'Hear and attend; from Salamis I came
To show your error.'"
The stratagem was successful: the law was repealed, an expedition against Salamis was intrusted to the command of Solon, and in one campaign he drove the Megarians from the island.
Solon the poet, orator, and soldier, became the judicious law-giver, whose fame reached the remotest parts of the then known world, and whose laws became the basis of those of the Twelve Tables of Rome. Says an English poet,
Who knows not Solon, last, and wisest far,
Of those whom Greece, triumphant in the height
Of glory, styled her father? him whose voice
Through Athens hushed the storm of civil wrath;
Taught envious Want and cruel Wealth to join
In friendship, and with sweet compulsion tamed
Minerva's eager people to his laws,
Which their own goddess in his breast inspired?
—AKENSIDE.
Having been raised, as stated, to the office of first archon, Solon was chosen, by the consent or an parties, as the arbiter of their differences, and invested with full authority to frame a new Constitution and a new code of laws. He might easily have perverted this almost unlimited power to dangerous uses, and his friends urged him to make himself supreme ruler of Athens. But he told them, "Tyranny is a fair field, but it has no outlet;" and his stern integrity was proof against all temptations to swerve from the path of honor and betray the trust reposed in him.
The ridicule to which he was exposed for rejecting a usurper's power he has described as follows
Nor wisdom's palm, nor deep-laid policy
Can Solon boast. For when its noblest blessings
Heaven poured into his lap, he spurned them from him;
Where was his sense and spirit when enclosed
He found the choicest prey, nor deigned to draw it?
Who, to command fair Athens but one day,
Would not himself, with all his race, have fallen
Contented on the morrow?
The grievous exactions of the ruling orders had already reduced the laboring classes to poverty and abject dependence; and all whom bad times or casual disasters had compelled to borrow had been impoverished by the high rates of interest; while thousands of insolvent debtors had been sold into slavery, to satisfy the demands of relentless creditors. In this situation of affairs the most violent or needy demanded a new distribution of property; while the rich would have held on to all the fruits of their extortion and tyranny. Pursuing a middle course between these extremes, Solon relieved the debtor by reducing the rate of interest and enhancing the value of the currency: he also relieved the lands of the poor from all encumbrances; he abolished imprisonment for debt; he restored to liberty those whom poverty had placed in bondage; and he repealed all the laws of Draco except those against murder. He next arranged all the citizens in four classes, according to their landed property; the first class alone being eligible to the highest civil offices and the highest commands in the army, while only a few of the lower offices were open to the second and third classes. The latter classes, however, were partially relieved from taxation; but in war they were required to do duty, the one as cavalry, and the other as heavy-armed infantry.
Individuals of the fourth class were excluded from all offices, but in return they were wholly exempt from taxation; and yet they had a share in the government, for they were permitted to take part in the popular assemblies, which had the right of confirming or rejecting new laws, and of electing the magistrates; and here their votes counted the same as those of the wealthiest of the nobles. In war they served only as light troops or manned the fleets. Thus the system of Solon, being based primarily on property qualifications, provided for all the freemen; and its aim was to bestow upon the commonalty such a share in the government as would enable it to protect itself, and to give to the wealthy what was necessary for retaining their dignity—throwing the burdens of government on the latter, and not excluding the former from its benefits.
Solon retained the magistracy of the nine archons, but with abridged powers; and, as a guard against democratical extravagance on the one hand, and a check to undue assumptions of power on the other, he instituted a Senate of Four Hundred, and founded or remodeled the court of the Areop'agus. The Senate consisted of members selected by lot from the first three classes; but none could be appointed to this honor until they had undergone a strict examination into their past lives, characters, and qualifications. The Senate was to be consulted by the archons in all important matters, and was to prepare all new laws and regulations, which were to be submitted to the votes of the assembly of the people. The court of the Areopagus, which held its sittings on an eminence on the western side of the Athenian Acropolis, was composed of persons who had held the office of archon, and was the supreme tribunal in all capital cases. It exercised, also, a general superintendence over education, morals, and religion; and it could suspend a resolution of the public assembly, which it deemed foolish or unjust, until it had undergone a reconsideration. It was this court that condemned the philosopher Socrates to death; and before this same venerable tribunal the apostle Paul, six hundred years later, made his memorable defence of Christianity.