[191] Levitic. 25: 35-36; Deuteron. 23: 20. This enactment seems sufficiently intelligible; yet M. Salvador (Histoire des Institutions de Moïse, liv. iii, ch. 6) puzzles himself much to assign to it some far-sighted commercial purpose. “Unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury, but unto a stranger thou mayst lend upon usury:”—it is of more importance to remark that the word here translated usury really means any interest for money, great or small;—see the opinion of the Sanhedrim of seventy Jewish doctors, assembled at Paris in 1807, cited in M. Salvador’s work, l. c.

The Mosaic law, therefore, (as between Jew and Jew, or even as between Jew and the μέτοικος, or resident stranger, distinguished from the foreigner,) went as far as the Koran in prohibiting all taking of interest. That its enactments were not much observed, any more than those of the Koran, we have one proof at least in the proceeding of Nehemiah at the building of the second temple,—which presents so curious a parallel in many respects to the Solonian seisachtheia, that I transcribe the account of it from Prideaux, Connection of Sacred and Profane History, part i, b. 6, p. 290:—

“The burden which the people underwent in the earning on of this work, and the incessant labor which they were enforced to undergo to bring it to so speedy a conclusion, being very great, ... care was taken to relieve them from a much greater burden, the oppression of usurers; which they then in great misery lay under, and had much greater reason to complain of. For the rich, taking advantage of the necessities of the meaner sort, had exacted heavy usury of them, making them pay the centesima for all moneys lent them; that is, 1 per cent. for every month, which amounted to 12 per cent. for the whole year; so that they were forced to mortgage their lands, and sell their children into servitude, to have wherewith to buy bread for the support of themselves and their families; which being a manifest breach of the law of God, given them by Moses (for that forbids all the race of Israel to take usury of any of their brethren), Nehemiah, on his hearing hereof, resolved forthwith to remove so great an iniquity; in order whereto he called a general assembly of all the people, where having set forth unto them the nature of the offence, how great a breach it was of the divine law, and how heavy an oppression upon their brethren, and how much it might provoke the wrath of God against them, he caused it to be enacted by the general suffrage of that whole assembly, that all should return to their brethren whatsoever had been exacted of them upon usury, and also release all the lands, vineyards, olive-yards, and houses, which had been taken of them upon mortgage on the account hereof.”

The measure of Nehemiah appears thus to have been not merely a seisachtheia such as that of Solon, but also a παλιντοκία, or refunding of interest paid by the debtor in past time,—analogous to the proceeding of the Megarians on emancipating themselves from their oligarchy, as recounted above, chapter ix, p. 44.

[192] In every law to limit the rate of interest, it is of course implied that the law not only ought to fix, but can fix, the maximum rate at which money is to be lent. The tribunes at Rome followed out this proposition with perfect consistency: they passed successive laws for the reduction of the rate of interest, until at length they made it illegal to take any interest at all: “Gemecium, tribunum plebis, tulisse ad populum, ne fœnerari liceret.” (Liv. vii, 42.) History shows that the law, though passed, was not carried into execution.

[193] Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, b. i, ch. 22, p. 128) thinks differently,—in my judgment, contrary to the evidence: the passages to which he refers, especially that of Theophrastus, are not sufficient to sustain his opinion, and there are other passages which go far to contradict it.

[194] Lysias cont. Theomnêst. A. c. 5, p. 360.

[195] Cicero, De Officiis, i, 42.

[196] Plato, Legg. iii, p. 684. ὡς ἐπιχειροῦντι δὴ νομοθέτῃ κινεῖν τῶν τοιούτων τι πᾶς ἀπαντᾷ, λέγων, μὴ κινεῖν τὰ ἀκίνητα, καὶ ἐπαρᾶται γῆς τε ἀναδασμοὺς εἰσηγούμενον καὶ χρεῶν ἀποκοπὰς, ὥστ᾽ εἰς ἀπορίαν καθίστασθαι πάντα ἄνδρα, etc.: compare also v, pp. 736-737, where similar feelings are intimated not less emphatically.

Cicero lays down very good principles about the mischief of destroying faith in contracts; but his admonitions to this effect seem to be accompanied with an impracticable condition: the lawgiver is to take care that debts shall not be contracted to an extent hurtful to the state: “Quamobrem ne sit æs alienum, quod reipublicæ noceat, providendum est (quod multis rationibus caveri potest): non, si fuerit, ut locupletes suum perdant, debitores lucrentur alienum,” etc. What the multæ rationes were, which Cicero had in his mind, I do not know: compare his opinion about fœneratores, Offic. i, 42 ii, 25.

[197] See Plutarch’s Life of Agis, especially ch. 13, about the bonfire in which the κλάρια, or mortgage-deeds, of the creditors were all burnt, in the agora of Sparta: compare also the comparison of Agis with Gracchus, c. 2.

