Where not indicated, the translations are from the Loeb Classical Library
. . . and the great hall gleams with bronze : the
whole ceiling is dressed for the war-god with bright
helmets, down from which nod white horse-hair
plumes, adornments for men’s heads. Bright
bronze greaves hide the pegs they hang on,
defence against a strong arrow ; there are
corslets of new linen and hollow shields thrown
the floor. Beside them are swords from Chalcis and
many belts and tunics.
These we have been unable to forget ever since we
first undertook this task.
Aristotle, Athenian Constitution
2. After that, there was civil strife for a long time between the nobility and the common people. For the whole political setup was oligarchical, and, in particular, the poor together with their wives and children were serfs of the rich. They were called Pelatae and Hectemori [“sixth-parters”], for it was at this rent that they cultivated the land of the wealthy. All the land was in the hands of a few, and if the serfs did not pay their rent, they and their children could be sold into slavery. All loans were contracted upon the person of the debtor, until the time of Solon, who was the first to become a leader of the people. The hardest and most hateful feature of the political situation as far as the many were concerned was their serfdom. But they also nursed grievances in all other respects, for they had, so to speak, no share in anything.
6. As soon as Solon had been entrusted with full powers to act, he liberated the people by prohibiting loans on the person of the debtor, both for the present and for the future. He made laws and enacted a cancellation of debts both private and public, a measure which is commonly called seisachtheia, [the shaking-off of burdens], since in this way they shook off their burdens.
3. He divided the population, according to property qualifications, into four classes as they had been divided before – namely, Pentacosiomedimni, Knights, Zeugitae, and Thetes. He distributed the higher offices, namely, those of the nine Archons, the Treasurers, the Poletae, the Eleven, and Colacretae so that they were to be held by men taken from the Pentacosiomedimni, the Knights, and the Zeugitae, and assigned the offices to them in proportion to their property qualifications. To those who belonged to the census of the Thetes, he gave only a share in the Assembly of the People and in the law courts. A person belonged to the census of the Pentacosiomedimni if he obtained from his own property a return of five hundred measures of dry and liquid produce, both of them reckoned together. If he had an income of three hundred measures, or, as others say, if he was able to keep horses, he was rated a Knight; and as confirmation of the latter explanation they adduce the name of the class [“Knights”] as being derived from the fact mentioned, and some ancient votive offerings. For on the Acropolis there is a statue of Diphilus with the following inscription:
Anthemion, the son of Diphilus, has dedicated this statue to the Gods, when from the status of a Thes he had been raised to the status of a Knight.
And a horse stands beside him in testimony of the fact that the status of a Knight means this [that is, the ability to keep a horse].
In spite of this, it is more probable that his class also, like that of the Pentacosiomedimni, was distinguished by measures. To the census of the Zeugitae belonged those who had an income of two hundred measures (liquid and dry). The rest belonged to the census of the Thetes and had no share in the magistracies. Consequently, even today when the superintending officer asks a man who is about to draw the lot for an office to what census class he belongs, nobody would ever say that he is a Thes.
10. As far as his legislation is concerned, these appear to be its democratic features; but, even before his legislation, he had effected the abolition of debts and afterwards the augmentation of the measures, the weights, and the coin. For it was under his administration that the measures became larger than those of Pheidon, and the mina, which formerly had had a weight of seventy drachmae, was increased to a full hundred. The original type of coin was that of the double drachma. He also introduced trade weights corresponding to the coinage at the rate of sixty-three minae to the weight of a talent, and proportional parts of the three additional minae were apportioned to the stater and the other units of weight.
12. That this was Solon’s attitude is generally acknowledged, and it is also confirmed by the following passages from his own poems:
To the common people I have given such honor and privilege as is sufficient for them, granting them neither less nor more than their due.
For those possessed of power and outstanding through wealth I had equal regard, taking care that they should suffer no injury.
Firmly I stood, holding out my strong shield over both of them, and I did not allow either party to triumph over the other in violation of justice.
2 In another passage he makes clear in what way one should deal with the common people:
The people will follow the leaders best if it is neither given too much license nor restrained too much.
For satiety breeds insolence when too great prosperity comes to men lacking right judgement.
3 Again, in another place, he speaks of those who wished to redistribute the land:
Those who gathered, setting their minds on plunder, nourished excessive hopes.
Every one of them expected to win great riches, and believed that I was wheedling with smooth words but would finally come out with a revolutionary plan.
Idle were their expectations. Now they are irate against me and they look at me askance as if I were their enemy.
This they should not do. For, with the help of the Gods, I have accomplished what I promised.
Other things I did not vainly undertake.
