From N.S. Gill,
Your Guide to Ancient / Classical History.
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Such power I gave the people as might do, Abridged not what they had, now lavished new. Those that were great in wealth and high in place, My counsel likewise kept from all disgrace. Before them both I held my shield of might, And let not either touch the other's right.
- Plutarch's Life of Solon

First coming to prominence, in about 600, for his patriotic exhortations when the Athenians were fighting a war with Megara for possession of Salamis, Solon was elected eponymous archon (the magistrate whose name the year is known by) in 594/3 B.C. and then, perhaps, again about 20 years later. Solon faced the daunting task of improving the condition of debt-ridden farmers, laborers forced into bondage over debt, and the middle classes who were excluded from government, while not alienating the increasingly wealthy landowners and aristocracy. Because of his reform compromises and other legislation, posterity refers to him as Solon the lawgiver.

In the eighth century, rich farmers began exporting their goods, olive oil and wine. Such cash crops required an expensive initial investment. The poorer farmer was more limited in choice of crop, but he still could have long continued to eke out a living, if only he had either rotated his crops or let his fields lie fallow.

When land was mortgaged, stone markers (hektemoroi) were placed on the land to show the amount of debt. During the seventh century, these markers proliferated. The poorer, wheat farmers lost their land. Laborers were free men who paid out one sixth of all they produced. In the years of poor harvests, this wasn't enough to survive. To feed themselves and their families, laborers put up their bodies as collateral to borrow from their employers. Exorbitant interest plus living on less than five sixths of what was produced made it impossible to repay loans. Free men were being sold into slavery. At the point at which a tyrant or revolt seemed likely, the Athenians appointed Solon to mediate.

Solon, the first Athenian literary figure whose name we know, came from an aristocratic family which traced its ancestry back ten generations to Hercules, according to Plutarch. Aristocratic beginnings did not prevent him from fearing that someone of his class would try to become tyrant. In his reform measures, he pleased neither the revolutionaries who wanted the land redistributed nor the landowners who wanted to keep all their property intact. Instead, he instituted the seisachtheia by which he canceled all pledges where a man's freedom had been given as guarantee, freed all debtors from bondage, made it illegal to enslave debtors, and put a limit on the amount of land an individual could own.

Plutarch records Solon's own words about his actions:

The mortgage-stones that covered her, by me Removed, --the land that was a slave is free;
that some who had been seized for their debts he had brought back from other countries, where
--so far their lot to roam, They had forgot the language of their home;
and some he had set at liberty,--
Who here in shameful servitude were held.

Sources:

• J.B. Bury. A History of Greece
• Plutarch's Life of Solon
• Richard Hooker's Ancient Greece: Athens
• John Porter's Solon
• University of Keele's Classics Department's Athenian Democracy (www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cl/iahcla~7.htm - accessed 01/02/2000)

Next: Solon's Constitution

Features on Democracy in Ancient Greece and the Rise of Democracy

Features on Democracy in Ancient Greece and the Rise of Democracy