...it wasn’t until fall of '15 that I encountered the name - Solon - once again, in an excellent history book by the United States Medal of Honor recipient Will Durant. Heroes of History: A Brief History of Civilization from Ancient Times to the Dawn of the Modern Age. Durant, who was accosted to write history television for his prowess, and he truly does make history exciting with his writing, says starting on page 100:
“the
peasants of Attica” [Ancient Greece] “approached, in the 7th century
D.C., a condition dangerously like that of the French peasantry twenty-five
hundred years later. ‘A few proprietors,’ wrote Aristotle, ‘owned all the
soil,’ and the cultivators, with their wives and children, were liable to be
sold into slavery if they failed to pay the interest on their debts. Many
peasants struggled on by mortgaging their land at high interest; if they found
themselves unable to pay, they fled to the towns and surrendered themselves as
serfs to the financiers. Rural poverty in Attica became so great that war
seemed to many peasants a secret blessing, since it might win more land for
colonization and leave fewer mouths to be fed.
As
the seventh century B.C. approached its close, ‘the disparity of fortune
between the rich and the poor,’ says Plutarch, ‘had reached its height, so that
the city’ of Athens ‘seemed to be in a truly dangerous condition, and no means
of freeing it from disturbances… seemed possible except a despotic government.’
The poor began to talk of violent revolt, and a complete redistribution of
wealth. The rich, unable any longer to
collect the debts legally due them, and angry at the challenge to their
property and their savings, invoked ancient laws, supported the harsh legislation
of Draco (620 B.C.), and prepared to defend themselves against an uprising that
threatened all property, all established order, even civilization.
SOLON
It
seems incredible that at this perilous juncture – so often recurring in history
– a man was found who, without any violence of speech of deed, was able to
persuade the rich and the poor to a compromise that not only averted social
chaos, but established a new and more humane political and economic order for
the entire remainder of free Athens’ career. Solon’s peaceful revolution is one
of the encouraging miracles of history.
His
father was a eupatrid of purest blood, who, according to Plutarch, ‘ruined his
estates in doing kindnesses to other men.’ Solon, left to his own resources,
consoled himself wisely: the riches of the rich ‘are no greater than his whose
only possessions are stomach, lungs, and feet that bring him joy, not pain; the
blooming charms of lad or maid; and an existence ever in harmony with the
changing seasons of life.’ He took to trade, and became a successful merchant
with far-flung interests and a rising reputation for intelligence and
integrity. He was not yet forty-five when in 594 B.C., he was chosen archon
eponymos (technically, representing a particular locality), and, with the
consent of all classes and regions, was entrusted with dictatorial powers to
calm the class conflict, draw up a new constitution, and restore stability to
the state.
He
disappointed the extreme radicals by making no move to redivide the land; such
an attempt would have meant civil war, chaos for a generation, and the rapid
return of inequality. But by his famous Seisachtheia
(Removal of Burdens), Solon canceled, says Aristotle, ‘all existing debts,
whether owing to private persons or to the state,’ and so at one blow cleared
Attic lands of all mortgages. All persons enslaved or attached for debt were
released; those sold into servitude abroad were reclaimed and freed; and such
enslavement was forbidden for the future. The rich protested that this legislation
was outright confiscation, but within a decade opinion became almost unanimous
that the act had saved Athens from revolution.
More
lasting than these reforms were those historic decrees that created the
Solonian constitution. Solon prefaced them with an act of amnesty, freeing or
restoring all persons who had been jailed or banished for political offenses
short of trying to usurp the government. He divided the free population of
Attica into four groups according to their wealth, and levied the rough equivalent
of an annual income tax of 12 percent on the first class, 10 percent on the
second class, 5 percent on the third, nothing on the fourth. Feudalism was
replaced by a frank plutocracy, but the new constitution made several moves
toward democracy. It opened the Ecclesia, or National Assembley, to all
citizens regardless of wealth, and gave it the authority to choose the archons
(from the first class) and to hold them subject to scrutiny and censure. All
citizens were eligible to selection by lot (as a means of evading the power of
wealth) to a heliaea, a grand jury of
6,000 members, which served as a supreme court on all matters except murder and
treason, and as a court of appeals from the decision of any magistrate.
Even
in the risky realm of morals and manners Solon offered laws. Persistent
idleness was made a crime, and no man who lived a life of debauchery was
permitted to address the Assembly. He legalized prostitution, and established
public brothels licensed and supervised by the state. He enacted a modest
penalty of 100 drachmas (dollars) for the violation of a free woman, but anyone
who caught an adulterer in the act was allowed to kill him there and then.
He
made it a crime to speak evil of the dead, or to speak evil of the living in
temples, courts, or public offices, or at the games; but even he could not tie
the busy tongue of Athens, in which gossip and slander seemed essential to
democracy….
Meanwhile
the spread and profits of Athenian commerce were promoting Athenian industry,
and the expanding business class resolved to end the political supremacy of the
landed aristocracy. Education spread, and orators found audiences receptive to
calls for wider public rule. In 507 B.C., Cleisthenes, himself the grandson of
a dictator, established Athenian democracy in the form that it kept till 338
B.C. Supreme authority was placed in the Council of 501, to which every
propertied citizen who had reached the age of thirty was appointed by rotation
for a year’s term. This council supervised the administrative bureaucracy,
determined what matters should be submitted to the Assembly, and served as the
final court in law. Every citizen – some 30,000 men – had the right to attend
the Assembly; 6,000 sufficed for a quorum. Never before had the world seen so liberal
a franchise with so wide a spread of political power.
The
Athenians were exhilarated by this leap into sovereignty. From that day they
knew the zest of a widening freedom in action, speech, and thought; and from
that day they led all Greece in literature, philosophy, and art, even, for a
time, in statesmanship and war. When the greatest empire of that age – the
Persian that had conquered everything from Afghanistan to Egypt – decided to
lay tribute upon the scattered cities of Greece, it forgot that in Attica it
would be opposed by men who owned the soil they tilled, and who manned the
state that governed them.”
How epic is
that? So, it was pretty, pretty epic. Solon truly mitigated an inequity, an
enormity of class warfare unheard of in any time in the whole history of
everything, really. His efforts are legendary, and that’s why I echo Durant’s
words...
