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SOLON OF ATHENS
THE POET, THE MERCHANT
AND THE STATESMAN

An Inaugural Lecture
delivered before the University of Liverpool

BY

C. F. LEHMANN-HAUPT, LL.D., PH.D.
GLADSTONE

ON FRIDAY,

PROFESSOR

OF GREEK

FEBRUARY I6,

1912

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF LIVERPOOL
1912
57 ASHTON STREET.

NoTE.-The small type numerals in the text refer to the
notes at the end. The fragments of Solon's poems are quoted
according to the numbering in Hiller-Crusius' Anthologia
Lyrica (' H.-C.').

ERRATA
Page Io, paragraph 3, 1. 6, read icar'.
Page 25, 1. 9, read ' IT 5/6: 10/9.'

Page 30, VII, 1. 8, read 'Seisachtheia '
Page 5o, 1. 2, strike out 'other.'
Page 51, n. 15, 1. I, read ' f.' ; n. 16, last but one line, after
Dialekte insert ' p. 368 f.'; p. 51, last line, read ' rir.'
Page 52, n. 26, 1. 4, p. 53, n. 31, 1. I, and p. 54, n. 34, 1. 6, read

' Uber.'
Page 55, n. 41, 1. 2.,
' Aristoteles.'

lead

' weltbeherrschende '; n. 45, read

SOLON
The Poet, the Merchant, and the Statesman

T

HE study of Greek is at present in a critical
state, not only in England but also in
Germany and other countries. The Greek
question may indeed be considered an international
one. Greek will soon cease to be a compulsory
part of higher education. The place of compulsion
will be taken by freedom of choice, and, whether
we regret the lowering of the general standard,
or welcome liberty as a most effective element of
true learning and research, as the Greeks themselves
have taught us, we have to face the fact, and we
face it with good confidence. For not only have
the treasuries of Greek thought and Greek culture
which underlie our own always succeeded in attracting and holding the youthful mind, but our own
times have witnessed a marvellous increase of these
treasuries. The three names, Mycenae, Crete and
Egypt, suffice to call to our mind some of the chief
sources of this increase.
Our knowledge of the civilisation of the mainland
and the islands of Greece has been extended far
backward to many centuries before the Trojan
War, a period when the soil, which was later
inhabited almost exclusively by the Greeks, was
being prepared by people of a very different race,
and thus was produced the mingling of races which
more and more proves to be an important element
in the development of civilisation.
And Egypt, owing to the peculiarities of her
climate, has begun to show her gratitude for the
benefit of Greek culture by rendering from her
3

p
S7700

bosom literary treasures which have been entrusted
to her keeping for many centuries.
And, lo, Aristotle's' Constitution of Athens' and
Menander's Comedies, Timotheos' nomos 'the
Persians,' the poems of Bacchylides, the mimes of
Herondas, Didymos' Commentaries to the speeches
of Demosthenes and a most valuable Greek historian
have, among others, been in part given back to us,1
along with an inexhaustible fund of other papyri
relating to Greek and Hellenistic law, government,
religion and finance.
This wealth, growing day by day, tends not only
to enrich our material but to deepen the knowledge
of Greek life and Greek achievements throughout.
Greek philology then has, apart from its intrinsic
merits, the great advantage of being an evolutionary
science, and this in itself is one of the greatest
enticements to student and scholar.
Philology has for its primary object the knowledge
of the language and the verbal interpretation of the
author's meaning. This in itself is a vast field,
comprising as it does, the knowledge not only of
all the different styles and kinds of speech in prose
and poetry, but also of the dialects for their own
sake and as a necessary preliminary to the
comparative philology of the Greek language as
one of the chief branches of the great Indo-European
family of speech.
And I may be allowed to add as the result of the
short experience I have had in teaching Greek in
this University, Greek philology necessarily also
includes the knowledge of the sound and the rhythm
of the language in poetry and in prose. Our chief
aim in learning Greek must not be to know how to
translate Greek into English but to understand
Greek in itself, and to delight in the music of its

language without translating it into a modern idiom.
In our efforts towards this result in England we
shall I am sure, be greatly helped by the unity of
pronunciation lately recommended by the Classical
Association.
But philology, in its true sense, has a much wider
application. It involves the lofty duty of fully
understanding and exhausting the meaning of the
Greek authors, not only as to the language, but
as to their full scope and content. That the
writings of the Greek philosophers can only be
understood by a combination of philological and
philosophical training and education, will be
universally acknowledged. Philology, however, is
furthermore a historical science. In the first place
it deals with language, which as long as it is spoken
is a living organism, only to be grasped historically.
And secondly it should go without saying that a
Greek historian cannot be read with anything
resembling a true profit for the reader without a
knowledge of Greek history, or at any rate the ardent
desire to acquire it.
Thus philology and history are not opposed or
distinct but intimately linked with each other.
It is, therefore, perhaps not without significance
that two successive Professors of Greek should have
been appointed in the University of Liverpool,
who have made history their chief pursuit.
Again, what use is there in reading descriptions
of Greek life and Greek authors without a knowledge
of the arrangements and institutions of public and
private life, of which the key is held by Archaeology,
either by itself or combined with history,--not to
speak of jurisprudence in its application to private
and public law.
Two chief points of view would therefore

present themselves for an illustration of the
principles of Greek philology; the importance of
the new material, and the necessity of taking
philology in its deepest and widest sense.
What theme, then, should a new Professor of
Greek in this University, who wishes to emphasise
these two points, choose for his Inaugural Address ?
It is the Gladstone Chair to which he has been
appointed, and since the study and teaching of
Greek in this University are for ever associated
with the memory of a great statesman, born in
Liverpool, who was at the same time a Greek
scholar of no common order, the first idea would
naturally be to select a subject from the range of
his research and to discuss some of the innumerable
and deeply interesting problems of Homeric study,
or to discuss Gladstone's view of Homer as a whole.
This, however, was admirably done by my
predecessor, Professor Myres.
But the fact remains that the Chair of Greek
was established in memory of a statesman whose
high character and devotion to his country were
recognised by friend and foe alike.
Our minds are thus naturally directed to that
Greek statesman, the integrity of whose character
and intention is universally acknowledged, and
who through his love for his native city and his
insight into the exigencies of her development, laid
the foundation for her future greatness.
Though at first sight it would appear to be a
merely historical subject, yet none could be more
appropriate to the present occasion. For Solon
was not only a statesman who left his mark in
Greek Literature, but also--a fact not sufficiently
recognised--a poet whose writings have the unique
merit that they show us the political and social

ideas of the statesman at different moments of his
career, giving the programme of his reforms,
illustrating his opinions from various points of
view, defending what he had achieved against
attacks and reproaches from all sides. Hence the
general scope and the unity of his aspirations are
preserved to us in a delightful variety of momentary
impressions and changing moods.
How rare an occurrence this is, we shall realise
in glancing at a document which bears a certain
relation to these invaluable utterances of Solon's
ideas, the so-called Monumentum Ancyranum in
which the Emperor Augustus summed up his deeds
and the achievements of his life. Here also the
originator of a new departure in the constitutional
history of one of the most important peoples of
antiquity attempts to convey to posterity his
political principles as well as the chief stages of his
career. And it has recently been shown that most
probably this document, though claiming to be
written in the last year of Augustus' life has a much
longer and more complicated history.2 Still it
breathes the same premeditated consciousness
throughout. In the nature of the case we should
look in vain for the delightful spontaneity and
naivete of Solon's kaleidoscopic expressions, and
when we consider other autobiographical productions of statesmen of antiquity' their distance
from Solon's sayings would appear all the more
pronounced. I was justified then in applying the
term unique to this part of Solon's literary
productions. This very important point has as
yet not been sufficiently emphasised.
It is true that it could not have been recognised
with the necessary clearness before Aristotle's
'Constitution of Athens' had been found in

Egypt; for, firstly, some very significant fragments
of Solon's political poetry have thus been brought
to our knowledge. Secondly, the intimate connection between Solon's poetry and his statesmanship has never been brought out so distinctly as in
the words of Aristotle that the Athenians elected
Solon to be their archon and their conciliator, since
he had composed a certain elegy, hitherto unknown
to us, in which he gave vent to his grief at the
troubled state of affairs in Athens defending the
struggling parties one against the other.4
Solon then, in whom the poet and the statesman
are linked together inseparably, would attract us,
but there is another feature which adds greatly to
,the interest we take in him on this occasion.
The University of Liverpool is prominent among
a number of new Universities, all of which have been
established in great city centres, and are intimately
connected with the life of the community. But
whereas most of these cities are industrial centres,
Liverpool is the most important of the very few
among these new seats of learning, whose life depends
on the sea.
Solon was not only the law-giver and ruler of a
city which was to be one of the greatest sea-ports
of antiquity, but he was himself a merchant, and
what he strove to do and did for Athens cannot be
rightly understood if this very important point is
overlooked or undervalued.
Solon as a merchant was fully aware that the way
to greatness for his native city lay in the field of
commerce, and it is he who consciously opened out
the path for her development in this direction.
Now the new Gladstone Professor of Greek, who
has the honour of addressing you, having been born
and educated in the greatest commercial city of

Germany, which has been and is in very
intimate connection with the great commercial
city of Liverpool, has naturally been imbued
with, the knowledge of and a high regard
for the importance and the civilising mission of
commerce both in bygone and in present times.
There is, besides, a great movement for founding
a new University in his native City of Hamburg.
Furthermore, he himself has come to Liverpool
after long experience as a teacher in one of the
youngest but now the foremost among the German
Among his students in Berlin were
Universities.
several of the younger English scholars who have
won distinction in the field of Greek and of
Ancient History.
The friendly competition and the intimate
connection between England and Germany in the
field of Classical studies is not only universally
acknowledged but also emphasized in this University
of Liverpool, her regulations enforcing that Honours
in Classics can only be taken by a student who is
able to use German authorities for his work.
So the new Gladstone Professor of Greek hopes
that, in speaking to you about Solon, the merchant,
who was at the same time a great statesman and a
poet, an undercurrent of mutual understanding,
reaching beyond a common interest in Classical
studies, will prevail and be felt at the present
moment and hereafter.
I
Now in turning to Solon, and before considering
his personality in the three aspects which call for
our attention, let us first make clear the chief facts
of his life and the state of Athens before he began
to shape her destiny.