[198] “Græcâ fide mercari.” Polybius puts the Greeks greatly below the Romans in point of veracity and good faith (vi, 56); in another passage, he speaks not quite so confidently (xviii, 17). Even the testimony of the Roman writers is sometimes given in favor of Attic good faith, not against it—“ut semper et in omni re, quicquid sincerâ fide gereretur, id Romani, Atticâ fieri, prædicarent.” (Velleius Paterc. ii, 23.)

The language of Heffter (Athenäische Gerichts Verfassung, p. 466), especially, degrades very undeservedly the state of good faith and credit at Athens.

The whole tone and argument of the Oration of Dêmosthenês against Leptinês is a remarkable proof of the respect of the Athenian dikastery for vested interests, even under less obvious forms than that of pecuniary possession. We may add a striking passage of Dêmosthenês cont. Timokrat. wherein he denounces the rescinding of past transactions (τὰ πεπραγμένα λῦσαι, contrasted with prospective legislation) as an injustice peculiar to an oligarchy, and repugnant to the feelings of a democracy (cont. Timokrat. c. 20, p. 724; c. 36, 747).

[199] A similar credit, in respect to monetary probity, may be claimed for the republic of Florence. M. Sismondi says, “Au milieu des révolutions monétaires de tous les pays voisins et tandis que la mauvaise foi des gouvernemens altéroit le numéraire d’une extrémité à l’autre de l’Europe, le florin ou séquin de Florence est toujours resté le même: il est du même poids, du même titre: il porte la même empreinte que celui qui fut battu en 1252.” (Républiques Italiennes, vol. iii, ch. 18, p. 176.)

M. Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, i, 6; iv, 19), while affirming, justly and decidedly, that the Athenian republic always set a high value on maintaining the integrity of their silver money,—yet thinks that the gold pieces which were coined in Olymp. 93, 2, (408 B. C.) under the archonship of Antigenês (out of the golden ornaments in the acropolis, and at a time of public embarrassments) were debased and made to pass for more than their value. The only evidence in support of this position appears to be the passage in Aristophanês (Ran. 719-737) with the Scholia; but this very passage seems to me rather to prove the contrary. “The Athenian people (says Aristophanês) deal with their public servants as they do with their coins: they prefer the new and bad to the old and good.” If the people were so exceedingly, and even extravagantly, desirous of obtaining the new coins, this is a strong proof that they were not depreciated, and that no loss was incurred by giving the old coins in exchange for them.

[200] “Sane vetus Urbi fœnebre malum (says Tacitus, Ann. vi, 16) et seditionum discordiarumque creberrima causa,” etc: compare Appian, Bell. Civil. Præfat.; and Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, l. xxii, c. 22.

The constant hopes and intrigues of debtors at Rome, to get rid of their debts by some political movement, are nowhere more forcibly brought out than in the second Catilinarian Oration of Cicero, c. 8-9: read also the striking harangue of Catiline to his fellow-conspirators (Sallust, B. Catilin. c. 20-21).

[201] The insolvent debtor, in some of the Bœotian towns, was condemned to sit publicly in the agora with a basket on his head, and then disfranchised (Nikolaus Damaskenus, Frag. p. 152, ed. Orelli).

According to Diodorus, the old severe law against the body of a debtor, long after it had been abrogated by Solon at Athens, still continued in other parts of Greece (i, 79).

[202] Solon, Frag. 27, ed. Schneid.—

[203] Plutarch, Solon, 18-23; Pollux, viii. 130; Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 4; Aristot. Fragm. περὶ Πολιτείων, Fr. 51, ed. Neumann; Harpokration and Photius, v. Ἱππάς; Etymolog. Mag. Ζευγίσιον, Θητικόν; the Etym. Mag. Ζευγίσιον, and the Schol. Aristoph. Equit. 627, recognize only three classes.

He took a medimnus (of wheat or barley?) as equivalent to a drachm, and a sheep at the same value (ib. c. 23).

The medimnus seems equal to about 1 2/5 (1·4) English imperial bushel: consequently 500 medimni = 700 English imperial bushels, or 87 1/2 quarters.

[204] The excellent explanation of the Solonian (τίμημα) property-schedule and graduated qualification, first given by Boeckh, in his Staatshaushaltung der Athener (b. iii, c. 5), has elucidated a subject which was, before him, nothing but darkness and mystery. The statement of Pollux (viii, 130), given in very loose language, had been, before Boeckh, erroneously apprehended; ἀνήλισκον εἰς τὸ δημόσιον, does not mean the sums which the pentakosiomedimnus, the hippeus, or the zeugite, actually paid to the state, but the sums for which each was rated, or which each was liable to pay, if called upon: of course, the state does not call for the whole of a man’s rated property, but exacts an equal proportion of it from each.

