The character of Solon, as gathered from the facts at hand regarding him, reflects in a measure the true condition of society at that time. Although vain and morally weak, he was in a certain sense humane; his humanity, however, extended only to those of his own sex. A large proportion of the women of Athens were imported foreigners, and were therefore so degraded that they had no rights which any one, even a lawgiver, was bound to protect. After his appointment to the archonship, Solon’s first act was to cancel the debts against the lands and persons of the Athenians, and to establish a law that in future no man should accept the body of his debtor for security.[228] Many who had been previously banished or driven out of the country for debt, and had remained so long from their native land as to forget their Attic dialect, were recalled as freemen, while others, who at home had suffered slavery, were released and given their freedom.
Perhaps, however, in no position in life will a vain, morally weak man display to better advantage the defects in his character than in his attempts to legislate for women; and under no circumstances will his true inwardness of purpose stand more truly revealed than in his efforts to “regulate” the relations of the sexes. A brief notice of Solon’s laws concerning women proves him to have been no exception to the generally observed rule. It is recorded of him that in his extreme solicitude lest their movements should not comport with his ideas of female propriety and decorum, he regulated their journeyings, and laid down rules respecting their mournings, sacrifices, and the number of gowns which they were to take with them when they went out of town. The provision for their journey and even the size of the basket in which it was to be conveyed were subjects not unworthy the attention of the great Athenian lawgiver. Women’s mode of travel by night was also prescribed as was also their conduct at funerals and various places of amusement. In fact all their actions were subjected to that meddlesome espionage and control which characterize a weak and sensuous age. Indeed, we have something more than a hint of the degraded position occupied by women, in the fact that a man might not be allowed to sell a daughter or a sister “unless she were taken in an act of dishonour before marriage,” in which case her accuser might sell her person for individual gain; and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that he, as well as nearly every other man in Athens, was steeped in infamy.
The measure adopted by Solon for the regulation of prostitution, and his division of women into classes for the convenience of all conditions of men, indicate clearly the disgrace and shamelessness which characterized the Athenians at this stage of their career, and depict with unerring fidelity the depth of horror into which womanhood had been dragged.
The condition of public morals during the three hundred years following the age of Solon is plainly indicated not only in the laws but in the mythologies of Greece and Rome. Prostitution was enjoined by religion and when Draco, suddenly shocked by the degeneracy of his time, affixed the penalty of death to rape, seduction, and adultery, it has been said that by the performance of the prescribed religious rites within the temple, the “rigour of his edicts was considerably softened.”
The restraint imposed upon the Athenians by the Draconian regulations was, however, of short duration; for when Solon, the successor of Draco, assumed the position of archon, he at once legally established a sufficient number of houses of prostitution at Athens to supply the demand, filling them with female slaves who had been taken captives in war, or who had been otherwise provided by the munificence of the government.
But you did well for every man, O Solon;
For they do say you were the first to see
The justice of a public-spirited measure,
The Saviour of the State.[229]
By this time, so degraded had womanhood become, that the traffic in female captives for sexual purposes was regarded as a legitimate business, and the revenue accruing from their services was considered a lawful source of gain to the state, its use being devoted to the rearing of temples and to the carrying out of the various projects connected with religious worship.