Solon died in 561

B.c.,

advanced in years. He may

have been born about 640 or between this year and
625.
His year of office and legislation was 594, after
which he went abroad for ten years, 593/2-584/3.
All his most incisive measures were carried out in
this one year when he held the office of Archon.
Indeed it is very significant that though the powers
with which he was entrusted as public conciliator
went far beyond the limits of this office, he never
wished to be more than Archon himself.
The preceding history of this office is all we know
of the former history of Athens. Here, as elsewhere,
there had been kings in olden times; but when the
kingship lost its significance and dwindled into a
merely religious function, the real ruler in the
state was the Archon ca' goxjvY.
At first he held
office for life, but after an attempt at usurpation by
Alcmaeon, the head of the Alcmaeonids, whose
ambition was to prove a definite factor in the
evolution of Athenian history, he was appointed for
ten years. From 683 B.c. he held office for only
one year, which was designated by his name, and
hence the title Archon Eponymus. A third, the
Archon Polemarchus, had also been instituted for
purposes of war, and these three together with the
six Thesmothetae, instituted not later than the
seventh century, constituted the College of the
nine Archons under the presidency of the Archon
Eponymus. It is, however, worthy of notice that
it was in fact Solon himself with whom the collegiate
character of the Archonship really originated, for
whereas different buildings had been allotted to the
Archon, the Polemarch and the Thesmothetai,
Solon united all of them in the Thesmotheteion. 5
And the remarkable fact that the great work of
IO

arawing up the new code was carried out in less
than a year, is evidently accounted for by the help
which the legislator received, at least in minor
matters, from his colleagues, especially the
Thesmothetai.5
To speak of Solon chiefly as the legislator, is not
merely a convenient abbreviation. Solon, it is
true, was more than a legislator in the general
meaning of the term: he was the founder of
But it will not only appear
Athenian democracy.
that all his measures of constitutional reform were
embodied in his code of laws but, what is more, and
what has been emphasised in Alfred Zimmern's
brilliant book on the Greek Commonwealth, 6 Solon
was the founder of the Athenian democracy, not so
much because he gave the people power in public
policy but because he secured them justice or fair
play.
This we shall realise at once in glancing upon those
three of Solon's achievements which Aristotle, who
had Solon's poems to guide him, singled out as
specially far-reaching in the direction of democracy.7
'First and most important of all, he forbade men
to borrow money on the security of their own
persons. Secondly he allowed any one, who wished,
to exact legal vengeance for those who were suffering
wrong.' This would sound rather strange to us
if we did not know that formerly only the one who
had been wronged could himself apply to the
Areopagus showing which law had been infringed to
wrong him.8 'Thirdly, and this is what they say
gave the mass of people their greatest leverage,
there was the appeal to the people's court; for
once the mass of the people are masters of the
verdict they become masters of the constitution.'
Athens up to Solon's time had had only a very
II

modest share in the great evolution, at one
economic, social and commercial, which is
characteristic of Greek life in the eighth and
seventh centuries, and which originated chiefly
in the Ionian cities of Western Asia, when
agriculture could no longer sustain all the members
of the aristocracy on the narrow .and not always
productive fringe of the coast of Asia Minor,
inhabited by the Greeks when colonies were
founded all over the Black Sea and over the North
West coasts of the Mediterranean, except where
the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians had settled
before and prevented it.
Then riches began to pour in, and to the old
nobility of birth the distinction of wealth was added.
Agriculture and commerce, landed gentry and
merchants, came into social and political competition.
The whole standard of life began to be changed,
the ideals of the knighthood began to fade, Greek
mediaeval traditions made way for modern
views, not without a struggle, to be sure. The
Ionian inhabitants of Euboea, especially the cities
of Chalcis and Eretria, joined in this development,
in which also some Dorian communities on the
continent of Greece, especially Corinth, Megara
and Aegina were involved.
An outcome of this fermentation is the growth of
a new kind of monarchism, the tyranny. The men
who established this form of absolute government
were as a rule of noble or of mixed origin,
but, having been raised to eminence by the wave
of popularity, they were to a certain degree the
advocates of the unenfranchised classes.
As to the origin of the tyranny, an ingenious
theory has lately been started, namely, that the
commercial development which is characteristic

--

I2

of the time at which tyranny flourished in Greece,
was not only a contemporary phenomenon, but the
reason for the development of tyranny itself.9
The founder of the tyranny 'would have been
the man who turned to greatest advantage for
political purposes the unique commercial conditions
of the age in which he lived '; a theory which
certainly has its merits, but will probably not
be considered as the only explanation of this
phenomenon.
Now if Athens' share, especially in the commercial
aspect of this new development, had hitherto been
more than modest, it was not because there had
been no need for commercial activity. On the
contrary, if the mainland of Greece is stony and
lacks a liberal supply of water, 10 these drawbacks
are a peculiar feature of Attica, where the fertile
plains are as rare comparatively as in Palestine,
or rarer still.
The inhabitants of Attica, then, had to look to
commerce and industry as a means of gaining what
the soil of their native country refused to yield in
abundance. Pottery especially was taken up, and
the vases found near the Dipylon and the like, bear
ample testimony to the mastership of the Athenian
craftsmen in early times. To the workers in clay,
those in stone are to be added.
Some other classes of skilled Athenian earners are
enumerated by Solon himself in one of the poems
of his old age," the only one which has been preserved
to us completely, and in which he sums up the true
goal and aim of life and endeavour.1 2
Here the metal worker and the weaver are
mentioned along with the poets or rather reciters, the
diviners and the doctors. But side by side with
the skilled farmer the trader takes his place. And
13

the Athenian pottery at. least had begun to be
exported on a large scale along with that of Miletus
and Corinth, and in the same way as that of Crete!
in heroic times.
A general desire, moreover, for commercial
expansion must have been alive when in the seventh
century18 the colony of Sigeion was founded on the
coast of the Troad. Sigeion was situated near the
straits which led from the Aegean to the Black Sea,
and through which the commerce with the grain
of Southern Russia, to speak in modern terms, had
to :ass.

But Athens was kept from entering into free
commercial competition by her immediate neighbours, the Megareans on one side, the Aeg-inetans on
the other.
In the meantime the consequences of the new
economic departure began to bear upon the social
and political life of Athens. The smaller farmers,
who worked for the rich nobility and had to hand
over to their masters a considerable part of theproduce of their fields," ' fell into debt which was
followed by bodily servitude. The industrial and
commercial part of the population was opposed -o
the nobility, and contested their rights. Profiting
by this state of affairs, Theagenes, tyrant of Meg:ra,
tried to get the better of Athens by an escapade,
carried out by his son-in-law, a rich Athenian, named
Kylon. The Kylonians occupied the Acropolis,
and Athens would have become subject to Megara,
but for the vigilance of the Alcmaeonids. But in
overwhelming the Kylonians, the Alcmaeonids
incurred the guilt of blood, and were banished from
Athens.
The importance of this. fact and its further
consequences cannot be dwelt upon here. The
14

immediate consequences for, Athens were the
purification of the city by, Epimenides, who came
from Grete, the home of ancient legislation, and the
attempt at a mitigation of the social contrasts in
Athenian life by Dracon's code of laws.
Solon by the circumstances of his life may have
witnessed the Kylonian outrage in his youth or his
childhood. He certainly must have remembered
the institution of Dracon's laws and his constitution,
if such there was.1 5 It is worth while to bear in
mind that little more than a quarter of a century
separated Solon's from the preceding legislation.
Both were to a certain degree brought about by
the strained relations between Athens and Megara.
The chief point of quarrel between the two city
states was the island of Salamis which bars the Bay
of Eleusis. Its possession was a vital question for
the Athenians, and it was all the more ardently
defended by their adversaries.
At this point Solon's career in public life as a
poet and patriot really begins.
II
What we value most in Solon's poetry is the
insight which his verses give into his political views
and their development. He is not so much the
poet in the highest sense of the word, the conceiver
of lofty views and of striking and picturesque
metaphors, swayed by intense emotions of the
heart, which find their vent in passionate and
sounding verses: he has himself characterised the
purport of his poems, at the outset of his activity
as a politician and a poet, in a manner that cannot
be surpassed.
After a hard struggle the Megarians had at last
15

got the better of the Athenians and had definitely
occupied Salamis and, if tradition is right a law had
been passed forbidding the citizens even to mention
the name of the island.
One day, however, Solon appeared in the market
addressing his fellow citizens in an ode, the beginning
of which I am able to quote in English verse.
That this can be done here and in many following
instances is due to the kindness and ability of
Mr. R. C. Lehmann which, I am sure, will be
greatly appreciated by my audience.
I with a song on my lips, from Salamis came as a herald,
Deeming a rhythm of words better than prose in a speech !

