p.
379
is
correct, Solon could
not
have reformed coinage,
though he might have altered the units
in
which uncoined silver was
weighed. The statement that Solon made new measures larger than the
Pheidonian is relatively transparent; at least, the latter were still in use
in some areas in Aristotle's lifetime, and they seem in fact to have been
smaller than the Attic. The arrangement
of
the chapter suggests that
the next clause refers to weights: 'and the mina, which previously had
a weight of
70
drachmae, was rilled up
(aveTrXtipcodrj)
with the hundred',
an odd expression whatever was meant. Next, the old coin unit was the
didrachm, which is true, but if'increase' implies that Solon instituted
the tetradrachm later familiar, that
is
false.
A
last sentence adds
obscurely that he established weights
irpbs
TO
vo/xia/na,
63
minae (instead
of 60)
to
the talent, and the three (extra) minae were distributed over
the stater and the other weights. It would be charitable to suppose that
this passage was over-compressed from
a
fuller and clearer account.
79
F
20;
F
5
5; F
65.
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SOLON 383
That Athens had used Pheidonian measures before Solon is beyond
our verification, but there might have been a Solonian law abolishing
them. The next clause is more disputable. Mina and drachma belong
primarily to the system of coin weights; and the corresponding passage
in Plutarch
{Sol.
15.3—4) is all about coinage, citing Androtion
(3 24
F
34)
for the view that Solon reduced the weight of the drachma so that there
were 100 to the mina instead of
70.
The original relation of mina and
drachma to the rest of the Athenian weight system is problematic. The
Classical stater (literally 'weigher')
80
was of 900-920 g, and there were
30 to the talent. The mina was by that time reckoned as a half-stater,
and increasingly used for material other than precious metal, but since
smaller weights were designated as fractions of the stater, not of the
mina, the latter was clearly not original to the system. The drachma,
YJQ
of the mina, was used only for the weighing of precious metal, coins
or temple dedications. The term originally designated a 'handful' of
iron spits in some area where these were used for currency, as they do
not seem to have been in Attica. When silver began to be used as a
medium of currency, some state (possibly Argos)
81
took the crucial step
of fixing an official weight of silver to be taken as the equivalent of an
iron drachma. The term drachma spread widely in mainland Greece,
with surprisingly different values: in Classical times 70 to the mina in
Aegina, 150 in Corinth and Euboea, 100 at Athens.
We do not know when Athens began to use silver, but it cannot have
been as late as Solon's time, and mention of
vavKpapiKov
apyvpiov in
his laws shows that by then the state already dealt in silver. If
we
could
suppose that down to
5 94
Athens had followed the Aeginetan system,
70 drachmae to the mina, and that Solon then decreed that in future
at Athens the mina was to be divided into 100, that would account for
what Androtion and Aristotle say. The purpose of such a change is
obscure, nor can we see why three cities so near to one another should
have adopted three different values for the drachma, but it appears not
to have been a matter of advantage in trade.
82
The best sense that has been made of the last sentence of Ath. Pol.
10 (above) is that coins were issued at slightly below their nominal
weight, 63 minae of coins weighing the same as 60 minae in the regular
weight system; the state thereby gained a small mint charge.
83
This
appears to fit the facts for the Classical period, but for Solon's time the
difficulty arises that the three earliest weights we have,
84
discarded while
in good condition late in the sixth century, are some 15 per cent lighter
than their Classical counterparts. All three were official weights, so
80
Confusingly, the word stater was also used elsewhere for coins, in Aegina for a didrachm,
in Corinth for a three-drachma coin; in Athens it was not used for any coin-weight.
81
H 48, 314; see CAH iv
2
, ch. id. BJ
G Z2
. CAH iv
2
, ch. id.
83
F 2O. »* F 2!.
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384 43- THE GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN STATE
inscribed: a stater of
795
g, and a quarter-stater and a sixth on the same
standard. They were not thrown out because they had become worn,
so we might deduce
a
change
of
standard
at
this time. Coin-weights
however remained stable from the inception
of
Attic coinage,
so
the
anomaly emerges that in the sixth century a mina of coins weighed more,
not less, than
a
half-stater.
85
But
we
must remember that mina
(an
eastern term) and drachma were imports into the Athenian system.
A
possible solution
is
that in 594 they were not yet integrated into this
system, but that late in the sixth century a change of standard made Attic
weights heavier, producing the Classical equivalence between mina and
half-stater.
It thus looks as if the Athenians were wrong to ascribe their Classical
weight standard to Solon, but may have been right to suppose that he
introduced a new and specifically Attic weight for the drachma. About
measures there can be no certainty.
For other matters we depend on scraps from Plutarch's Life. Solon
(24.4) restricted grants of citizenship
to
perpetual exiles and
to
those
migrating
to
Athens with their whole families
to
practise
a
trade;
Plutarch says that this
was
meant
not so
much
to
exclude other
immigrants (though he believed these were numerous enough to be
a
danger, 22.1) as to encourage more solid settlers. He does not here speak
of encouragement
of
crafts
(as at
22.1
in
another context),
but the
measure has been taken that way, and some potters from Corinthian
workshops seem to have migrated to Athens. 24.1 quotes from ' the first
axon'
a
law forbidding the export of any agricultural product but oil,
and large but uncertain deductions have been made from this. Minor
regulations, e.g. against planting olives or figs too close to a neighbour's
land, show
in
what detail Solon
was
concerned with agriculture.
Aristotle
(Pol.
i266bi3) adds a law laying down the maximum amount
of land that one man might own, but this has left no other trace and
is generally disbelieved.
2.
The constitution and the law
Solon's main constitutional reform was as radical as his solution for the
agrarian crisis: essentially, the substitution
of
wealth
for
birth as the
qualification for office. There can hardly have been much evidence about
the situation before Solon, but we may accept the general presumption
that office was then confined to the nobility; and (in spite of Ath. Pol.
4.3)
it
is certain that Solon instituted four classes defined by income in
kind, and determined which classes should be eligible for the various
offices.
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