[223] Plutarch, Solon, c. 17; Cyrill. cont. Julian, v, p. 169, ed. Spanheim. The enumeration of the different admitted justifications for homicide, which we find in Dêmosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 637, seems rather too copious and systematic for the age of Drako; it may have been amended by Solon, or, perhaps, in an age subsequent to Solon.
[224] See Boeckh, Public Economy of the Athenians, book iii, sect. 5. Tittmann (Griechisch. Staatsverfass. p. 651) and others have supposed (from Aristot. Polit. ii, 4, 4) that Solon enacted a law to limit the quantity of land which any individual citizen might acquire. But the passage does not seem to me to bear out such an opinion.
[225] Plutarch, Solon, 24. The first law, however, is said to have related to the insuring of a maintenance to wives and orphans (Harpokration, v. Σῖτος).
By a law of Athens (which marks itself out as belonging to the century after Solon, by the fulness of its provisions, and by the number of steps and official persons named in it), the rooting up of an olive-tree in Attica was forbidden, under a penalty of two hundred drachms for each tree so destroyed,—except for sacred purposes, or to the extent of two trees per annum for the convenience of the proprietor (Dêmosthen. cont. Makartat c. 16, p. 1074).
[226] Plutarch, Solon, 22. ταῖς τέχναις ἀξίωμα περιέθηκε.
[227] Plutarch, Solon, 22-24. According to Herodotus, Solon had enacted that the authorities should punish every man with death who could not show a regular mode of industrious life (Herod. ii, 177; Diodor. i, 77).
So severe a punishment is not credible; nor is it likely that Solon borrowed his idea from Egypt.
According to Pollux (viii, 6) idleness was punished by atimy (civil disfranchisement) under Drako: under Solon, this punishment only took effect against the person who had been convicted of it on three successive occasions. See Meursius, Solon, c. 17; and the “Areopagus” of the same author, c. 8 and 9; and Taylor, Lectt. Lysiac. cap. 10.
[228] Xenophon, De Vectigalibus, iii, 2.
[229] Thucyd. ii, 40 (the funeral oration delivered by Periklês),—καὶ τὸ πένεσθαι οὐχ ὁμολογεῖν τινι αἰσχρὸν, ἀλλὰ μὴ διαφεύγειν ἔργῳ αἴσχιον.