On one point I cannot concur with Boeckh. He fixes the pecuniary qualification of the third class, or zeugites, at one hundred and fifty drachms, not at two hundred. All the positive testimonies (as he himself allows, p. 31) agree in fixing two hundred, and not one hundred and fifty; and the inference drawn from the old law, quoted in Dêmosthenês (cont. Makartat. p. 1067) is too uncertain to outweigh this concurrence of authorities.

Moreover, the whole Solonian schedule becomes clearer and more symmetrical if we adhere to the statement of two hundred drachms, and not one hundred and fifty, as the lowest scale of zeugite income; for the scheduled capital is then, in all the three scales, a definite and exact multiple of the income returned,—in the richest class it is twelve times,—in the middle class, ten times,—in the poorest, five times the income. But this correspondence ceases, if we adopt the supposition of Boeckh, that the lowest zeugite income was one hundred and fifty drachms; for the sum of one thousand drachms (at which the lowest zeugite was rated in the schedule) is no exact multiple of one hundred and fifty drachms. In order to evade this difficulty, Boeckh supposes that the adjustment of income to scheduled capital was effected in a way both roundabout and including nice fractions: he thinks that the income of each was converted into capital by multiplying by twelve, and that, in the case of the richest class, or pentakosiomedimni, the whole sum so obtained was entered in the schedule,—in the case of the second class, or hippeis, five-sixths of the sum,—and in the case of the third class, or zeugites, five-ninths of the sum. Now this process seems to me rather complicated, and the employment of a fraction such as five-ninths (both difficult and not much above the simple fraction of one-half) very improbable: moreover, Boeckh’s own table, p. 41, gives fractional sums in the third class, when none appear in the first or second.

Such objections, of course, would not be admissible, if there were any positive evidence to prove the point. But in this case they are in harmony with all the positive evidence, and are amply sufficient, in my judgment, to countervail the presumption arising from the old law on which Boeckh relies.

[205] See Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, ut suprà. Pollux gives an Inscription describing Anthemion son of Diphilus,—Θητικοῦ ἀντὶ τέλους ἱππάδ᾽ ἀμειψάμενος. The word τελεῖν does not necessarily mean actual payment, but “the being included in a class with a certain aggregate of duties and liabilities,”—equivalent to censeri (Boeckh, p. 36).

Plato, in his treatise De Legibus, admits a quadripartite census of citizens, according to more or less of property (Legg. v, p. 744; vi, p. 756). Compare Tittmann, Griechische Staats Verfassungen pp. 648, 653; K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Gr. Staats Alt. § 108.

[206] Plutarch, Solon, 18, 19, 23; Philochorus, Frag. 60, ed. Didot. Athenæus, iv, p. 168; Valer. Maxim. ii, 6.

[207] Meursius, Solon, passim; Sigonius, De Republ. Athen. i, p. 39 (though in some passages he makes a marked distinction between the time before and after Kleisthenês, p. 28). See Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, vol. i, sects. 46, 47; Tittmann, Griechische Staatsverfassungen, p. 146; Platner, Der Attische Prozess, book ii, ch. 5, pp 28-38; Dr. Thirlwall, History of Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, pp. 46-57.

Niebuhr, in his brief allusions to the legislation of Solon, keeps duly in view the material difference between Athens as constituted by Solon, and Athens as it came to be after Kleisthenês; but he presumes a closer analogy between the Roman patricians and the Athenian eupatridæ than we are entitled to count upon.

[208] Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. Æschinês ascribes this oath to ὁ νομοθέτης (c. Ktesiphon. p. 389).

Dr. Thirlwall notices the oath as prescribed by Solon (History of Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, p. 47).

So again Dêmosthenês and Æschinês, in the orations against Leptinês (c. 21, p. 486) and against Timokrat. pp. 706-707,—compare Æschin. c. Ktesiph. p. 429,—in commenting upon the formalities enjoined for repealing an existing law and enacting a new one, while ascribing the whole to Solon,—say, among other things, that Solon directed the proposer “to post up his project of law before the eponymi,” (ἐκθεῖναι πρόσθεν τῶν Ἐπωνύμων): now the eponymi were (the statues of) the heroes from whom the ten Kleisthenean tribes drew their names, and the law making mention of these statues, proclaims itself as of a date subsequent to Kleisthenês. Even the law defining the treatment of the condemned murderer who returned from exile, which both Dêmosthenês and Doxopater (ap. Walz. Collect. Rhetor. vol. ii, p. 223) call a law of Drako, is really later than Solon, as may be seen by its mention of the ἄξων (Dêmosth. cont. Aristok. p. 629).

Andokidês is not less liberal in his employment of the name of Solon (see Orat. i, De Mysteriis, p. 13), where he cites as a law of Solon, an enactment which contains the mention of the tribe Æantis and the senate of five hundred (obviously, therefore, subsequent to the revolution of Kleisthenês), besides other matters which prove it to have been passed even subsequent to the oligarchical revolution of the four hundred, towards the close of the Peloponnesian war. The prytanes, the proëdri, and the division of the year into ten portions of time, each called by the name of a prytany,—so interwoven with all the public proceedings of Athens,—do not belong to the Solonian Athens, but to Athens as it stood after the ten tribes of Kleisthenês.