This in truth holds good for all his poems as far
as they refer to public life.
In fact, though speeches were certainly made as
Solon himself hints, the literary form of speech had
not yet been developed; there was no prose
literature, though Draco and Solon in framing
their laws, are to be looked upon also as the
founders of Attic prose writing. The difficulties
which Solon encountered in shaping his laws are
especially referred to by Aristotle; they lay to a
great degree, though of course not entirely, in
the matter of language.
The bulk' of Solon's poems, then, were speeches
in verse and this accounts for the fact that they are
sometimes rather commonplace in their style
and that not all of Solon's metaphors are of the
same striking and suggestive vigour.
But, besides, there certainly are many qualities
in Solon's poems which are essential to the poet, and
which we shall at once discover in examining the
few other fragments which remain of his poem on
Salamis.
i6

Would I could then declare, ' Pholegandros or Sikinos owns me;
No man of Athens am I: lo, I have changed my abode.'
Yea, for a rumour would run, and a man would say to his
neighbour
' Salamis he has betrayed being of Attican breed.'
Onward to Salamis all, to fight for the beautiful island,
Onward in honour and faith, dropping the burden of shame !
(H.-C. i)

The last two lines, being evidently the conclusion
of the whole poem or speech had the effect, of forcing
the Athenians to follow Solon as their leader and to
conquer Salamis.
There is, then, a ruling passion in Solon not
concerned with his private affairs, the passion of
patriotism and of the courage it inspires, and this
passion is combined with a considerable fervour of
indignation against cowardice and lukewarmness.
As for Solon's devotion to his country, it possesses
a special feature inasmuch as Solon is, at least as far
as we can see, the first advocate of Athenian and
Attic patriotism. He considers, and to a certain
degree rightly considers, Attica as the oldest country
of the whole Ionian tribe, and he wishes to bring
Athens into a position worthy of this privilege.
He is the first author who consciously mentions the
Attic language as a separate unity ; this he does in
one of his most noticeable poems, which we shall
consider later on.
And withal Solon is the first who ever used the
Attic language for literary purposes, introducing
Attic instead of Ionic forms into his elegiac and
iambic poems, 6 thus also in the sphere of literature
anticipating the greatness of Athens, which he was
about to build up.
If this feature of his poetry sprang from his
high-minded patriotism, there is apart from that
17

a remarkable power in Solon's language, the
faculty of forming new words, which likewise
is one of the qualities that constitute a poet.
When he wishes to bring home to the Athenians
the shame of their attitude with regard to Salamis,
he forms the one word 'aXZaxuva0b'rjC,' the
relinquisher of Salamis, and pictures the ordeal of
an Athenian abroad passing through a crowd of
foreigners pointing with their fingers at him and
whispering this contemptuous word. And again,
when the poet Mimnermus of Colophon had wished
to die without previous sufferings as a man of sixty
years, Solon-whether younger or older than
Mimnermus has been much discussed, but is of very
little consequence 7-- advises him to put eighty
years instead of the sixty (H.-C. Mimn. 6; Sol. 19).
MIMNERMOS :

If, free from grief or sickness, a man might yield his breath,

When sixty years have crowned me I fain would find my death.
SOLON :

Oh let me still persuade you to cancel what you said,

Nor chide me if I show you a better way instead.
Change, change your song, sweet singer and take a longer breath;
Add twenty years to sixty before you think of death.
I would not have a death-bed where every cheek is dry ;
May there be friends who weep my loss when I shall come to
die.

Here Solon not only follows his contemporary in
the formation or application of the word sexagenarian,
it by octogenarian,
replacing
i ?covra~'rl,
3yoicovTrarfs,

but

also

addresses his fellow poet

by a name which has greatly puzzled modern
interpreters and which has only lately been shown
not to be a family name, or anything of the kind,
but a word formed by Solon in a genial way calling

Mimnermus the limpid

singer: the xtryv's otSo's

becomes a Atyvo-T6rds.

III
Another important characteristic of Solon's poems
is their reference to foreign countries visited by
their author. The travels which he undertook
after his Archonship, in search of fresh experience
as well as for the sake of trade, are thus confirmed.
But a fresh light is thrown on the growth and
development of Solon's personality, by the fact, as
yet not universally admitted, that even in his youth
long before his work as legislator, he had undertaken
voyages in pursuit of merchandise.
If we consider the allusions in the poems as
referring to his later journeys alone, we may gather
that he visited Egypt, and especially the great
emporium of Ionian and Greek commerce, the city
of Naucratis, 'near the mouth of the Canobian
arm of the Nile' (H.-C.z5); Cyrene and Cyprus, to
which Lydia must be added; not, of course, on
account of the legendary interview with Croesus,
discredited for chronological reasons even in
Plutarch's day, though he refused to reject a story
so celebrated, so well-established, so thoroughly
in harmony with Solon's character, and so worthy
of his high-minded wisdom.
For all that, we need not discard as a pure invention
the story that Croesus in his misfortunes recalled
1
words uttered by Solon," for if, as was undoubtedly
the case, Solon visited Lydia during the reign of
Alyattes, he would in all probability have been
consulted by the king, and his words of warning and
advice would be remembered afterwards in the day
of Lydia's misfortune.
'9

That Solon's advice was sought for after he had
become renowned as the legislator and reformer of
his native city, is proved by his verses to Philokypros,
King of Soloi in Cyprus.
You, may you dwell in your city, and hold a long kingship in Soloi,
Living at ease in your house, girt with your people, your
own.

But for myself, may Cypris, the violet crowned, the divine one,
Grant that I sail unscathed, swift from the glorious isle;
So shall my honour increase with her favour for helping to found
you,

Soon to be sped, as I wish, safe to the land of my sires.
(H.-C.

18)

From these verses we see that Solon had assisted
the king in founding the city of Soloi. We also see
that Cyprus and Soloi were the last stage of Solon's
ten years' absence from Athens after his Archonship, and that he returned direct to Athens with the
ship which King Philokypros manned for him.
But let us now turn to Solon's early travels.
Everyone who knows that Solon in his later years
went to sea for commercial purposes would
necessarily infer that this was not a taste acquired
in later years, after his having risen to the highest
place in the esteem of his fellow-citizens. And,
furthermore, there is ample intrinsic proof that
many of the chief measures of Solon as the statesman
and legislator could only have been initiated by a
man who was professionally versed in commercial
matters--but we are not limited to this internal
evidence alone. Plutarch in his life of Solon, which
is in great measure based on the poems of Solon or
upon sources which utilised them, " says expressly
that Solon went out for the sake of commerce as a
young man; and he gives as the reason that his father
Exekestides, had spent a good part of his fortune in
helping others and that Solon, although there would
20

have been many who would have liked to help him,
preferred to make his own way, being descended
from a noble house which was accustomed to help
others. " And it is again Plutarch who tells us
that the verse referring to Naucratis was written by
Solon not with reference to his visit after his
legislation but on a previous occasion, thus evidently
alluding to the journeys of Solon the youth. 2 '
That Solon in this way took commerce for his
vocation is significant in itself, as it shows that
Athens too was becoming affected by the general
social and economic development which had
originated in lonia.
But with Solon this step meant more. It involved
the dawn of the greatness of Athens ; for Solon, the
merchant of high statesmanship, consciously made
it his aim to open out the path for commercial
development of his native city as a condition of
political supremacy.
IV
Let us first consider the state of the ancient
world at the time when Solon carried out his
journeys in his young and also in riper years. The
downfall of Nineveh in the year 607, when Medians
and Babylonians conquered and burned the great
Assyrian capital, occurred only thirteen years before
Solon's archonship."
Let us also bear in mind that about the same
time, and possibly in the same year in which Draco's
laws were drawn up, the Deuteronomy was proclaimed in Judah.
The Western and the Eastern coast of the Aegean
were never alien to each other. The measures of
capacity which King Pheidon of Argos introduced
2I

in the Peloponnesus, and which were also used in
Athens until Solon abolished them, were identical
with those used by the Hebrews, and had evidently
been brought to Greece by the Phoenicians."
So it may be more than a mere coincidence that
at the same time when the men of the East abolished
vicarious punishment by the legislation of the
Deuteronomy, the men of the West in a tablet
contemporary with Draco's laws and sacred to the
gods of Olympia,' declared that they would no
longer see the son punished for the father, thus
proclaiming the great principle of individual
responsibility.'"
One year before Nineveh was destroyed, King
Josiah of Judah, under whom the Deuteronomy
was passed, met his fate in the Battle of Megiddo,
vanquished by King Necho II of Egypt, a member
of that dynasty to which Egypt owed her revival
after the Ethiopian invasion and the Assyrian
conquest, this restoration being prepared and
furthered by the wise rule and legislation of King
Bokchoris of Sais.
Solon, when he was in Egypt during the journeys
of his younger years, may have witnessed the
preparations for the Egyptian war against Judah. 25
The ten years of Solon's later journeys are crowded
with notable events, the war waged by King
Hophrah of Egypt and by Zedekiah of Judah
against Nebuchadnezzar, the conquest of Jerusalem
and the Battle of the Halys between King Alyattes
of Lydia, the father of Croesus and King Kyaxares of
Media.
The peace concluded between Lydia and Media,
brought about by the mediation of the Kings of
Babylonia and Cilicia, helped to some extent to set
Alyattes free to renew the attacks upon the Ionian
22

cities which had been begun by Gyges the founder
of the Mermnade dynasty. Gyges (about 66o B.c.)
had conquered Kolophon and Magnesia on the
Maiandros.
And though Smyrna and Miletos
succeeded in resisting him, still these Lydian
enmities could not fail to weaken the power of the
Ionians. Though the invasion of northern barbarians, the Kimmerians, prevented the Lydians
from renewing their attacks, still the Kimmerians
only brought new sufferings to the Ionians, and
besides it was practically certain that the Lydian
kings after once mastering the Kimmerians would
continue to harass the Ionian cities.
Solon no doubt, acquainted with the state of
affairs by the journeys of his youth, foresaw this and,
as we shall see, acted upon this insight. It must
have been a singular satisfaction to the Athenian
traveller that his forebodings came true, and that
the peace with the Medes was followed by the
final expulsion of the Kimmerians and the conquest
of Smyrna by King Alyattes (575 B.c.).

V
But Solon's attention was certainly not confined
to political events. And among the laws and
customs of the Eastern nations the state of monetary
affairs, being of great consequence to the merchant,
was sure to appeal'to him most strongly.
Here we meet the fact that although different
systems had sprung up, yet underlying all of them
there was one general system, which in some of
the countries most prominent in commerce, e.g.,
Lydia, persisted in its original form. We may call
or even the
it the Babylonian bimetallistic,
oriental trimetallistic system, a proportion being
23

fixed and officially upheld between gold, silver and
copper.
The Babylonian weight, like all the other measures
of Babylonia, was built up according to the
sexagesimal principle, sixty forming the basis of the
whole numerical notation.
The reasons for this preference of the number
sixty and the great advantages of this system cannot
be considered here. Suffice it to say that it has
astronomical, geometrical and arithmetical reasons. 26
And let us remember that every dial of a clock or
watch with its subdivision into sixty is a living
testimony to the Babylonian influence reaching
down into the present time. Now the Babylonian
pound was called a mina; sixty minas were a
talent, and even with the Greeks this proportion
of talent and mina held good. The mina was
sub-divided into sixty shekels, and the shekel was
the unit for weighing unminted gold. But since
commerce, and especially commerce in precious
metals, was international, and the sexagesimal
principle did not appeal to all the other oriental
people alike, a new mina of fifty shekels was formed
as the unit for gold, and this gold mina consequently
was 5/6 of the mina of weight.
The proportion between silver and gold arrived
at by the Babylonian priests for economical as well
as for astronomical and astrological reasons was
40:3 =13 1/3 :I.