I find no pleasure in achieving anything by the forceful methods of a tyrannical regime, nor would it please me to see the noble and the vile have an equal share of the rich soil of our fatherland.
4 Again, about the cancellation of debts and about those who formerly had been slaves but then were freed in consequence of the seisachtheia, he says:
Which of the aims because of which I gathered the people did I abandon before I had accomplished it?
My best witness before the tribunal of posterity will be the great mother of the Olympian Gods, black Earth.
For I removed the markstones of bondage which had been fastened upon her everywhere; and she who had then been a slave is now free.
I brought home to Athens, to their fatherland, many Athenians who, lawfully or unlawfully, had been sold abroad, and others who, having fled their country under dire constraint of debts, no longer spoke the Attic tongue – so wide had been their wanderings.
I also restored to freedom those who here at home had been subjected to shameful servitude, and trembled before their masters.
These things I accomplished by the power, which I wielded, bringing together force and justice in true harmony, and I carried out my promise.
I enacted laws for the noble and the vile alike, setting up a straight rule of justice for everybody.
Yet, if another man, of evil intent and filled with greed, had held the goad as I did, he would not have held the people back.
For if I had been willing to do what their opponents planned for people at that time, or again what their opponents planned for them, this city would have been deprived of many of her sons.
For this reason I had to set up a strong defense on all sides, turning around like a wolf at bay in the midst of packs of hounds.
5 And again, reproaching both parties for the attacks which they afterwards directed against him, he says:
If I must express publicly my just rebuke, I have to say that the common people would never have seen in their dreams what they now enjoy….
And those who are privileged and powerful might well praise me and call me their friend;
For, he says, if someone else had obtained such an exalted office,
He would not have held the people back and would not have rested until, by shaking up the state, he would have got the butter from the milk for himself.
But I set myself up as a barrier between the battle line of the opposing parties.
16. As said before, Pisistratus administered the state in a moderate fashion, and his rule was more like a constitutional government than like a tyranny. For he was benevolent and kind, and readily forgave those who had committed an offense; he even advanced money to the poor to further their work so that they could make a living by farming. In doing this he had a twofold purpose: first, that they might not stay in the city but live scattered all over the country; secondly, that they might be moderately well off but fully occupied with their own affairs so that they would have neither a strong desire nor the leisure to concern themselves with public affairs. Another incidental consequence was that his income was increased by the thorough cultivation of the land. For the exacted a tax of ten percent on the produce.
Archilochos, Fragments
They’ll say I was a mercenary,
Like a Carian. Such was life.
Herodotus, Book I. 163
These Phocaens were the earliest of the Greeks to make long sea-voyages: it was they who discovered the Adriatic Sea, and Tyrrhenia, and Iberia, and Tartessus, not sailing in round freight-ships but in fifty-oared vessels. When they came to Tartessus they made friends with the king of the Tartessians, whose name was Arganthonius; he ruled Tartessus for eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty.
Herodotus, Book II. 152
But after no long time, certain Ionians and Carians, voyaging for plunder, were forced to put in on the coast of Egypt, where they disembarked in their mail of bronze; and an Egyptian came into the marsh country and brought news to Psammetichus (for he had never before seen mailed men) that men of bronze were come from the sea and were foraging in the plain.
Herodotus, Book II. 178 – 179
Amasis became a lover of the Greeks, and besides other services which he did to some of them he gave those who came to Egypt the city of Naucratis to dwell in, and to those who voyaged to the country without desire to settle there he gave lands where they might set altars and make holy places for their gods. Of these the greatest and most famous and most visited precinct is that which is called the Hellenion, founded jointly by the Ionian cities of Chios, Teos, Phocaea, and Clazomenae, the Dorian cities of Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus, and Phaselis, and one Aeolian city, Mytilene. It is to these that the precinct belongs, and these are they that appoint wardens of the port; if any others claim rights therein they lay claim to that wherein they have no part or lot. The Aeginetans made a precinct of their own, sacred to Zeus; and so did the Samians for Here and Milesians for Apollo.
Naucratis was in old time the only trading port in Egypt. Whosoever came to any other mouth of the Nile must swear that he had not come of his own will, and having so sworn must then take his ship and sail to the Canobic mouth; or, if he could no t sail against contrary winds, he must carry his cargo in barges round the Delta till he came to Naucratis. In such honour was Naucratis held.
Hesiod, Words and Days
458-461.
So soon as the time for ploughing is proclaimed to men, then make haste, you and your slaves alike, in wet and in dry, to plough in the season for ploughing, and bestir yourself early in the morning so that your fields may be full.
571-577.