Schömann maintains emphatically, that the sworn nomothetæ, as they stood in the days of Dêmosthenês, were instituted by Solon; but he admits at the same time that all the allusions of the orators to this institution include both words and matters essentially post-Solonian, so that modifications subsequent to Solon must have been introduced. This admission seems to me fatal to the cogency of his proof: see Schömann, De Comitiis, ch. vii, pp. 266-268; and the same author, Antiq. J. P. Att. sect. xxxii. His opinion is shared by K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alterth. sect. 131; and Platner, Attischer Prozess, vol. ii, p. 38.

Meier, De Bonis Damnatorum, p. 2, remarks upon the laxity with which the orators use the name of Solon: “Oratores Solonis nomine sæpe utuntur, ubi omnino legislatorem quemquam significare volunt, etiamsi a Solone ipso lex lata non est.” Herman Schelling, in his Dissertation De Solonis Legibus ap. Oratt. Attic. (Berlin, 1842), has collected and discussed the references to Solon and to his laws in the orators. He controverts the opinion just cited from Meier, but upon arguments no way satisfactory to me (pp. 6-8); the more so, as he himself admits that the dialect in which the Solonian laws appear in the citation of the orators can never have been the original dialect of Solon himself (pp. 3-5), and makes also substantially the same admission at Schömann, in regard to the presence of post-Solonian matters in the supposed Solonian laws (pp. 23-27).

[209] See Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, book ii, c. 15.

[210] Demosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 26, p. 731: compare Aristophanês Ekklesiazus. 302.

[211] Herodot. i, 29; Plutarch, Solon, c. 25. Aulus Gellius affirms that the Athenians swore, under strong religious penalties, to observe them forever (ii, 12).

[212] Livy iii, 34.

[213] Solon, Fragm. ii, 3, ed. Schneidewin:—

The reading ἐπαρκεῖ in the first line is not universally approved: Brunck adopts ἐπαρκεῖν, which Niebuhr approves. The latter construes it to mean, “I gave to the people only so much power as could not be withheld from them.” (Röm. Geschicht. t. ii, p. 346, 2d ed.) Taking the first two lines together, I think Niebuhr’s meaning is substantially correct, though I give a more literal translation myself. Solon seems to be vindicating himself against the reproach of having been too democratical, which was, doubtless, addressed to him in every variety of language.

[214] Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 4. Ἐπεὶ Σόλων γ᾽ ἔοικε τὴν ἀναγκαιοτάτην ἀποδιδόναι τῷ δημῳ δύναμιν, τὸ τὰς ἀρχὰς αἱρεῖσθαι καὶ εὐθύνειν· μηδὲ γὰρ τούτου κύριος ὢν ὁ δῆμος, δοῦλος ἂν εἴη λαὶ πολέμιος.

In this passage respecting Solon (containing sections 2, 3, 4 of the edition of M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire), Aristotle first gives the opinion of certain critics who praised Solon, with the reasons upon which it is founded; next, the opinion of certain critics who blamed him, with their reasons; thirdly, his own judgment. The first of these three contains sect. 2 (from Σόλωνα δ᾽ ἔνιοι, down to τὰ δικαστήρια ποιήσας ἐκ πάντων). The second contains the greater part of sect. 3 (from Διὸ καὶ μέμφονταί τινες αὐτῷ, down to τὴν νῦν δημοκρατίαν). The remainder is his own judgment. I notice this, because sections 2 and 3 are not to be taken as the opinion of Aristotle himself, but of those upon whom he was commenting, who considered Solon as the author of the dikasteries selected by lot.

[215] Herodot. v, 69. τὸν Ἀθηναίων δῆμον, πρότερον ἀπωσμένον πάντων, etc.

[216] Herodot. v, 66-69. Οὗτοι οἱ ἄνδρες (Kleisthenês and Isagoras) ἐστασίασαν περὶ δυνάμεως· ἑσσούμενος δὲ ὁ Κλεισθένης τὸν δῆμον προσεταιρίζεται ...

... Ὡς γὰρ δὴ τὸν Ἀθηναίων δῆμον, πρότερον ἀπωσμένον πάντων, τότε πρὸς τὴν ἑωϋτοῦ μοίρην προσεθήκατο, (Kleisthenês) τὰς φυλὰς μετωνόμασε ... ἦν δὲ, τὸν δῆμον προσθέμενος πολλῷ κατύπερθε τῶν ἀντιστασιώτεων.

As to the marked democratical tendency of the proceedings of Kleisthenês, see Aristot. Polit. vi, 2, 11; iii, 1, 10.

