All persons in the state whose annual income amounted to less than two hundred medimni, or drachms, were placed in the fourth class, and they must have constituted the large majority of the community. They were not liable to any direct taxation, and, perhaps, were not at first even entered upon the taxable schedule, more especially as we do not know that any taxes were actually levied upon this schedule during the Solonian times. It is said that they were all called thêtes, but this appellation is not well sustained, and cannot be admitted: the fourth compartment in the descending scale was indeed termed the thetic census, because it contained all the thêtes, and because most of its members were of that humble description; but it is not conceivable that a proprietor whose land yielded to him a clear annual return of one hundred, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and forty, or one hundred and eighty drachms, could ever have been designated by that name.[205]
Such were the divisions in the political scale established by Solon, called by Aristotle a timocracy, in which the rights, honors, functions, and liabilities of the citizens were measured out according to the assessed property of each. Though the scale is stated as if nothing but landed property were measured by it, yet we may rather presume that property of other kinds was intended to be included, since it served as the basis of every man’s liability to taxation. The highest honors of the state,—that is, the places of the nine archons annually chosen, as well as those in the senate of areopagus, into which the past archons always entered,—perhaps also the posts of prytanes of the naukrari,—were reserved for the first class: the poor eupatrids became ineligible; while rich men, not eupatrids, were admitted. Other posts of inferior distinction were filled by the second and third classes, who were, moreover, bound to military service, the one on horseback, the other as heavy-armed soldiers on foot. Moreover, the liturgies of the state, as they were called,—unpaid functions, such as the trierarchy, chorêgy, gymnasiarchy, etc., which entailed expense and trouble on the holder of them,—were distributed in some way or other between the members of the three classes, though we do not know how the distribution was made in these early times. On the other hand, the members of the fourth or lowest class were disqualified from holding any individual office of dignity,—performed no liturgies, served in case of war only as light-armed, or with a panoply provided by the state, and paid nothing to the direct property-tax, or eisphora. It would be incorrect to say that they paid no taxes; for indirect taxes, such as duties on imports, fell upon them in common with the rest; and we must recollect that these latter were, throughout a long period of Athenian history, in steady operation, while the direct taxes were only levied on rare occasions.
But though this fourth class, constituting the great numerical majority of the free people, were shut out from individual office, their collective importance was in another way greatly increased. They were invested with the right of choosing the annual archons, out of the class of pentakosiomedimni; and what was of more importance still, the archons and the magistrates generally, after their year of office, instead of being accountable to the senate of areopagus, were made formally accountable to the public assembly sitting in judgment upon their past conduct. They might be impeached and called upon to defend themselves, punished in case of misbehavior, and debarred from the usual honor of a seat in the senate of areopagus.
Had the public assembly been called upon to act alone, without aid or guidance, this accountability would have proved only nominal. But Solon converted it into a reality by another new institution, which will hereafter be found of great moment in the working out of the Athenian democracy. He created the pro-bouleutic or pre-considering senate, with intimate and especial reference to the public assembly,—to prepare matters for its discussion, to convoke and superintend its meetings, and to insure the execution of its decrees. This senate, as first constituted by Solon, comprised four hundred members, taken in equal proportions from the four tribes,—not chosen by lot, as they will be found to be in the more advanced stage of the democracy, but elected by the people, in the same way as the archons then were,—persons of the fourth or poorest class of the census, though contributing to elect, not being themselves eligible.