It prevailed through the centuries, and when the
Lydians had invented the coinage of money it
regulated the Lydian and the Persian monetary
systems. Now if you have a piece of gold weighing
about a sovereign, its equivalent in silver being
more than thirteen times heavier is, of course, quite
out of the question for a piece of coin. But you
24

may arrange that ten pieces of silver according to
this proportion should be equal to one piece of
gold. A silver mina consisting of fifty such pieces
will then be 4/3 the weight of the gold mina, and
consequently, since the gold mina was 5/6 of the
mina of weight, the silver mina will be 4/3 of 5/6,
i.e., 10/9 of the mina of weight; or in other words
the mina of weight, the gold mina and the silver
mina were in the proportion of I :5/6 :5/9The two chief systems of coinage in silver, current in
Greece when Solon began to travel as a merchant,
were developments of the Babylonian silver mina,
the Pheidonian mina upon which the Aeginetan
coinage was based, 7 being I/10 higher than the

Babylonian silver mina, whereas the Euboean mina
was I/5 less, this later development being probably
due to a temporary change in the valuation of copper.
Between silver, again, and copper there was the
proportion of I2zo: i, and if I2o silver minas or
two silver talents of copper, were equal to one silver
mina of silver, then the equivalent of one talent
Thus
of copper was half a silver mina of silver.
the half mina of the silver standard, forming
the connection between silver and copper, was
even more important as a unit than the full
mina of the silver standard. It is this half mina of
the silver standard which forms the oldest weight
used by the Romans. The proportion between
the mina of weight, the mina of gold and this half
mina of silver, which was also used for copper,
would be I : 5/6 :5/9.
If, however, copper gained a higher value, being
rated by the proportion 96:I, then the equivalent
in silver would have to be lowered by I/5 ; in this
manner the Euboean silver mina, being 4/5 of the
Babylonian silver mina, originated."
25

We shall see that all these matters and proportions
were very well known to Solon, and that he applied
them in more than one direction.

VI
It is, of course, always a problem in which
moment of a statesman's career the consciousness
of his political purposes was clearly established.
For the gift of political insight and the faculty of
using the right circumstances in any given moment
certainly go very far in the case of a man who is
lifted to an important position among his fellowcitizens. But we can certainly date this consciousness
in Solon from the very moment when he undertook
a measure which, as no other, shows how intimately
the merchant and the statesman were blended
together in him.
When Solon changed the monetary system of
Athens, introducing the coinage of Euboea instead
of that of Aegina, which had hitherto been in use
in Athens, he must have been fully aware, as my
teacher Ulrich Koehler2 9 has shown, that this
involved a declaration of commercial war against
Aegina, the Dorian island in the neighbourhood of
Athens, which, in monopolising the commerce in
the Western Aegean, made any free competition
impossible for Athens.
Not that the average Athenian had felt the
necessity of such a competition; this insight on
the contrary is an essential part of Solon's merits,
though on the other hand it would be mis-stating
the facts if we considered Athens as a city devoid of
commercial aspirations before Solon's times.
The foundation of Sigeion, and the fact that
26

Solon himself turned to commerce in his young
years, would alone be sufficient to disprove such a
view.

But what Solon intended, and brought about, was
on a far higher scale. It meant breaking the
connection with, and the commercial subjection
to Aegina and joining Athens commercially to
Euboea, thus directing his fellow-citizens to take
up the intercourse and follow the path of Euboean,
that is to say, chiefly the Chalcidian and Eretrian
trade.
Thus Thrace and Macedonia, with their riches
in wood and metals, and, furthermore, those
harbours of the Black Sea where the corn of Scythia,
or to speak in modern terms, of Southern Russia,
was exported in abundance, were brought within
the scope of the commercial activity of the
Athenians.
The cities of Euboea, and especially Chalcis, also
kept up a very lively trade with the West, where
in Southern Italy and in Sicily many colonies had
been founded by their exertions.
But although Solon, far-sighted as he proved
himself to be, may have considered this side also of
the new departure, still, Corinth having the commercial sway in the West, and Aegina being the
intermediary between Corinth and the Ionian East,
his first and strongest motive for adopting the
Euboean system lay in the possibilities which
it opened out in the North and the NorthEast.so Athens was to take her stand in commerce,
and through commerce in politics, as the oldest city
state of lonia; and to realise the ambition suggested
by this claim, she was to take the place which up to
that time Miletus and the other Ionian cities had
held and which they could no longer maintain
27

owing to the ravages of the Cimmerians and the
enmity of the Lydian kings.
When some forty years later Ephesus, one of the
most powerful cities of Eastern Ionia, was conquered
by King Croesus of Lydia, and the inhabitants were
forced to leave their homes in the mountains near
the mouth of the Caystrus and to settle in the plain
near the old temple of Artemis, an Athenian (named
Aristarchus) was called from Athens to guide and
superintend the new institutions. This may be
considered as an acknowledgment of the fact that
Eastern Ionia had been overshadowed by Athens.
And since it was a struggle between Western and
Eastern Ionia, the element of race involved in this
monetary change from Dorian Aegina to Euboea
certainly was of no little weight with Solon, for
thus he rallied the forces of Western Ionia against
their kinsmen in the East.
There are many more sides to this numismatic
and metrologic change, but there, is one especially
which again shows how deeply Solon's mind was
imbued with the experience of the market both
abroad and at home. The weight used for the
standard of the coin was also naturally to be the
normal weight throughout. Now the Euboean
unit-we should say the pound--was, as we have
seen, smaller than that of Aegina, which had been
hitherto used in Athens.
But the fact that both the unit of coin and of
weight were lessened might trouble the thoughts
of the average Athenian, though in truth the
reciprocity of the decrease might have excluded
such fears. Still Solon foresaw and knew how to
meet them.
In Babylonia and throughout Western Asia a
curious custom prevailed. Kings and temples had
28

a claim to a weight higher than the regular one in
the payment of all supplies, payments and revenues
Besides the common weight there existed, then, an
increased weight, surpassing the common standard
by 1/36, 1/24 or I/20. Of these three increased
forms two were based upon the duodecimal, or
rather the sexagesimal system, whereas the last
and highest one was adapted to the decimal
system. "'
Thus throughout antiquity we find in all the
different systems of weight as well as of coinage
the combination of or the option between a common
and an increased form of the standard. When
I discovered this fact and worked out its far-reaching
consequences, I was not aware that the same curious
dualism existed in the Middle Ages: for instance,
in France under Philip le Beau, besides the Marc
du Paris, there was the Marc du Roy, surpassing it
by 1/48, and in England under Henry VII and VIII
the pound of the Tower and the pound Troy,
which was I/I5 higher. " And the existence of the
sovereign and the guinea in our own days, though
not having originated in this way, certainly points
to a similar line of development."
Now this custom could not of course have escaped
Solon's observation during his commercial travels,
and he made rather surprising use of it. Changing
the old oriental privilege of kings and priests into
a popular measure, he enacted that for the use of
the market, not the common Euboean weight
should be used, but one surpassing it by I/20, thus
introducing a royal form of this weight, but as a
help for the Athenian household; for on behalf of
the reciprocity between the unit of coin and the
unit of measure, the Athenian purchaser received
a greater quantity of goods for his coin. The price
29

of a pound of salt would, for instance, be constant,
and an increase of the weight would be a net profit
to the purchaser; or to speak in modern terms, by
paying a sovereign or any part of it, the purchaser
would obtain a guinea's worth of goods or an
equivalent proportion.
But more than this: the English pound, avoirdu-pois, by which all of us reckon in everyday life,
is nothing but Solon's mina of a raised standard,
preserved like many other ancient standards down
through the centuries to our days."
VII
Any statesman and legislator who profits by the
economic and financial conditions of a neighbouring
country, is sure not to limit himself to coins and
weights and measures, and consequently we are
by no means surprised to find that Solon's legislation
was influenced especially by that of King Bokchoris
of Egypt. Not only are his most famous economic
measure, the Seisachteia, and the very noteworthy
law punishing idleness and lack of profession referred
to this oriental source, but, what is more, the whole
legislation concerning commercial intercourse,
regulating the Law of Contracts, is reported to have
been suggested by this Egyptian Code of Law. 5
And if, as has recently been justly remarked, 6
Athens in the fifth century was able, owing to the
excellence of the Solonian Laws, to establish a
network of commercial treaties between herself and
each individual member of her league, this most
effective element of coalescence for the development
of her empire was due to the knowledge of foreign
commercial laws which Solon the merchant had
acquired in his journeys.
30