But when the House-carrier climbs up the plants from the earth to escape the Pleiades, then it is no longer the season for digging vineyards, but to whet your sickles and rouse up your slaves. Avoid shady seats and sleeping until dawn in the harvest season, when the sun scorches the body. Then be busy, and bring home your fruits, getting up early to make your livelihood sure.
405-406.
First of all, get a house, and a woman and an ox for the plough – a slave woman and not a wife, to follow the oxen as well
597-608.
Set your slaves to winnow Demeter’s holy grain, when strong Orion first appears, on a smooth threshing-floor in an airy place. Then measure it and store it in jars. And so soon as you have safely stored all your stuff indoors, I bid you put your bondman out of doors and look out a servant-girl with no children; - for a servant with a child to nurse is troublesome. And look after the dog with jagged teeth; do not grudge him his food, or some time the Day-sleeper may take your stuff. Bring in fodder and litter so as to have enough for your oxen and mules. After that, let your men rest their poor knees and unyoke your pair of oxen.
335-341.
But do you turn your foolish heart altogether away from these things, and as far as you are able, sacrifice to the death less gods purely and cleanly, and burn rich meats also, and at other times propitiate them with libations and incense, both when you go to bed and when the holy light has come back, that they may be gracious to you in heart and spirit, and so you may buy another’s holding and not another yours.
631-649.
You yourself wait until the season for sailing is come, and then haul your swift ship down to the sea and stow a convenient cargo in it, so that you may bring home profit, even as your father and mine, foolish Perses, used to sail on ship-board because he lacked sufficient livelihood. And one day he came to this very place crossing over a great stretch of sea; he left Aeolian Cyme and fled, not from riches and substance, but from wretched poverty which Zeus lays upon men, and he settled near Helicon in a miserable hamlet, Ascra, which is bad in winter, sultry in summer, and good at no time. But you, Perses, remember all works in their season but sailing especially. Admire a small ship, but put your freight in a large one; for the greater the lading, the greater will be your piled gain, if only the winds will keep back their harmful gales. If ever you turn your misguided heart to trading and wish to escape from debt and joyless hunger, I will show you the measures of the loud-roaring sea, though I have no skill in sea-faring nor in ships.
663-694.
Fifty days after the solstice, when the season of wearisome heat is come to an end, is the right time for men to go sailing. Then you will not wreck your ship, nor will the sea destroy the sailors, unless Poseidon the Earth-Shaker be upon it, or Zeus, the king of the deathless gods, wish to slay them; for the issues of good and evil alike are with them. At that time the winds are steady, and the sea is harmless. Then trust in the winds without care, and haul your swift ship down to the sea and put all the freight on board; but make all haste you can to return home again and do not wait till the time of the new wine and autumn rain and oncoming storms with the fierce gales of Notus who accompanies the heavy autumn rain of Zeus and stirs up the sea and makes the deep dangerous. Another time for men to go sailing is in spring when a man first sees leaves on the topmost shoot of a fig-tree as large as the foot-print that a crow makes; then the sea is passable, and this is the spring sailing time. For my part I do not praise it, for my heart does not like it. Such a sailing is snatched, and you will hardly avoid mischief. Yet in their ignorance men do even this, for wealth means life to poor mortals; bur it is fearful to die among the waves. But I bid you consider all these things in your heart as I say. Do not put all your goods in hollow ships; leave the greater part behind, and put the lesser part on board; for it is a bad business to meet with disaster among the waves of the sea, as it is bad if you put too great a load on your wagon and break the axle, and goods are spoiled. Observe due measure: and proportion is best in all things.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I.
5.
It should be explained that in early times both the Hellenes and the Barbarians who dwell on the mainland near the sea, as well as those on the islands, when once they began more frequently to cross over in ships to one another, turned to piracy, under the lead of their most powerful men, whose motive was their own private gain and the support of their weaker followers, and falling upon cities that were unprovided with walls and consisted of groups of villages, they pillaged them and got most of their living from that source. For this occupation did not as yet involve disgrace, but rather conferred something even of glory.
101.2
Most of the Helots were the descendants of the early Messenians who had been enslaved of old, and hence were all called Messenians.
Plutarch, Life of Solon
13.2
At that time, too the disparity between the rich and the poor had culminated, as it were, and the city was in an altogether perilous condition; it seemed as if the only way to settle its disorders and stop its turmoils was to establish a tyranny. All the common people were in debt to the rich. For they either tilled their lands for them, paying them a sixth of the increase (whence they were called Hectemorioi and Thetes), or else they pledged their persons for debts and could be seized by their creditors, some becoming slaves at home, and others being sold into foreign countries.