This is, it can be construed as a, sort of set of boundaries, both internal and
external. The boundaries on the land, but also and
very decisively, the boundaries between the citizen and the slave.
I put up an example here, of a boundary stone.
This is a much later one, it's in fact, a civic one.
But if you look closely, I think you, you can see the word Horos across the top that
just gives you the idea of what these things look like.
And then, Solon also had, along with the kind of major economic reforms, a set of
economically related political reforms. He established a division of four property
classes. There were the pentakosiomedimnoi, which
is those people whose property produced 500 measures, presumably of grain, and
olives, and grapes are old triad. Then, the hippeis, which means literally
horsemen or knights, and Aristotle's scheme, he works it out so that if the 500
measure men were at the top, next were 300, who were the horsemen and knights.
Then comes the zeugitai, which means the men that who had, who were yoked and, or
the yokemen who were 200 measures or more. Then the thetes was everybody else that is
none of the above. Now, this categorization is clearly
artificial, it clearly doesn't really work.
You have the 500 measure men, okay, that's fine, they were probably the traditionally
wealthy landowners. The knights were prosperous, that is
prosperous enough to afford cavalry outfit.
We talked about this a little bit as well. Always, you know, to outfit yourself as a
hoplite was expensive enough to outfit yourself as a knight was much more
expensive. The zeugitai were probably the relatively
well-to-do farmers who could afford hoplite armor.
Some people have suggested that the term means that they were yoked together in the
hoplite phalanx, this seems to me to be impossible.
But, finally, you have the thetes who were the subsistence farmers.
So these economic categories were there. And, what we're doing is replacing, or
what Solon is doing, is replacing the criterion of birth with a criterion of
wealth and he linked this to access t political office.
The top offices in the state that have archon and treasurer were limited to
members of the top property class. The other important offices were limited
to the top two, the 500 measure men and the knights.
But, all citizens have the right to participate in the assembly and this is
important as well. There is a mysterious council of 400 that
is ascribed to Solon. It may have existed, it may not have.
If it did, it left no trace. But, I'm just mentioning it now, because
we've talked about king council and assembly, talked about how the functions
of the King were divided among those with the magistrates and etcetera.
What the system did was simultaneously preserve some of the old privileges and to
allow for social mobility. Aristotle in, if it's him.
Aristotle, let's call him that, for the constitution of Athens, reports the he saw
a dedicatory statue on the Acropolis from one man who said, I dedicate this on
having risen from the thetic class to the class of knights.
So that, you have the possibility there to make money, to rise through the ranks, and
this takes into account now, the new economic realities.
Again, just to repeat myself very quickly. You're replacing a standard of birth, or
inheritance, or elite genes with now something that recognizes some of the new
economic realities. There were two other very important
reforms that Solon introduced. One of them is what I've put up here as
the right of legal intervention, which means that any citizen could intervene on
behalf of any other citizen legally. This is a tremendous advance in terms of a
sense of mutual responsibility among all the members of the community.
Again, we're seeing in practice, this notion of the Egalitarian ideal that we
are all somehow as citizens at least that is as free, native born adult males, we
don't have to keep repeating that. But nonetheless, that all of us are
somehow responsible for each other. And there was also, and finally, the right
to transfer a case, before verdict was rendered, from a magistrate, that is if a
magistrate was hearing your case, you could say, no, I want it heard by a jury
of my citizen peers. Again, we have this sense of mutual
responsibility of being able to call on those who are like us to make a decision
in a law court that might affect something like a deed or an inheritance.
Some important familiar process that is now given a legal and civic identity.
How did Solon promote his reforms? Well, here's where we loop back to his
being a poet. We don't want to think of him as some sort
of street corner crank just standing there singing out his verses.
This is comic, but not exact. Instead, what we think of, what we should
think of is Solon, in a very special circumstance, and we'll talk about this
later on, called a symposium, which is a formalized drinking party for the elite,
in which one of the key elements was the recitation of poetry.
And it seems that Solon participated there and he talks about his own activity and he
talks about it with a sort of measured pride.
He said, I gave everybody what they were entitled to, neithertoo much, nor too
little. And repeatedly refers to himself as being
in the center, is sometimes in the center, like a boundary stone, and sometimes in
one vivid image. He describes himself as a wolf surrounded
by hunters fending them off. He also says and quite explicitly that he
had the opportunity to make himself tyrant, but passed it up.
He is, I think, the first three-dimensional, fully-realized, vivid
historical character that we have seen. And even so, and this is another caution,
you can see with all the evidence that we have about him, so many things still
remain uncertain. What is certain however, is that he
becomes a figure of an enormous importance in the Athenian ideology.
Later on, when people wanted to undertake a conservative revolution, they talked
about going to back to the laws of Solon. And in the popular imagination, he
becomes, as we have seen one of the Seven Sages, and after he, as a good lawgiver,
takes leave of his community after having passed his code.
He goes to places like Lydia and visits the enormously rich King Croesus here in
the wonderful 17th century painting. Solon, it might be said, has been said, I
think it should be said in some ways, set the terms for or laid the groundwork for
the development of Athenian democracy. Where it went to next is where we will go
to from here.