As to the law forbidding idleness it has several
other features calling for our attention. It is one
of the not very numerous laws which, apart from
those concerning capital punishment, Solon took
from the legislation of Dracon, abating the fine
prescribed by his predecessor. We see, then, that
Solon was not the first to consider oriental examples
with a view to Athenian legislation, and most
probably this older influx of Eastern legal ideas is
not restricted to Athens but may and will also have
worked upon the older Greek bodies of laws, the
Cretan laws, those of Zaleukos of Lokroi and of
Charondas of Catana. Now this law evidently bears
witness to the fact that Solon encouraged crafts
and arts, and it is very interesting to see that this
was not an entirely new departure but that Draco
had preceded him. The general result of modern
investigation, that Solon's legislation is not merely
a reversal of Draco's law,87 but partly a development
of germs which it contained, is thus confirmed.
And this very law enables us to illustrate this
relation between Dracon and Solon and the advance
of the latter beyond his predecessor. For Solon
added the law, freeing a son, whose father had not
caused him to learn a craft or trade, from the duty
of providing for his parents in old age.
And he added another far-reaching law,
encouraging immigration and the naturalising of
foreigners. Whereas, formerly citizenship could
scarcely ever be acquired by a non-Athenian, he
only forbade the bestowal of citizenship on any but
such as had been exiled from their own country for
ever, or had settled with their whole household in
Athens for the sake of exercising some manual
trade."
Solon and the statesmen who followed him
31

succeeded beyond all expectation in this line of
action. They attracted to Athens, 'a constant
stream of immigrants, and set newcomers and old
residents at work together in developing and
diffusing the national resources.'" 9
Among Solon's laws which, curiously enough,
have, to my knowledge at least, not been fully
collected and scientifically treated in recent times,
there are several other ordinances showing his
intimate knowledge of economic and commercial
life. There is, e.g., the law forbidding the engraver
of a seal to keep an impression for himself which
might have been used for purposes of forgery.
Of greater consequence is the law enforcing the
protection of the olive trees and their growth, and
forbidding their exportation ; for combining it with
another law forbidding the exportation of any other
agricultural product, we learn from it, that
Solon tried-and this successfully--to reconcile
agriculture and commerce, encouraging the growth
and the exportation of the one product which
Attica could be made to yield in abundance.
The range of these laws, then, goes far beyond the
mere interest of commerce and economics; they
concern the public welfare, which indeed is the
ruling point of view throughout Solon's legislation.
And we shall be able to appreciate the value of this
statement, when we turn to the oldest body of laws
preserved to us, the code of Hammurabi, King of
Babylonia, circ. 2000 B.c. at the latest, in which the
needs of agriculture and commerce are altogether
the principal factor.' 0
Specially characteristic of this point of view is
Solon's law inflicting severe punishment on any
member of the community who in case of political
unrest does not join one of the parties ; a principle
32

to which he himself held true, in his old age, when
Peisistratus had attained to tyranny in Athens.
Solon, being too old to take arms himself, signified
his opposition by putting his arms, shield and spear
before the door of his house. Almost as remarkable
is the ordinance which while prohibiting that the
honour of the public meal in the Prytaneum should
be conferred too often, at the same time punishes
a man who is offered this honour and refuses it.
The same point of view holds good in the
protection of youth, especially against immorality
in schools and gymnasia.
To keep the highest office, that of the Archons,
free from doubtful elements, Solon prescribed that
immorality in a citizen would cause him to forfeit
his right to this office, and an Archon who was
found in a state of inebriation was severely
punished.
Those who fell in warfare were to be publicly
interred and their families cared for. And when
we think of Pericles' funeral.speech as the grandest
testimony to the greatness and the immortal soul4 1
of Athens, let us bear in mind that it was Solon who
made it possible, not merely by the law we have
mentioned, but also because it was he who by a
law, evidently passed with special reference to the
Alcmeonids,' 2 enabled them to return to Athens.
The Alcmeonids, it is true, were banished again,
but it is Solon who definitely freed them from the
guilt of blood they had contracted and thus restored
to them the possibility of partaking in the life of their
native city state. And again, let us not forget that
it was a fatal moment in the history of Athens when
Pericles, in order to please those Athenians who
grudged to foreigners the benefits which in course
of time had accrued to the citizenship, brought
33

forward a law cutting off the influx of immigrants,
thus departing from the principle laid down by
Solon as a corner-stone of his policy. This law
was only abolished when, in the course of the
Peloponnesian War, it was too late to give an effective
increase of strength to Athens by the infusion of
new blood.
VIII
Solon was called to be Archon and conciliator
after he had composed the elegy (already quoted
above) in which he expresses his grief at the decline
of the oldest land of Ionia. ' Sorrow fills my heart,
seeing the oldest country of Ionia on the way to
her ruin,' 4 ---these are the opening lines of this
important poem, of which only a few other verses
seem to be preserved.
But another poem, dating from about the same
time, has been preserved to us glowing with love
for his native city and at the same time imbued
with wrath against the wealthy leaders of the people
whose immoderate aspirations tended to ruin the
state. It beginsNay but by Zeus his decree, by the will of the Gods everlasting
Nought can shatter our state, destined for aye to endure.
We have a great-souled Warden, our high-fathered PallasAthene.
Stretching her hands to protect us and the city from harm.
Nathless the men of the State themselves would ruin its
greatness,
Madmen, who strive to destroy, lured by the glitter of gain.
Wicked in heart are the chiefs; for the sin of their pride
overweening
Vengeance follows them fast, woe upon woe in its train.
Fools ! For the pleasure they have they take not in quiet and
order,
Over-indulge in their feasts, check not their arrogant deeds.
(H.-C. 2.)

34

Although Solon was himself convinced that the
troubles in the state were due chiefly, if not solely,
to the rich, still he would not have been the wise
and deep-sighted politician, the p o
as Aristotle characterises him,4 4 had he thought
that by merely reproaching the privileged class
he could further the welfare of his beloved Athens.
On the contrary he had to fight for each of the
parties against the other, as he did, according to
Aristotle, in the elegiac poem, which immediately
preceded his election; this is his boast in several
of the poems in which he afterwards defends his
work. 'I stood holding a mighty shield over both,
and did not allow either of them to conquer
unjustly' as he declares in one of his elegiac poems.

-;roXtgrr

(H.-C. 3.)
There were, then, also claims of the poorer classes
which Solon could not or did not care to fulfil.
The liberation of all those who had been suffering
from bodily servitude was the chief of the measures
which Solon took towards the mitigation of the
social difficulties, and it is this measure which he
himself considers as the greatest of the benefits
conferred by him on the poor. At the same time
he ordained that all outstanding debts should be
cancelled. This measure called the Seisachtheia, the
shaking off of the burden-in itself an imitation of
a step taken by King Bocchoris of Egypt-was
evidently necessary both to prevent the immediate
return of the occasion for bodily servitude, which he
had abolished for ever, and to help the smaller land
owners to free their property from mortgages. But he
disappointed the expectations of the unenfranchised,
in declining to make a new division of the land,
a measure which would have stripped the gentry
of part of their inherited property.
35

And if Solon is rightly proud of the abolition of
bodily servitude for debt, and of the Seisachtheia,

he also is deeply convinced of his merits in refusing
to touch the inherited rights of the landowners.

The reproaches of those who considered themselves
wronged by this restraint were answered by Solon
in the beautiful iambic poem already mentioned.
But I who bound the people into one,
Did I then cease from striving for the ends
For which I bound them, ere the ends were gained
Aye, but for this a witness might be called
Before the court and judgment-seat of TimeThe mighty mother of th' Olympian gods,
Black Earth herself, from whose deep bosom I
Plucked out the stakes that pinned her everywhere,
Who was a slave aforetime, but is free.
And to their Athens, to their fatherland,
The God-created, many brought I home
Who had been slaves, a human merchandise,
Some by the narrow letter of the law,
And some without a law to warrant it.
Those, too, who went as fugitives for debt,
Forgetful of their Attic mother-tongue,
Since they had wandered much and far afield;
And those, who, suffering bondage here at home,
Quaked at their masters' every change of moodAll these I freed; and this by strength I wrought,
Blending together might and right in one,
And as I promised so did I perform.
Laws too I made for good and bad alike,
Ordaining justice strict for every man.
But had some other grasped, as I, the goad,
Some evil-counselled avaricious man,
How had he held the people ? Had I willed
The things that pleased my adversaries then,
Or had I wished what their opponents planned,
Our State had been bereft of many men.
And, therefore, seeking help from every side,
I turned and twisted like a wolf at bay,
Encompassed by a multitude of hounds.
(H. -C. 32.)

36

?

IX
The Seisachtheia as well as the liberation of Solon's
fellow-citizens was, of course, a single political
measure. But the recurrence of the same difficulties,
and the future servitude of poor Athenian citizens
could only be avoided by incorporating this prohibition in the body of Solon's laws, and so we see
that ordinances which Aristotle considers as a
characteristic part of Solon's democratic institution
have been parts of his legislation, so that the
distinction between laws and polity which Aristotle
theoretically holds in his Politicsdoes not hold good
for Solon's code of law.
In fact the most important of Solon's laws must
have been those regulating the constitution; and
"
Wilamowitz, 4 is evidently right in assuming that
just this part of Solon's legislation was singled out
to be written down on columns of stone called
,cuppeC, which were set up in the oTOd /aoiXeso9,
whereas the whole of Solon's laws were originally
written down for publication on the caoves,
wooden boards painted white and put together so
as to revolve round a central pivot.
Certainly the offices and their functions, the
institution of the assembly of the people, the
EKccxn&a, the rights and duties of the council,
who had to prepare the business of the ekklesia, and
those of the old council Hill of Ares, the
'Areopagus,' had to be regulated in ordinances to
which those concerned in them could refer--and
where else should this be done except in Solon's
laws ?46