[217] Lysias cont. Theomnest. A. c. 5, p. 357, who gives ἐὰν μὴ προστιμήσῃ ἡ Ἡλίαια as a Solonian phrase; though we are led to doubt whether Solon can ever have employed it, when we find Pollux (vii, 5, 22) distinctly stating that Solon used the word ἐπαίτια to signify what the orators called προστιμήματα.

The original and proper meaning of the word Ἡλίαια is, the public assembly (see Tittmann, Griech. Staatsverfass. pp. 215-216); in subsequent times we find it signifying at Athens—1. The aggregate of six thousand dikasts chosen by lot annually and sworn, or the assembled people considered as exercising judicial functions; 2. Each of the separate fractions into which this aggregate body was in practice subdivided for actual judicial business. Ἐκκλησία became the term for the public deliberative assembly properly so called, which could never be held on the same day that the dikasteries sat (Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 21, p. 726): every dikastery is in fact always addressed as if it were the assembled people engaged in a specific duty.

I imagine the term Ἡλίαια in the time of Solon to have been used in its original meaning,—the public assembly, perhaps with a connotation of employment in judicial proceeding. The fixed number of six thousand does not date before the time of Kleisthenês, because it is essentially connected with the ten tribes; while the subdivision of this body of six thousand into various bodies of jurors for different courts and purposes did not commence, probably, until after the first reforms of Kleisthenês. I shall revert to this point when I touch upon the latter, and his times.

[218] The statement of Plutarch, that Solon gave an appeal from the decision of the archon to the judgment of the popular dikastery (Plutarch, Solon, 18), is distrusted by most of the expositors, though Dr. Thirlwall seems to admit it, justifying it by the analogy of the ephetæ, or judges of appeal, constituted by Drako (Hist. of Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, p. 46).

To me it appears that the Drakonian ephetæ were not really judges in appeal: but be that as it may, the supposition of an appeal from the judgment of the archon is inconsistent with the known course of Attic procedure, and has apparently arisen in Plutarch’s mind from confusion with the Roman provocatio, which really was an appeal from the judgment of the consul to that of the people. Plutarch’s comparison of Solon with Publicola leads to this suspicion,—Καὶ τοῖς φεύγουσι δίκη, ἐπικαλεῖσθαι τὸν δῆμον, ὥσπερ ὁ Σόλων τοὺς δικαστὰς, ἔδωκε (Publicola). The Athenian archon was first a judge without appeal; and afterwards, ceasing to be a judge, he became president of a dikastery, performing only those preparatory steps which brought the case to an issue fit for decision: but he does not seem ever to have been a judge subject to appeal.

It is hardly just to Plutarch to make him responsible for the absurd remark that Solon rendered his laws intentionally obscure, in order that the dikasts might have more to do and greater power: he gives the remark, himself, only with the saving expression λέγεται, “it is said;” and we may well doubt whether it was ever seriously intended even by its author, whoever he may have been.

[219] Kratinus ap. Plutarch. Solon. 25.—

Isokratês praises the moderate democracy in early Athens, as compared with that under which he lived; but in the Orat. vii (Areopagitic.) he connects the former with the names of Solon and Kleisthenês, while in the Orat. xii (Panathenaic.), he considers the former to have lasted from the days of Theseus to those of Solon and Peisistratus. In this latter oration he describes pretty exactly the power which the people possessed under the Solonian constitution,—τοῦ τὰς ἀρχὰς καταστῆσαι καὶ λαβεῖν δίκην παρὰ τῶν ἐξαμαρτανόντων, which coincides with the phrase of Aristotle—τὰς ἀρχὰς αἱρεῖσθαι καὶ εὐθύνειν,—supposing ἀρχόντων to be understood as the substantive of ἐξαμαρτανόντων.

Compare Isokratês, Or. vii, p. 143 (p. 192 Bek.) and p. 150 (202 Bek.) and Orat. xii, pp. 260-264 (351-356 Bek.).

[220] Cicero, Orat. pro Sext. Roscio, c. 25; Ælian, V. H. viii, 10.

[221] This seems to be the opinion of Dr. Thirlwall, against Wachsmuth though he speaks with doubt. (History of Greece, vol. ii, ch. 11, p. 48, 2d ed.)

[222] Plutarch, Solon, 23-25. He particularly mentions the sixteenth ἄξων: we learn, also, that the thirteenth ἄξων contained the eighth law (c. 19): the twenty-first law is alluded to in Harpokration, v. Ὅτι οἱ ποιητοί.

Some remnants of these wooden rollers existed in the days of Plutarch, in the Athenian prytaneium. See Harpokration and Photius, v. Κύρβεις; Aristot. περὶ Πολιτειῶν, Frag. 35, ed. Neumann; Euphorion ap. Harpokrat. Ὁ κάτωθεν νόμος. Bekker, Anecdota, p. 413.