But while Solon thus created the new pre-considering senate, identified with and subsidiary to the popular assembly, he manifested no jealousy of the preëxisting areopagitic senate: on the contrary, he enlarged its powers, gave to it an ample supervision over the execution of the laws generally, and imposed upon it the censorial duty of inspecting the lives and occupations of the citizens, as well as of punishing men of idle and dissolute habits. He was himself, as past archon, a member of this ancient senate, and he is said to have contemplated that, by means of the two senates, the state would be held fast, as it were with a double anchor, against all shocks and storms.[206]
Such are the only new political institutions, apart from the laws to be noticed presently, which there are grounds for ascribing to Solon, when we take proper care to discriminate what really belongs to Solon and his age, from the Athenian constitution as afterwards remodelled. It has been a practice common with many able expositors of Grecian affairs, and followed partly, even by Dr. Thirlwall,[207] to connect the name of Solon with the whole political and judicial state of Athens as it stood between the age of Periklês and that of Dêmosthenês,—the regulations of the senate of five hundred, the numerous public dikasts or jurors taken by lot from the people, as well as the body annually selected for law-revision, and called nomothets, and the prosecution, called the graphê paranomôn, open to be instituted against the proposer of any measure illegal, unconstitutional, or dangerous. There is, indeed, some countenance for this confusion between Solonian and post-Solonian Athens, in the usage of the orators themselves; for Dêmosthenês and Æschinês employ the name of Solon in a very loose manner, and treat him as the author of institutions belonging evidently to a later age for example, the striking and characteristic oath of the heliastic jurors, which Demosthenês[208] ascribes to Solon, proclaims itself in many ways as belonging to the age after Kleisthenês, especially by the mention of the senate of five hundred, and not of four hundred. Among the citizens who served as jurors or dikasts, Solon was venerated generally as the author of the Athenian laws; and the orator, therefore, might well employ his name for the purpose of emphasis, without provoking any critical inquiry whether the particular institution, which he happened to be then impressing upon his audience, belonged really to Solon himself or to the subsequent periods. Many of those institutions, which Dr. Thirlwall mentions in conjunction with the name of Solon, are among the last refinements and elaborations of the democratical mind of Athens,—gradually prepared, doubtless, during the interval between Kleisthenês and Periklês, but not brought into full operation until the period of the latter (460-429 B. C.); for it is hardly possible to conceive these numerous dikasteries and assemblies in regular, frequent, and long-standing operation, without an assured payment to the dikasts who composed them. Now such payment first began to be made about the time of Periklês, if not by his actual proposition;[209] and Dêmosthenês had good reason for contending that, if it were suspended, the judicial as well as the administrative system of Athens would at once fall to pieces.[210] And it would be a marvel, such as nothing short of strong direct evidence would justify us in believing, that in an age when even partial democracy was yet untried, Solon should conceive the idea of such institutions: it would be a marvel still greater, that the half-emancipated thêtes and small proprietors, for whom he legislated,—yet trembling under the rod of the eupatrid archons, and utterly inexperienced in collective business,—should have been found suddenly competent to fulfil these ascendent functions, such as the citizens of conquering Athens in the days of Periklês,—full of the sentiment of force and actively identifying themselves with the dignity of their community,—became gradually competent, and not more than competent, to exercise with effect. To suppose that Solon contemplated and provided for the periodical revision of his laws by establishing a nomothetic jury, or dikastery, such as that which we find in operation during the time of Dêmosthenês, would be at variance, in my judgment, with any reasonable estimate either of the man or of the age. Herodotus says that Solon, having exacted from the Athenians solemn oaths that they would not rescind any of his laws for ten years, quitted Athens for that period, in order that he might not be compelled to rescind them himself: Plutarch informs us that he gave to his laws force for a century absolute.[211] Solon himself, and Drako before him, had been lawgivers, evoked and empowered by the special emergency of the times; the idea of a frequent revision of laws, by a body of lot-selected dikasts, belongs to a far more advanced age, and could not well have been present to the minds of either. The wooden rollers of Solon, like the tables of the Roman decemvirs,[212] were doubtless intended as a permanent “fons omnis publici privatique juris.”
If we examine the facts of the case, we shall see that nothing more than the bare foundation of the democracy of Athens as it stood in the time of Periklês, can reasonably be ascribed to Solon. “I gave to the people,” Solon says, in one of his short remaining fragments,[213] “as much strength as sufficed for their needs, without either enlarging or diminishing their dignity: for those too who possessed power and were noted for wealth, I took care that no unworthy treatment should be reserved. I stood with the strong shield cast over both parties, so as not to allow an unjust triumph to either.” Again, Aristotle tells us that Solon bestowed upon the people no greater measure of power than was barely necessary,[214]—to elect their magistrates and to hold them to accountability: if the people had had less than this, they could not have been expected to remain tranquil,—they would have been in slavery and hostile to the constitution. Not less distinctly does Herodotus speak, when he describes the revolution subsequently operated by Kleisthenês—the latter, he tells us, found “the Athenian people excluded from everything.”[215] These passages seem positively to contradict the supposition, in itself sufficiently improbable, that Solon is the author of the peculiar democratical institutions of Athens, such as the constant and numerous dikasts for judicial trials and revision of laws. The genuine and forward democratical movement of Athens begins only with Kleisthenês, from the moment when that distinguished Alkmæônid, either spontaneously, or from finding himself worsted in his party strife with Isagoras, purchased by large popular concessions the hearty coöperation of the multitude under very dangerous circumstances. While Solon, in his own statement as well as in that of Aristotle, gave to the people as much power as was strictly needful, but no more,—Kleisthenês (to use the significant phrase of Herodotus), “being vanquished in the party contest with his rival, took the people into partnership.”[216] It was thus to the interests of the weaker section, in a strife of contending nobles, that the Athenian people owed their first admission to political ascendency,—in part, at least, to this cause, though the proceedings of Kleisthenês indicate a hearty and spontaneous popular sentiment. But such constitutional admission of the people would not have been so astonishingly fruitful in positive results, if the course of public events for the half-century after Kleisthenês had not been such as to stimulate most powerfully their energy, their self-reliance, their mutual sympathies, and their ambition. I shall recount in a future chapter those historical causes, which, acting upon the Athenian character, gave such efficiency and expansion to the great democratical impulse communicated by Kleisthenês: at present, it is enough to remark that that impulse commences properly with Kleisthenês, and not with Solon.