The matter ought not be open to discussion at
all, for we know that the Solonian law regulating the
37

treasurers of the goddess continued in use down to
the time of Aristotle. 47
The law is, in itself, interesting in more than
one respect. It ordains that these officials are to
be elected by lot, showing that this manner of
election was an element in Solon's constitution, as
indeed it had, to a certain degree, been in use even
before.
The treasurers of the goddess are to be sifted out
by lot from the most wealthy class of the citizens,
evidently with the intention that there should be
a sufficient guarantee in their own personal wealth
against mismanagement of the public funds.
But which was this wealthiest class of citizens,
and what meaning had the classes in Solon's
constitution ?
The population of Athens had formerly been
divided into the following three classes:knights
(i7rre),who fought on horseback ; citizens who could
provide their own armament (vy~ra)' 48; and, thirdly,
To this original distribution
the labourers (O6Tes).
a new departure had been added for the sake
of financial classification: the most wealthy of
the knights were assigned to a separate class, who,
according to the minimum of their income,
the
were called the 'five-hundred-bushellers,'
Ilevrafcoo-top &vootY-this
name in itself showing
the whole class to be of later origin than the three
other ones with their natural and merely descriptive
names. These classes evidently existed before Solon,
and were used for the purpose of a political division
of the citizens-though in which way exactly would
not be easy to tell : the question of Draco's constitution lies out of the range of our discussion to-day.
Solon certainly used these four classes in the first
place for the distribution of political rights, and for
38

this purpose he had (in his laws) to determine and
to limit them anew. Wealth or a higher income no
longer rested with the nobility, consisting merely
of landed proprietors who consumed their own
grain. The olive-growers who were to be oil-traders
at the same time had to be considered; and chiefly,
if not for their sake it was arranged that the metretes,
the measure for liquids, was considered equal to the
bushel in reckoning the income for the purpose of
dividing the classes.
Furthermore, wealth no longer being a
privilege of the nobility, those merchants who did
not deal with agricultural products, and the craftsmen, had to be taken into consideration, so both
the units of capacity were equalled to one drachma.
To the first class there belonged those citizens who
had at least an income of 500 measures in corn or
liquid productions, or of 500 drachmai. The
Knights had to have a minimum income of 300.
The Zeugitai 150, at least, according to Solon.
The lower limit of this third class was, however,
raised to 200 in later times--a fact which has given
rise to serious misunderstandings. 4 9
All those whose income did not reach the limit
of I5o belonged to the fourth class, the labourers.
The admission to the offices was graduated
according to the classes, the lower ones only being
open to the Zeugites also.
As this extension of public rights was democratic
in itself, Solon had to be careful that at least the
standard of the classes should be kept up in the
former sense.
Now the lowering of the monetary standard
would in itself, and by the principles of metrology,
have brought with it a decrease of the units of
capacity, which would have meant a considerable
39

lowering of the classes from their former standard,
and would have added greatly to the democratic effect
of Solon's reform. But even here Solon's wise
moderation found the right solution by arriving at an
increase of the measures of capacity, without changing
the base of his metrological system. A metretes
would formerly have been equal to the cube of the
older Pheidonian foot, making it about thirty-six
litres in capacity; the Solonian foot being smaller,
the metretes would have measured only twenty-six
litres, instead of which Solon made it to be one and
a half cube of his foot, the result being that the
metretes was about three litres more than the older
one and is in the same way the measure for dry
material; the medimnos having formerly been
5/4 of the metretes was made to be 4/3 of the new
one, the result being an increase of the metretes by
°
seven litres. 0
Those citizens, whose income did not reach I50
measures ordrachmai,--the thetes -onlyparticipated
in the assembly of the people, the ekklesia, by which
also the magistrates were elected, and in the courts
of justice formed out of the members of the ecclesia.
These courts-juries with a very great number of
members--served as courts of appeal for every
matter which did not come under their jurisdiction
in the first instance. Thus every matter, and
especially every decision of a magistrate, which
came to be questioned, was subject to these popular
courts of justice, and in this institution, one of the
three measures which Aristotle calls the most
democratic, the thetes participated.
X
The most important of all the Athenian offices
was that of Archon Eponymus, and Aristotle
40

distinctly and rightly points out that all the troubles
and factions had their chief origin in the struggle
5
about this office." Now since Solon was elected, as
mediator, to eliminate the causes of the troubles,
we might be sure that he would have sought for
a means of moving this office out of the range of such
civic struggles, even if there were no testimony to
this effect.
But such there is. And it is rather
curious, merely from these general reasons, that this
most important part of Solon's constitutional legislation should have been questioned by a number of
distinguished scholars." The law, as Aristotle gives
it, prescribes that forty citizens (ten from each of the
four phylae) were elected by vote, and that out of
these forty, the nine Archons, i.e., the Archon
Eponymus and his eight colleagues, were appointed
by lot.
This of course meant that the office
of the Archon had no longer the significance
connected with it before, and that the real leader
of the people was to be looked for in the
officeless, but all the more important Sluaywryoys, or
leader of the people. It also meant that the
Archon Polemarchus could no longer be the
commander-in-chief of the Athenian army for the
particular year. He now could only be a minister
of war, or even less than that, merely an official
dealing with the preparations and materials of war,
but not with strategy and tactics, which were
to be left to the Strategoi; and as to this
particular point, Solon may have had good
reasons for this change, as he himself had been the
leader in the struggle for Salamis, and had possibly
to do away with the opposition of the Archon
Eponymus then in charge. The only thing which
Aristotle is not able to tell us, because he did not
find it in his sources, was whether the Archons were
41

to be elected only out of the members of the first
or out of those of the first two classes, and having
stated before that the offices were open to the
three upper classes, according to gradation, only
the lowest offices being available for all of them,
he now goes on to show that there was such a
gradation by quoting the law concerning the
treasurers of the goddess.
This has led to the misunderstanding that the law
concerning the election of the Archons was arrived
at by Aristotle only as the result of an inference
from the later state of things, and this error has
been increased by the idea, just refuted, that Solon's
laws were not concerned with the constitution.
It is quite impossible that such a conclusion should
here be in question. For Aristotle himself relates
that after Solon the struggle for the Archonship
began anew, and we know from Thucydides and
Aristotle that the Archon was elected by vote,
under the tyranny of the Peisistratids, and that
the constitution of Cleisthenes only knew an Archon
elected by votes. It was only in the year 487 that
a mixture of vote and lot came into use for the
office of Archon.53 The only possible conclusion
which might have been drawn, if there had been
no knowledge of the Solonian Law, would then have
been that also under Solon the Archons were elected
by vote.
No, Solon's law concerning the election of the
Archons is an undoubted reality, and knowing this,
we discover another most important fact in the
constitutional history of Athens.
The change from the Archon elected by vote,
to Solon's mixed procedure, was only effected by
Themistocles in 482 B.c. It was a preliminary to
the passing of his law concerning the creation of
42

an Athenian navy, the navy that won the Battle of
Salamis; and Themistocles, the greatest Athenian
politician, appears as the continuer of the policy

of Solon, both in the way of democracy and in
recognising that the greatness of Athens lay in her
naval development. Thus a line of thought and
of noble strife for Athens' might and glory connects
the winner of the Island and the winner of the
Battle of Salamis.

XI
Now bearing in mind that we are to see in Solon
the far-sighted merchant, well acquainted with all
the principles and details bearing upon the financial
policy and the commercial usages of the East, we
are in a position to show that Solon was in truth the
first to introduce graduated taxation.-a theory
which was formerly held but has been denied in
modern times.
As August Boeckh 54 has seen, when in the case
of an emergency, an extraordinary income-tax
had to be levied, this eisphora, as it was called, was
taken by a percentage from the whole of the
minimum income of the first class, whereas the
Hippeis and the Zeugitai were only taxed according
to a part of the minimum income of their respective
classes, 1/6 of the income of the Hippeis and 4/9 of
that of the Zeugites being left out of consideration.
This is the same principle of income-tax abatement with which we are familiar in this country.
Is it too fanciful to suggest that this slight amelioration of the lot of the over-burdened taxpayer
may be traced back also to the suggestion of Solon,
5
as Grote" --though not in every respect quite
rightly--understood it ?
43

One of the chief reasons alleged against B oeckh's
most ingenious and persuasive explanation of the
fragmentary indications left to us by the ancient
writers falls to the ground as soon as we know that
the lower limit of the third class was changed in
5
post-Solonian times." Of the other objections
generally raised, the chief are that we do not know
of any eisphora before that of the year 428 B.c., during
the Peloponnesian War, and that the scale
I : 5/6 : 5/9 would be too unnatural to have occurred
and appealed to Solon.
But it certainly does not appear so to us, who have
seen that just the same progression held a significant
place in the monetary system of Babylonia and
Western Asia, with which system Solon by his
journey and by his vocation as a merchant was
acquainted. Experience teaches us that whenever
numerical gradations have to be introduced, proportions well established by former usage are
resorted to; though often unconsciously. We use
the decimal system without always realising that
it was suggested by the formation of our hands,
and the duodecimal system without thinking of
the twelve revolutions of the moon during the
solar year, which are really responsible for it.
Indeed, Aristotle himself, in the 'AOnvatov 'roXL-ia,
explains the earliest constitution of Athens in the
following way :-The state is divided into four
Each
cvXa, corresponding to the four seasons.
of them is divided into parts, the trittyes, so that
there are altogether twelve parts, as many as there
are months in the year, and these thirds and twelfths
are called cpapTpa.
Each phratria was divided
into thirty families, corresponding to the days of
the month. Aristotle is right as to the facts, but is
probably wrong in thinking that the division was
44

brought about in conscious reference to astronomical
facts. But as this custom of leaning towards
well-known proportions is to be acknowledged,
no one can be surprised that Solon chose a proportion
for his taxation which, well known as it was to every
one versed in Eastern finance, proved to be useful
for his purposes.

Furthermore, to judge the intentions of any
legislator, and especially one so far-sighted as Solon,
from the question whether a law of his has come
into force or not is, of course, to take quite a wrong
view. One might even say that the more possibilities a legislator conceived and the fewer of them
came into force, the wiser and the more far-sighted
was the legislator. So to contend that Solon could
not have had an extraordinary taxation in view
because the necessity for such a measure never
appeared-at any rate to our knowledge--until
about 170 years later, is of course quite out of the
question."
On the contrary, the fact that such
a taxation was necessary in a time of emergency,
might persuade us that Solon, seeing that Athens
would have to struggle for her greatness, could not
but take such a case into serious consideration.
Thus, historical and metrological research in
recent times enables us to see that Solon's progressive
taxation is a reality, in spite of all that has been set
forth against it.
XII
One of the greatest merits of Solon, namely, that
he resisted the temptation of establishing a tyranny
over Athens, would be cancelled if there had been
'scarcely a possibility for the development of a
tyranny, agriculture, industry and trade holding
an equal balance,' as has recently been urged in
45

connection with the theory which sees the origin
of the tyranny in capitalism.68
This would mean to underrate the merchant in
Solon and the commercial possibilities existing in
Athens about 6oo00 B.c. But besides we have an
irresistible documentary proof in a poem composed
by Solon after his Archonship, in which he defends
himself against the reproaches of his friend Phokos for
having neglected the opportunity of usurping the
tyranny in Athens; a poem, parts of which were
known before, whilst a very important fragment
has been added by the papyrus of the Athenai6n
Politeia.
Shallow-counselled was your Solon, small the wisdom that he used
When he scorned the noble offers and the gifts of God refused.
When the prey was in the meshes, which himself had fairly set,
Weak of will and reft of judgment he forgot to close the net.
Had I grasped at power and gained it, taken riches for my own,
Been a despot over Athens e'en for one short day alone,
Quite content, aye very gladly, I had yielded-can you doubt ?All my body to the flayer, while my race was blotted out.
(H.-C. 29.)