What we read respecting the ἄξονες and the κύρβεις does not convey a clear idea of them. Besides Aristotle, both Seleukus and Didymus are named as having written commentaries expressly about them (Plutarch, Solon, i; Suidas, v. Ὀργεῶνες; compare also Meursius, Solon, c. 24; Vit. Aristotelis ap. Westermann. Vitarum Scriptt. Græc. p. 404), and the collection in Stephan. Thesaur. p. 1095.

[223] Plutarch, Solon, c. 17; Cyrill. cont. Julian, v, p. 169, ed. Spanheim. The enumeration of the different admitted justifications for homicide, which we find in Dêmosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 637, seems rather too copious and systematic for the age of Drako; it may have been amended by Solon, or, perhaps, in an age subsequent to Solon.

[224] See Boeckh, Public Economy of the Athenians, book iii, sect. 5. Tittmann (Griechisch. Staatsverfass. p. 651) and others have supposed (from Aristot. Polit. ii, 4, 4) that Solon enacted a law to limit the quantity of land which any individual citizen might acquire. But the passage does not seem to me to bear out such an opinion.

[225] Plutarch, Solon, 24. The first law, however, is said to have related to the insuring of a maintenance to wives and orphans (Harpokration, v. Σῖτος).

By a law of Athens (which marks itself out as belonging to the century after Solon, by the fulness of its provisions, and by the number of steps and official persons named in it), the rooting up of an olive-tree in Attica was forbidden, under a penalty of two hundred drachms for each tree so destroyed,—except for sacred purposes, or to the extent of two trees per annum for the convenience of the proprietor (Dêmosthen. cont. Makartat c. 16, p. 1074).

[226] Plutarch, Solon, 22. ταῖς τέχναις ἀξίωμα περιέθηκε.

[227] Plutarch, Solon, 22-24. According to Herodotus, Solon had enacted that the authorities should punish every man with death who could not show a regular mode of industrious life (Herod. ii, 177; Diodor. i, 77).

So severe a punishment is not credible; nor is it likely that Solon borrowed his idea from Egypt.

According to Pollux (viii, 6) idleness was punished by atimy (civil disfranchisement) under Drako: under Solon, this punishment only took effect against the person who had been convicted of it on three successive occasions. See Meursius, Solon, c. 17; and the “Areopagus” of the same author, c. 8 and 9; and Taylor, Lectt. Lysiac. cap. 10.

[228] Xenophon, De Vectigalibus, iii, 2.

[229] Thucyd. ii, 40 (the funeral oration delivered by Periklês),—καὶ τὸ πένεσθαι οὐχ ὁμολογεῖν τινι αἰσχρὸν, ἀλλὰ μὴ διαφεύγειν ἔργῳ αἴσχιον.

[230] Herodot. ii, 167-177: compare Xenophon, Œconomic. iv, 3.

The unbounded derision, however, which Aristophanes heaps upon Kleôn as a tanner, and upon Hyperbolus as a lamp-maker, proves that, if any manufacturer engaged in politics, his party opponents found enough of the old sentiment remaining to turn it to good account against him.

[231] This seems the just meaning of the words, ἐν τῷ γένει τοῦ τεθνηκότος ἔδει τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὸν οἶκον καταμένειν, for that early day (Plutarch, Solon, 21): compare Meier, De Gentilitate Atticâ, p. 33.

[232] Tacitus, German, c. 20; Halhed, Preface to Gentoo Code, p. i, iii; Mill’s History of British India, b. ii, ch. iv, p. 214.

[233] See the Dissertation of Bunsen, De Jure Hereditario Atheniensium. pp. 28, 29; and Hermann Schelling. De Solonis Legibus ap. Oratt. Atticos, ch. xvii.

The adopted son was not allowed to bequeathe by will that property of which adoption had made him the possessor: if he left no legitimate children, the heirs at law of the adopter claimed it as of right (Dêmosthen. cont. Leochar p. 1100; cont. Stephan. B. p. 1133; Bunsen, ut sup. pp. 55-58).

[234] Plutarch, Solon, 21. τὰ χρήματα, κτήματα τῶν ἐχόντων ἐποίησεν.

[235] According to Æschinês (cont. Timarch. pp. 16-78), the punishment enacted by Solon against the προαγωγὸς, or procurer, in such cases of seduction, was death.

[236] Plutarch, Solon, 20. These φερναὶ were independent of the dowry of the bride, for which the husband, when he received it, commonly gave security, and repaid it in the event of his wife’s death: see Bunsen, De Jure Hered. Ath. p. 43.

[237] Plutarch, l. c. The Solonian restrictions on the subject of funerals were to a great degree copied in the twelve tables at Rome: see Cicero, De Legg. ii, 23, 24. He esteems it a right thing to put the rich and the poor on a level in respect to funeral ceremonies. Plato follows an opposite idea, and limits the expense of funerals upon a graduated scale, according to the census of the deceased (Legg. xii, p. 959).

Dêmosthenês (cont. Makartat. p 1071) gives what he calls the Solonian law on funerals, different from Plutarch on several points.

