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The Economic Background to Solon's Reforms1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

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Extract

The causes of the rural discontent with which Solon attempted to deal have never been satisfactorily explained. The invention and extended use of coined money, which has often been blamed, is hardly likely to have had such drastic effects in itself if one accepts the witness of other parallel episodes in world history. We can learn something of the austerities of life on the land in central Greece from Hesiod, and scattered literary references may serve as clues to a reconstruction of developments.

Type
Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 6 , Issue 1-2 , May 1956 , pp. 11 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1956

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References

page 12 note 1 Thucydides i. 2, 6.

page 12 note 2 ProfGomme, A. W., Greece, p. 103.Google Scholar

page 12 note 3 Even in Homer the hekatomb has come to signify a sacrifice of considerably less than the hundred beasts which the term would suggest.

page 12 note 4 See SirThiselton-Dyer's, W. T. ‘Flora’, in A Companion to Greek Studies.Google Scholar

page 12 note 5 See Glotz, , Ancient Greece at Work, 63;Google ScholarJardé, , The Formation of the Greek People, 43.Google Scholar

page 13 note 1 e.g. in Attica. See Plato, , Critias 111.Google Scholar

page 13 note 2 e.g. Odysseus' estate on Ithaca and the mainland, supporting livestock to the number of seven or eight thousand head. See Glotz, , Ancient Greece at Work, 35.Google Scholar

page 13 note 3 The reference Il. 2. 403 to Agamemnon sacrificing a five-year-old ox is interesting as apparent evidence of very low population density. Only an under-populated region, where land is very cheap, could afford to fatten animals for five years before killing. Of course the killing could be postponed by non-economic considerations, e.g. religious taboo.

page 13 note 4 During the Persian war Arcadians are found enlisting as mercenaries on the Persian side. Herod. 8. 26. During the Peloponnesian war Arcadians are found fighting on both sides: see Thuc. 3. 34; 7. 19, 57.

page 13 note 5 For an examination of the literary evidence see Heitland, Agricola; for an examination of the geographical background see Myres, Geographical History in Greek Lands.

page 14 note 1 Theognis 959–62.

page 14 note 2 Critias 111 a–d (Burnet).

page 15 note 1 Hesiod, , Works and Days 116–18.Google Scholar

page 15 note 2 Other parts of Greece were, of course, going through what was essentially the same crisis. We hear of the bitter party struggle at Megara and Sicyon, at Lesbos and Corinth (, Theognis 781). Everywhere the position seems to be that the propertied class is forced to protect its position by violence: new tyrannies arise, the available wealth is increased by commercial expansion, and the peasants win political ground. On the other hand, in the more fertile parts of Greece, e.g. in Thessaly and Laconia, where the economic pressure was less severe, a different social pattern results. Lacking the need for overseas expansion, these states produce, in the seventh and sixth centuries, neither the tyrannies of central Greece, nor the arbitration of a Solon, and the result is a land system based on serfdom. The system is given an air of inevitability by the tradition that the landowners were a race of conquerors: it is quite possible that the Helots of Messenia and the Paupers of Thessaly were the descendants of a conquered people, but so, no doubt, were the peasants in other parts of Greece. In all probability it was the failure of the land workers in these countries to extract economic and political concessions from the landowners that caused the social system, in historical times, to reflect the traditional relationship of conqueror and conquered.

page 16 note 1 The first cargoes may well have been brought to Athens by privateers: but when Athenian overseas trade became worthy of the name the three commodities which lay to hand for export were slaves, wine, and oil. The last-named was of crucial importance owing to the fact that the Black Sea area from which, in historical times at least, Athens was to import heavily, is climatically unfavourable to the cultivation of the olive.

page 16 note 2 Ath. Pol. 2.

page 16 note 3 Solon 13.

page 16 note 4 The view that the Hektemors paid five-sixths of their produce as rent has been supported by a number of scholars, including Prof. Woodhouse in his book Solon the Liberator. The latter summarizes a good deal of the extensive scholarly literature, in English, German, and French, on the subject of the Seisachtheia.

page 17 note 1 Ath. Pol. 2. 3.

page 17 note 2 Ibid. 2. 2:

page 18 note 1 Plut. Solon. 15. 5:

page 18 note 2 Arguments from the etymology of the word must be treated with caution.Future generations who know nothing about the Cambridge University examination system will likewise not learn much by investigating the etymology of the word ‘Tripos’.

page 19 note 1 Ath. Pol. 2. 2.

page 19 note 2 Ibid. 2. 2:

page 21 note 1 Ath. Pol. 6. i.

page 21 note 2 The distinction between ‘private’ and ‘public’ might here be the narrower one of debts upon one man's security, and debts upon a common security provided by several men acting together, so the phrase might perhaps be translated ‘debts upon a single, or a combined security’.

page 21 note 3 Solon 15. 4.

page 21 note 4 Ath. Pol. 2. 2.

page 21 note 5 If Solon had cancelled debts, in the sense of unpaid accounts, he would not only have penalized die landlords but any remaining freeholders as well, since the landlord, who had always been the purchaser of any surplus, might himself be backward in paying, and in this case would be absolved from payment altogether.

page 22 note 1 Ath. Pol. 12. 4.

page 22 note 2 Solon 15. 5.

page 22 note 3 See Woodhouse, Solon the Liberator, chap. x. I have followed his translation of the term , and his explanation of ‘free’ as ‘cleared of all claims’.

page 23 note 1 As evidence to support this belief may be cited Aristotle's comment (Ath. Pol. 13. 3) referring to the effect of debt cancellation upon some of the nobles. But it is doubtful how much weight should be attached to this parenthesis, slipped in by Aristotle to help in explaining anarchy subsequent to Solon's reform.

page 23 note 2 Ath. Pol. 12. 3.

page 23 note 3 Ibid., 11. 2.

page 24 note 1 See Solon’s claim. Plut. Solon, 18. 4.

page 24 note 2 Arist. Ath. Pol. 12. 1.

page 24 note 3 Solon 16. 1.

page 25 note 1 Solon 15. 6.

page 25 note 2 Prof. Woodhouse, in his book, Solon the Liberator, contrasts the rural depression of Solon's time with the thriving state of the Attic small-holder in the fifth century, the implication being that Solon was largely responsible for this spectacular rehabilitation. But, in the first place, it is hard to believe that Peisistratus did not seriously alter the picture by interfering with the estates of his political opponents: secondly, the rural stability of the fifth century is far more likely to have been the result of the favourable economic circumstances induced by commercial expansion. One effect of the increase in Athenian trade was the increasing attraction of investment in commerce at the expense of agriculture, hence increasing availability, at a reasonable price, of land for purchase by merchants, artisans, and tenants, to whom the general prosperity had brought a surplus for investment. Vines and olives are best suited to cultivation on a small holding, whereas large estates, in the fifth century, probably suffered from a labour shortage, due to improved conditions in secondary industry. Thus the number of small holdings at that time is not surprising, and needs no deus ex machina to explain it. Of course, this interpretation rests on the assumption that land in Attica was alienable in the period in question, an assumption which has been challenged recently by J. V. A. Fine in his book Horoi.