If I spared my native country, keeping still a steady course
Far removed from tyrant power and the ruthless rule of force,
My renown must shine the brighter, free from stain and free from
shame,
And above the sons of mortals stand the honour of my name.
(H.-C. 28.)
Those who came agape for plunder in the hope that they might find
Gain of gold and great possessions, each according to his mind;
Those who thought to find me hiding all my roughness of intent
In a mist of glozing language, all in vain their hopes they spent.
Now their eyes are hot against me and their favour is forbid'Tis not right, for what I promised with the help of God I did.
Other deeds too, I accomplished, not with tyrant's might and
main,
Yea I wrought them to a finish and I wrought them not in vain.
For I hold that in our country--and on this I take my standRogues and heroes are not equal when they come to share the land.
(H.-C. 31.)

46

So there was a possibility of Solon becoming a
despot of Athens, and indeed his friends expected
him to do so, and although these friends did not
understand him rightly, and possibly were of the
same set which had laid a snare for him when he
abolished the debts,5 9 still to deny the possibility of
a tyranny would, then, be to deny the philological
genuineness of a most undoubtedly genuine literary
production which in its very content, nay, in its
very wording, bears the stamp of Solon's mind and
Solon's poetry, quite apart from the authorities
through which this poem has been handed down to
us.
Here at once we have a most striking example of
the near relations between philology and history.
From the finding and deciphering of the papyrus
and its recognition as a well-known but hitherto
lost work of Aristotle, down to the estimation of
this Solonian poem as a test for the theory bearing
upon an important feature of ancient political
history, where is the boundary line between philology
and history ?
But the frame of our investigation has had to be
stretched much beyond this intimate connection

between Greek history and Greek philology.
A much-neglected auxiliary

science of history,

metrology, the knowledge of weights and
measures and of the monetary systems based upon
these weights, has proved indispensable for the
philological as well as the historical understanding
of very vital points in the information which the
ancient writers have handed down to us concerning

Solon.
Coins and weights and measures are implements
of commerce, which, like commerce itself, are inter-

47

national, and were even more so in ancient times.
Comparative metrology, then, helps us to scrutinise
the history of ancient commerce. And how much
ancient Greek life really depended on commerce has
lately been shown, and is being more and more
recognised in our days. It will, I hope, also have
appeared in what I have been allowed to lay before
you to-day.
Commerce, however, prepares the ground for
the influx of thought; and the Greeks have never
withheld themselves from foreign influences.
In fact, the greatness and peculiarity of Greek
culture does not consist in its independence of
foreign thought, but in the way in which the
Greeks assimilated what they had received, so that
it became a part of their own being, and reproduced
it in a shape bearing the stamp of their genius. 6 o
We must also bear in mind that the Ionians, who
were the pioneers in the development of Greek
commercial and social life and of the Greek
philosophy which enlightened the world and
continues to enlighten it to this very day, were, to
a great part, politically members of great oriental
empires--first the Lydian, then the Persian-which
depended for their civilisation to a very high degree
upon the achievements of Babylonia.
Greek philology and Greek history cannot be
separated from ancient oriental history, and if we feel
ourselves indebted to Greece for the highest attainments of our own culture, we must never forget
that much of what Greece has shaped and given us
has its roots and sources in Ancient Egypt and
Ancient Babylonia.
If the study of Greek is conducted in all our
Universities, and especially in this great commercial
centre of Liverpool, in the large-minded spirit
48

suggested by all these associations, and also with
the depth and thoroughness which every serious
study demands, then we may feel justified in claiming
for our Greek studies and for the University of
whose work they are an intrinsic part, the protection
of the great-souled warden, our high-fathered
Pallas Athene :Toil yp

peydOvpo

Eriaorroo o/ptpo7rprl
ex".
HaXac 'AOrval Xeipac vrepOev

49

NOTES
i. Fragments of Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho, Corinna,
Pindar might be added as well as other fragments of the older
Greek dramatists. For selections of the former see E. Diehl,
Supplementum Lyricum (1908).
2. E. Kornemann, Klio, II, 1902, p. 141 if, III (1903), p. 74 if,
IV (1904), 88 if, V (1905), 317.

3. Especially Caesar's writings, but compare also the lost
autobiographies of Tiberius, Claudius and other Roman Emperors
and statesmen. See G. Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie,
I, Leipzig, 1907.

4. Aristotle, Ath. Pol., 5.
5. Ath. Pol., 3, 5. Note also that Draco was himself one of
the Thesmothetai.
6. Op. cit., p. 128 if.
7. A1th. Pol., 9, r. I here followed the translation given by
Zimmern.
8. Ath. Pol., 4, 4. Cf. Alfred Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth (I911),

131

if.

9. P. Ure, 'The Origin of the Tyranny,' 7ournal of Hellenic
Studies (J. H. S.), XXVI (1906), 131 if.
io. Alfred Zimmern, Op. cit., p. 36 f.
II.

H.-C., 12.

12. Cf. U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff,
Athen (1893), II, 314-

Aristoteles und

13. To assume that Sigeion was not founded before the time
of Peisistratus (so Beloch, Busolt and recently Ure, 7. H. S.,
XXVI, 135, n. 44) would be a mistake. Alcaeus and Pittacus,
who certainly flourished about and before 6oo, fought against
the Athenians in the Troad, and even the well-known Sigeian
inscription written in Ionic and in Attic is certainly not much,
if at all, younger than 600 u.c. Cf. also Ed. Meyer, Geschichte d.
Altertums,. II, p. 636, 644 f.
14. On the &c7'rp.op(t)ot, see Ath. Pol., 2, 2. Plutarch,
Solon, and Herychios, s. v. According to Aristotle,
rav Tv
r>pyc woroWy
OwoOV (scil. 7'PV &,c'u)
/plcr

7r-v

rov
e~ra

ca'rc

7rXovooW

aypov.
According to Plutarch, EyecOpyovv eceivoe
7iov yevo0peyOV TeXOvreV. F. E. Adcock, Klio, XII
50

(1912), 2, n.

1,

remarks, that Aristotle seems to him to 'say the

same as Plutarch' (?),' whether he is right is another matter.'
15. Of Draco's constitution I have treated on p. 165 if, of
my Griechische Geschichte his zur Schlacht bei Chaironeia
in Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft, herausgegeben von
A. Gercke und C. Norden, vol. III, p. 2, Izo.

16. Solon, of course, in his elegiac poems used the epic
language to a great extent, and in his iambic poetry he could
not but imitate to a certain degree the example set by his
Ionian predecessors, but on the other hand it seems certain that
Solon consciously introduced Attic forms into his poetry. His
original language contains Ionisms, to be sure, and these caused
ancient copyists and modern editors to transform Attic forms
into the corresponding Ionic forms throughout.
But the
discovery of the papyrus of the Athenaion Politeia has shown
that Solon used i~ purum, where the Ionians have q. So in the
Iambic poem quoted on p. 36, the papyrus has plav which is
changed into /31 v, H.-C. 32, 16. Cf. Thumb, Handbuch der
Griechischen Dialekte and v. Christ-Schmid, Geschichte der
griechischen Literatur, 1912, S. 25 f.

17. See my Griechische Geschichte, p. 72.
18. Cf. A. Zimmern, p. 176 and 22o f.
19. That most probably the Atthis of Androtion is the
common source of the Solonian chapters of the Athenaion
Politeia and of Plutarch's Life of Solon (in which Androtion
is quoted among others), has been shown with great probability
by F. E. Adcock, Klio, XII, I ff. Hermippus, then, who is generally
acknowledged as being the immediate authority both for
Plutarch and for Diogenes Laertius and their lives of
Solon, must have had Androtion for one of his chief sources.
20. Plutarch, Solon, 2. About Solon's youthful travels, which
are often overlooked, see my remarks, Klio, II, 334.
21. Plutarch, Solon, 26, cis ica "poTrepov auords b o~ "
NelXov r spoxoow KavcPto9 yyvOev aclttr,
See H. Prinz, Funde aus Naukratis, Klio, Beiheft VII, p. 4.
22. The destruction of Nineveh must have made a great
impression upon the Greeks. It is, in fact, almost the only
event of the history of Assyria that is really known to Herodotus.
Nearly all his other information concerning Assyria and the
Assyrians refer in truth to Babylonia and the Babylonians, this
being due, as I have pointed out (Cf. Wochenschrift fur Klassische
51

Philologie, 1900, 962 f, n. 6; Klio, I [1900], 270 ff; VII [1907],

447, n. 5), to the fact that under Darius, Assyria and Babylonia
formed one satrapy which was generally called Assyria but had
Babylon for its capital. Thus the Logographoi and Herodotus,
where he followed them, seem justified in speaking of the
Assyrians as Babylonians.
23. This is shown by Epiphanius, De mensuris et ponderibus,
(Metrologici Scriptores, ed Hultsch, I, 259 f), as I shall shortly
prove.
24. A. Zimmern, Op. cit., p. 101 f.
25. But it is more probable that the foreign countries were
at peace at the time when Solon visited them. Some data for
the chronology of Solon's journeys might even be gained through
this consideration.
26. For the origin of the Babylonian sexagesimal system see
my papers: Uber das babylonische metrische System und dessen
erbreitung, lerhandlungen der physikalischen Gesellschaft zu
Uber die Beziehungen
Berlin, Jahrgang 8, (1889), No. 15.
zwischen- Zeit und Raummessung im babylonischen Sexagesimalsystem, Klio, I (1901), 381 if. Zur Entstehung des Sexagesimalsystems und des sexagesimalen babylonischen Liingenmaasses,
Klio, I, 481 ff. Compare also the papers quoted in notes 28 and 31.
We are justified by Herodotus' statement, III, 89 if. and by a
number of other considerations in referring the fixed
proportion between silver and gold to the Babylonians.
As to the proportion between silver and copper, it probably
That is
originated with the Egyptians, (see Note 28).
why I speak of the B a b y 1 o n i a n bimetallistic, but of the
orienta 1 trimetallistic system, although the proportion of
120 : I is an outcome of the Babylonian sexagesimal system. For
bimetallistic
the origin and existence of the 'Babylonian'
system, as first developed by Mommsen and Brandis, see my
remarks and papers : Verhandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen
Gesellschaft, 1895, 434; 1896, 447 ff. Die Sonderformen des
(in collaboration with
' babylonischen ' Gewichts-systems
K. Regling), Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenliindischen Gesellschaft, 63 (1909), 701 ff. Zum Wertverhiltnis von Gold und
Silber, Klio, X (1910), 476 ff. Herodot's Berechnung der
2,
persischen Tribute unter Darius, Klio, XII (1912), Heft z
pp. 240-248.
27. See below, n. 31.

z8.