Ungovernable excesses of grief among the female sex are sometimes mentioned in Grecian towns: see the μανικὸν πένθος among the Milesian women (Polyæn. viii, 63): the Milesian women, however, had a tinge of Karian feeling.

Compare an instructive inscription, recording a law of the Greek city of Gambreion in Æolic Asia Minor, wherein the dress, the proceedings, and the time of allowed mourning, for men, women, and children who had lost their relatives, are strictly prescribed under severe penalties (Franz, Fünf Inschriften und fünf Städte in Kleinasien, Berlin, 1840, p. 17). Expensive ceremonies in the celebration of marriage are forbidden by some of the old Scandinavian laws (Wilda, Das Gildenwesen im Mittelalter, p. 18).

[238] Plutarch, Solon, 23. Xenophanês, Frag. 2, ed. Schneidewin. If Diogenês is to be trusted, the rewards were even larger anterior to Solon: he reduced them (Diog. l. i, 55).

[239] Plutarch, Solon, c. 23. See Suidas, v. Φεισόμεθα.

[240] See the laws in Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. pp. 733-736. Notwithstanding the opinion both of Heraldus (Animadversion. in Salmas. iv, 8) and of Meier (Attischer Prozess, p. 356), I cannot imagine anything more than the basis of these laws to be Solonian,—they indicate a state of Attic procedure too much elaborated for that day (Lysias c. Theomn. p. 356). The word ποδοκάκκῃ belongs to Solon, and probably the penalty of five days’ confinement in the stocks, for the thief who had not restored what he had stolen.

Aulus Gell. (xi, 18) mentions the simple pœna dupli: in the authors from whom he copied, it is evident that Solon was stated to have enacted this law generally for all thefts: we cannot tell from whom he copied, but in another part of his work, he copies a Solonian law from the wooden ἄξονες on the authority of Aristotle (ii, 12).

Plato, in his Laws, prescribes the pœna dupli in all cases of theft, without distinction of circumstances (Legg. ix, p. 857; xii, p. 941); it was also the primitive law of Rome: “Posuerunt furem duplo condemnari, fœneratorem quadruplo.” (Cato, De Re Rusticâ, Proœmium),—that is to say, in cases of furtum nec manifestum (Walter, Geschichte des Römisch. Rechts. sect. 757).

[241] Plutarch, Solon, 24; Athenæ. iv, p. 137; Diogen. Laërt. i, 58: καὶ πρῶτος τὴν συναγωγὴν τῶν ἐννέα ἀρχόντων ἐποίησεν, εἰς τὸ συνειπεῖν,—where perhaps, συνδειπνεῖν is the proper reading.

[242] Plutarch, Solon, 20, and De Serâ Numinis Vindictâ, p. 550; Aulus Gell. ii, 12.

[243] See a case of such indifference manifested by the people of Argos, in Plutarch’s Life of Aratus, c. 27.

[244] Plutarch, Solon, 29; Diogen. Laërt. i, 59.

[245] Plutarch, Solon, 15.

[246] Herodot. i, 29. Σόλων, ἀνὴρ Ἀθηναῖος, ὃς Ἀθηναίοισι νόμους κελεύσασι ποιήσας, ἀπεδήμησε ἔτεα δέκα, ἵνα δὴ μή τινα τῶν νόμων ἀναγκάσθῃ λῦσαι τῶν ἔθετο· αὐτοὶ γὰρ οὐκ οἷοί τε ἦσαν αὐτὸ ποιῆσαι Ἀθηναῖοι· ὁρκίοισι γὰρ μεγάλοισι κατείχοντο, δέκα ἔτεα χρήσεσθαι νόμοισι τοὺς ἄν σφι Σόλων θῆται.

One hundred years is the term stated by Plutarch (Solon, 25).

[247] Plutarch, Solon, 26; Herodot. v, 113. The statements of Diogenês that Solon founded Soli in Kilikia, and that he died in Cyprus, are not worthy of credit (Diog. Laërt. i, 51-62).

[248] Plutarch tells us that several authors rejected the reality of this interview as being chronologically impossible. It is to be recollected that the question all turns upon the interview as described by Herodotus and its alleged sequel; for that there may have been an interview between Solon and Crœsus at Sardis, at some period between B. C. 594 and 560, is possible, though not shown.

It is evident that Solon made no mention of any interview with Crœsus in his poems; otherwise, the dispute would have been settled at once. Now this, in a man like Solon, amounts to negative evidence of some value for he noticed in his poems both Egypt and the prince Philokyprus in Cyprus, and had there been any conversation so impressive as that which Herodotus relates, between him and Crœsus, he could hardly have failed to mention it.