But the Solonian constitution, though only the foundation, was yet the indispensable foundation, of the subsequent democracy; and if the discontents of the miserable Athenian population, instead of experiencing his disinterested and healing management, had fallen at once into the hands of selfish power-seekers, like Kylôn or Peisistratus, the memorable expansion of the Athenian mind during the ensuing century would never have taken place, and the whole subsequent history of Greece would probably have taken a different course. Solon left the essential powers of the state still in the hands of the oligarchy, and the party combats—to be recounted hereafter—between Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megaklês, thirty years after his legislation, which ended in the despotism of Peisistratus, will appear to be of the same purely oligarchical character as they had been before he was appointed archon. But the oligarchy which he established was very different from the unmitigated oligarchy which he found, so teeming with oppression and so destitute of redress, as his own poems testify.
It was he who first gave both to the citizens of middling property and to the general mass, a locus standi against the eupatrids; he enabled the people partially to protect themselves, and familiarized them with the idea of protecting themselves, by the peaceful exercise of a constitutional franchise. The new force, through which this protection was carried into effect, was the public assembly called heliæa,[217] regularized and armed with enlarged prerogatives, and farther strengthened by its indispensable ally,—the pro-bouleutic or pre-considering senate. Under the Solonian constitution, this force was merely secondary and defensive, but after the renovation of Kleisthenês, it became paramount and sovereign; it branched out gradually into those numerous popular dikasteries which so powerfully modified both public and private Athenian life, drew to itself the undivided reverence and submission of the people, and by degrees rendered the single magistracies essentially subordinate functions. The popular assembly as constituted by Solon, appearing in modified efficiency, and trained to the office of reviewing and judging the general conduct of a past magistrate,—forms the intermediate stage between the passive Homeric agora, and those omnipotent assemblies and dikasteries which listened to Periklês or Dêmosthenês. Compared with these last, it has in it but a faint streak of democracy,—and so it naturally appeared to Aristotle, who wrote with a practical experience of Athens in the time of the orators; but compared with the first, or with the ante-Solonian constitution of Attica, it must doubtless have appeared a concession eminently democratical. To impose upon the eupatrid archon the necessity of being elected, or put upon his trial of after-accountability, by the rabble of freemen (such would be the phrase in eupatrid society), would be a bitter humiliation to those among whom it was first introduced; for we must recollect that this was the most extensive scheme of constitutional reform yet propounded in Greece, and that despots and oligarchies shared between them at that time the whole Grecian world. As it appears that Solon, while constituting the popular assembly with its pro-bouleutic senate, had no jealousy of the senate of areopagus, and indeed even enlarged its powers,—we may infer that his grand object was, not to weaken the oligarchy generally, but to improve the administration and to repress the misconduct and irregularities of the individual archons; and that too, not by diminishing their powers, but by making some degree of popularity the condition both of their entry into office, and of their safety or honor after it.
It is, in my judgment, a mistake to suppose that Solon transferred the judicial power of the archons to a popular dikastery; these magistrates still continued self-acting judges, deciding and condemning without appeal,—not mere presidents of an assembled jury, as they afterwards came to be during the next century.[218] For the general exercise of such power they were accountable after their year of office; and this accountability was the security against abuse,—a very insufficient security, yet not wholly inoperative. It will be seen, however, presently, that these archons, though strong to coerce, and perhaps to oppress, small and poor men,—had no means of keeping down rebellious nobles of their own rank, such as Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megaklês, each with his armed followers. When we compare the drawn swords of these ambitious competitors, ending in the despotism of one of them, with the vehement parliamentary strife between Themistoklês and Aristeidês afterwards, peaceably decided by the vote of the sovereign people, and never disturbing the public tranquillity,—we shall see that the democracy of the ensuing century fulfilled the conditions of order, as well as of progress, better than the Solonian constitution.