For the relation of silver and copper, and the origin of
52

the Euboean system, see p. 2o8 [44 ff.] of my treatise : Das
altbabylonische Maass- and Gewichtsystem als Grundlage der antiken
Gewichts-Mgnz-und Maassysteme (Actes du 8° Congras International des Orientalistes, Section Semitique (b), (1893), and
p. 124 ff. of my paper: Zur metrologischen Systematik, Berliner
Zeitschrift fur Numismatik, XXVII (1909), I ff. referring to E. F.
Haeberlin, Die metrologischen Grundlagen der iltesten mittelitalischen Miinzsysteme, ibid. p. I ff. Of the two systems of the
Babylonian weight, the heavy and the light one (the latter being
just half of the former in all its units), I have only considered the
light one in the text (although the heavy system is the original
one). Note, however, that, just as the light half ' silver mina'
is the equivalent of a light 'silver talent ' of copper, so the light
'silver mina' is the equivalent of a heavy 'silver talent' of
copper. This is important for the origin of the Euboean mina,
as mentioned in the text.

117

29. Mitteilungen des deutschen archaeologischen Instituts zu
Athen, X, 151 ff. The identity of the Euboean and the Athenian
standard, recently doubted by P. Gardner, The earliest coins of
Greece proper (from the Proceedings of the British Academy,
vol. V), p. 32 (cf. also p. I6 f.), is proved by the conditions of
the treaty between the Romans and Antiochus III of Syria;
cf. Hultsch, Griechische und ri'mische Metrologie' p. 2o 4 . The
Solonian coinage is probably represented among the so-called
Wappenminzen of the Euboean standard (so also Gardner l.c.
p. 27). But even if Athens had begun to strike her own coins
according to the Euboean standard considerably later, and had
only used Euboean coins to begin with, our notion of Solon's
reform would still hold good.
30. Note that the commercial competition and antagonism
between Athens and Corinth was one of the chief reasons of the
Peloponnesian War.
31. Uber altbabylonisches Maass und Gewicht und deren
Wanderung, Verhandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen Gesellschaft, 1889, p. 245-328, furthermore, the treatises quoted in
n. 28, and Gewichte aus Thera (in collaboration with F. Hiller von
Gaertringen), Hermes, 36 (1900), II3 if, see especially the schedule
before p. IIz. In these the discovery of the common norm of
the Babylonian weight, which is at the bottom of all the most
important weights of antiquity, has been evolved. The
co-existence of the common and the 'Royal' weight has been
acknowledged by F. Hultsch, Die Gewichte der Altertums (1897),
E. F. Haeberlin (see n. 28), G. F. Hill and B. V. Head (see Historia
53

Nummorum, New Edition [I91], p. XXIV if). The Pheidonian
weight, as used in Athens before Solon (see Zur 'AO vaiov
7roktTea, Hermes,XXVII [1892], 530 ff, especially pp. 538 ff. and
P. 551 f.), belongs to the system of the common norm, and to this
Androtion refers (Plutarch, Solon, 15), but the coins of Aegina
generally show one of the royal forms of the same weight, and
Aristotle, in Ath. Pol., X, has possibly in mind the relation
between the Attic and Aeginetan standard, as usual in his days,
Ioo drachmai of 4,366...(4,32 g., see Hermes, XXVII, p. 535) go
Both
being equal to 70 drachmai of 6,238 (6,17) g.
Androtion's and Aristotle's views must be enucleated from
amongst statements that are partly erroneous.
32. K. Regling, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlindischen
Gesellschaft, LXIII (1909), 703.

33. ' The guinea, so called from the Guinea gold, out of which
it was first struck, was proclaimed in 1663, and to go for twenty
shillings; but it never went for less than twenty-one shillings.'
(Pinkerton).
34. On the royal form of the Solonian or Euboean weight
(increase by 1/20), as stated by Aristotle, Ath. Pol., Io : d'rolo-e
6 scat oraOc rps Too vt/pol.Ja, T[p]er /ad ;cov ra ,vavr,
velcOflo-av
[a T]pe?
layovo-'a
ical dtreE
TO TXavTo,
3
ra8ol , see
T
rowe dXXot~ov
vaL
T
o raTr)pe Ica'
C. F. Lehmann-Haupt, Uber eine erhohte Form des solonischen Gewichts, Verb. Berl. anthropol. Gesellsch., 1892, p. 582,
Hermes, XXXV (1906), 636 if. G. F. Hill, Numismatic Chronicle,
XVII (1897), p. 297. The pound avoir-du-poids equal to a
' royal' form of the Euboean-Attic weight: see the schedule in

Hermes, XXXVI (note 31 above) sub II (increase by 1/24).

35. For Solon's laws see the abstract in my Griechische
Geschichte, p. 21 f.
36. A. Zimmern, Op. cit., 184.
37. Cf. pp. 21 and xo2 of my Griechische Geschichte.
38. Plutarch, Solon, 24.
39. A. Zimmern, Op. cit., 348.
40. See my treatise, Babyloniens Kulturmission einst und
jetzt (1893), p. 43 if, and cf. Hammurabi'sCode, The Ninetsenth
Century and After (Dec., 1903), p. 1035. The 43 years of
Hammurabi would be 2194-2152 B.C., at the earliest, they cannot
have begun later than about 1980 B.c. See Klio, III (1893),
cf. X (1910), 476 ff.
135 if. (especially 157), VIII (1908), if.

54

and furthermore, among others, A. Ungnad, Zeitschr. d. deutsch.
mnorgeniind. Gesellschaft, 61 (19o7), 714 ff.
41. ' . . .ihres verginglichen kleinen Vaterlandes unsterbliche, weltumfassende, weltheherrschende Seele'; Ulrich von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Griechische Trag'dien, Band III,
p. 194.
42. Plutarch, Solon, 19. Cf. my Griechische Geschichte, p. 22.
43. Ath. Pol., 5, I; H.-C. 27a, H.-C. 27b and c, probably
belong to the same poem.
44.

Thuc., VI, 54, Ath. Pol.,

ii,

2;

12,

I.--F. E. Adcock,

Klio, VI, 5.

45.

See Aristotle und Athen, I, p. 45.

Cf., p. 47, n. IO.

46.

See my Griechische Geschichte, pp. 21 and 107 f.
47. Ath. Pol., 8, I, 47, I.
ae
48. The right meaning of Evyiry has been pointed out by
C. Cichorius, Zu den Namen der attischen Steuerklassen in Griechische Studien, Hermann Lipsius dargebracht, Leipzig (1894),
pp. 135-140.

The

evy,lf

is not he who has his own yoke of

oxen, although of course, the peasants would originally be the
chief, if not the only members of this class.-After the
development of the Athenian navy the Thetes acted as rowers
in the triremes and thus became a very important factor in the
national armament.
49. See my Griechische Geschichte, p. 107 if.
50.

eo

Ath. Pol., 10,
i
'T&v

e7r'

QteL8oEoeLv,

ice vov yap EyEvcro.

.

. Ta ,,ETpa

as explained by me, Zeitschrift der

Deutschen MorgenlandischenGesellschaft, 63 (1909), p. 728 f, n. 5.
51i. Ath. Pol., 13, z.
52. For the following see my essay, Schatzmeister - und
Archontenwabl in Athen, Klio, VI, 304 f. I cannot share the
view taken by F. E. Adcock, Klio, XII, 6 f. Cf. foil. note.
53.

ipxov'ro

Aristotle, Ath. Pol., 22, 5...e7st TEAecrivov

(the year might be also 486/5, see Klio, VI [90o6], 308, n. 4),
Eivap Evo-av ToVScvva
3
Vr0 j T v
fl/oTv

iapxovas Ei

reYTa/0oo-0Lv

rpocpL evTe?, 1o by each of the old

8s4)ot,

Twv 7rpoicpLBEvrov
(instead

of

the

40

vX ai, we have here the

by the
1oo being pre-elected from each
Kleisthenian
vuXj) TOTE /ETar TfV Tvpavvt8a 7rpTov. of &
7porTpot (s c. a f ter t h e tyran n y) 7rvTre
av aipEoi.
irpoicpto-ts,

55

54. See Die Staathaushaltung der Athener, Dritte Auflage,
herausgegeben und mit Anmerkungen begleitet von Max
Frinkel, I, p. 586 ff., II. For the foll, see Das Mindesteinkommen
der Zeugiten und die solonischen Timemata, p. o107-110o of my
Griechische Geschichte.
55. History of Greece, vol. III (1869), p. I19 ff.
56. See above, p. 39.
57- See my remarks, Hermes, 35 (19oo), 638, n. i ; Kho, VI,
p. 30958. See above p. 13.
59. Aristotle, Ath. Pol., 6, 2-4. Plutarch, Solon, 15
60. Cf. my Griechische Geschichte, p. 6.

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