Wesseling, Larcher, Volney, and Mr. Clinton, all try to obviate the chronological difficulties, and to save the historical character of this interview, but in my judgment unsuccessfully. See Mr. Clinton’s F. H. ad ann. 546 B. C., and Appendix, c. 17, p. 298. The chronological data are these,—Crœsus was born in 595 B. C., one year before the legislation of Solon: he succeeded to his father at the age of thirty-five, in 560 B. C.: he was overthrown, and Sardis captured, in 546 B. C., by Cyrus.

Mr. Clinton, after Wesseling and the others, supposes that Crœsus was king jointly with his father Halyattês, during the lifetime of the latter, and that Solon visited Lydia and conversed with Crœsus during this joint reign in 570 B. C. “We may suppose that Solon left Athens in B. C. 575, about twenty years after his archonship, and returned thither in B. C. 565, about five years before the usurpation of Peisistratus.” (p. 300.) Upon which hypothesis we may remark:—

1. The arguments whereby Wesseling and Mr. Clinton endeavor to show that Crœsus was king jointly with his father, do not sustain the conclusion. The passage of Nikolaus Damaskenus, which is produced to show that it was Halyattês (and not Crœsus) who conquered Karia, only attests that Halyattês marched with an armed force into Karia (ἐπὶ Καρίαν στρατεύων): this same author states, that Crœsus was deputed by Halyattês to govern Adramyttium and the plain of Thêbê (ἄρχειν ἀποδεδειγμένος), but Mr. Clinton stretches this testimony to an inadmissible extent when he makes it tantamount to a conquest of Æolis by Halyattês, (“so that Æolis is already conquered.”) Nothing at all is said about Æolis, or the cities of the Æolic Greeks, in this passage of Nikolaus, which represents Crœsus as governing a sort of satrapy under his father Halyattês, just as Cyrus the younger did in after-times under Artaxerxês. And the expression of Herodotus, ἐπεί τε, δόντος τοῦ πατρὸς, ἐκράτησε τῆς ἀπχῆς ὁ Κροῖσος, appears to me, when taken along with the context, to indicate a bequest or nomination of successor, and not a donation during life.

2. The hypothesis, therefore, that Crœsus was king 570 B. C., during the lifetime of his father, is one purely gratuitous, resorted to on account of the chronological difficulties connected with the account of Herodotus. But it is quite insufficient for such a purpose; it does not save us from the necessity of contradicting Herodotus in most of his particulars; there may, perhaps, have been an interview between Solon and Crœsus in B. C. 570, but it cannot be the interview described by Herodotus. That interview takes place within ten years after the promulgation of Solon’s laws,—at the maximum of the power of Crœsus, and after numerous conquests effected by himself as king,—at a time when Crœsus had a son old enough to be married and to command armies (Herod, i, 35),—at a time, moreover, immediately preceding the turn of his fortunes from prosperity to adversity, first in the death of his son, succeeded by two years of mourning, which were put an end to (πένθεος ἀπέπαυσε, Herod. i, 46) by the stimulus of war with the Persians. That war, if we read the events of it as described in Herodotus, cannot have lasted more than three or four years,—so that the interview between Solon and Crœsus, as Herodotus conceived it, may be fairly stated to have occurred within seven years before the capture of Sardis.

If we put together all these conditions, it will appear that the interview recounted by Herodotus is a chronological impossibility: and Niebuhr (Rom. Gesch. vol. i, p. 579) is right in saying that the historian has fallen into a mistake of ten olympiads, or forty years; his recital would consist with chronology, if we suppose that the Solonian legislation were referable to 554 B. C., and not 594.

In my judgment, this is an illustrative tale, in which certain real characters,—Crœsus and Solon; and certain real facts,—the great power and succeeding ruin of the former by the victorious arm of Cyrus,—together with certain facts probably altogether fictitious, such as the two sons of Crœsus, the Phyrgian Adrastus and his history, the hunting of the mischievous wild boar on Mount Olympus, the ultimate preservation of Crœsus, etc., are put together so as to convey an impressive moral lesson. The whole adventure of Adrastus and the son of Crœsus is depicted in language eminently beautiful and poetical.

Plutarch treats the impressiveness and suitableness of this narrative as the best proof of its historical truth, and puts aside the chronological tables as unworthy of trust. Upon which reasoning Mr. Clinton has the following very just remarks: “Plutarch must have had a very imperfect idea of the nature of historical evidence, if he could imagine that the suitableness of a story to the character of Solon was a better argument for its authenticity than the number of witnesses by whom it is attested. Those who invented the scene (assuming it to be a fiction) would surely have had the skill to adapt the discourse to the character of the actors.” (p. 300.)

To make this remark quite complete, it would be necessary to add the words “trustworthiness and means of knowledge,” in addition to the “number,” of attesting witnesses. And it is a remark the more worthy of notice, inasmuch as Mr. Clinton here pointedly adverts to the existence of plausible fiction, as being completely distinct from attested matter of fact,—a distinction of which he took no account in his vindication of the historical credibility of the early Greek legends.