Herakleidês Pontic. (Πολιτ. c. 1) and Dio Chrysostom (Or. xxxi, p. 331) express themselves loosely.
Both Wachsmuth (Hell. Alterth. v. i, p. 249) and K. F. Hermann (Gr. Staats Alter. c. s. 106) quote the heliastic oath, and its energetic protest against repudiation, as evidence of the bearing of the Solonian seisachtheia. But that oath is referable only to a later period; it cannot be produced in proof of any matter applicable to the time of Solon; the mere mention of the senate of Five Hundred in it, shows that it belongs to times subsequent to the Kleisthenean revolution. Nor does the passage from Plato (Legg. iii, p. 684) apply to the case.
Both Wachsmuth and Hermann appear to me to narrow too much the extent of Solon’s measure in reference to the clearing of debtors. But on the other hand, they enlarge the effect of his measures in another way, without any sufficient evidence,—they think that he raised the villein tenants into free proprietors. Of this I see no proof, and think it improbable. A large proportion of the small debtors whom Solon exonerated were probably free proprietors before; the existence of the ὅροι, or mortgage pillars, upon their land proves this.
[183] That which Solon did for the Athenian people in regard to debts, is less than what was promised to the Roman plebs (at the time of its secession to the Mons Sacer in 491 B. C.) by Menenius Agrippa, the envoy of the senate, to appease them, but which does not seem to have been ever realized (Dionys. Hal. vi, 83). He promised an abrogation of all the debts of debtors unable to pay, without exception,—if the language of Dionysius is to be trusted, which probably it cannot be.
Dr. Thirlwall justly observes respecting Solon, “He must be considered as an arbitrator, to whom all the parties interested submitted their claims, with the avowed intent that they should be decided by him, not upon the footing of legal right, but according to his own view of the public interest. It was in this light that he himself regarded his office, and he appears to have discharged it faithfully and discreetly.” (History of Greece, ch. xi. vol. ii, p. 42.)
[184] Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. οὐδὲ τῶν χρεῶν τῶν ἰδίων ἀποκοπὰς, οὐδὲ γῆς ἀναδασμὸν τῆς Ἀθηναίων, οὐδ᾽ οἰκιῶν (ψηφιοῦμαι): compare Dio Chrysostom, Orat. xxxi, p. 332, who also dwells upon the anxiety of various Grecian cities to fix a curse upon all propositions for χρεῶν ἀποκοπὴ and γῆς ἀναδασμός. What is not less remarkable is, that Dio seems not to be aware of any one well-authenticated case in Grecian history, in which a redivision of lands had ever actually taken place—ὃ μηδ᾽ ὅλως ἴσμεν εἴ ποτε συνέβη. (l. c.)
For the law of debtor and creditor, as it stood during the times of the Orators at Athens, see Heraldus, Animadv. ad Salmasium, pp. 174-286; Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, b. iii, c. 2, p. 497, seqq. (though I doubt the distinction which they there draw between χρέος and δανεῖον); Platner, Prozess und Klagen, b. ii, absch. 11, pp. 349, 361.
There was one exceptional case, in which the Attic law always continued to the creditor that power over the person of the insolvent debtor which all creditors had possessed originally,—it was when the creditor had lent money for the express purpose of ransoming the debtor from captivity (Dêmosthen. cont. Nikostr. p. 1249),—analogous to the actio depensi in the old Roman law.
Any citizen who owed money to the public treasury, and whose debt became overdue, was deprived for the time of all civil rights until he had cleared it off.
Diodorus (i, 79) gives us an alleged law of the Egyptian king Bocchoris, releasing the persons of debtors and rendering their properties only liable, which is affirmed to have served as an example for Solon to copy. If we can trust this historian, lawgivers in other parts of Greece still retained the old severe law enslaving the debtor’s person: compare a passage in Isokratês (Orat. xiv, Plataicus, p. 305; p. 414, Bek.)