M. Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, i, 6; iv, 19), while affirming, justly and decidedly, that the Athenian republic always set a high value on maintaining the integrity of their silver money,—yet thinks that the gold pieces which were coined in Olymp. 93, 2, (408 B. C.) under the archonship of Antigenês (out of the golden ornaments in the acropolis, and at a time of public embarrassments) were debased and made to pass for more than their value. The only evidence in support of this position appears to be the passage in Aristophanês (Ran. 719-737) with the Scholia; but this very passage seems to me rather to prove the contrary. “The Athenian people (says Aristophanês) deal with their public servants as they do with their coins: they prefer the new and bad to the old and good.” If the people were so exceedingly, and even extravagantly, desirous of obtaining the new coins, this is a strong proof that they were not depreciated, and that no loss was incurred by giving the old coins in exchange for them.
[200] “Sane vetus Urbi fœnebre malum (says Tacitus, Ann. vi, 16) et seditionum discordiarumque creberrima causa,” etc: compare Appian, Bell. Civil. Præfat.; and Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, l. xxii, c. 22.
The constant hopes and intrigues of debtors at Rome, to get rid of their debts by some political movement, are nowhere more forcibly brought out than in the second Catilinarian Oration of Cicero, c. 8-9: read also the striking harangue of Catiline to his fellow-conspirators (Sallust, B. Catilin. c. 20-21).
[201] The insolvent debtor, in some of the Bœotian towns, was condemned to sit publicly in the agora with a basket on his head, and then disfranchised (Nikolaus Damaskenus, Frag. p. 152, ed. Orelli).
According to Diodorus, the old severe law against the body of a debtor, long after it had been abrogated by Solon at Athens, still continued in other parts of Greece (i, 79).
[202] Solon, Frag. 27, ed. Schneid.—
Ἃ μὲν ἄελπτα σὺν θεοῖσιν ἤνυσ᾽, ἄλλα δ’ οὐ μάτην
Ἔρδον.
[203] Plutarch, Solon, 18-23; Pollux, viii. 130; Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 4; Aristot. Fragm. περὶ Πολιτείων, Fr. 51, ed. Neumann; Harpokration and Photius, v. Ἱππάς; Etymolog. Mag. Ζευγίσιον, Θητικόν; the Etym. Mag. Ζευγίσιον, and the Schol. Aristoph. Equit. 627, recognize only three classes.
He took a medimnus (of wheat or barley?) as equivalent to a drachm, and a sheep at the same value (ib. c. 23).