Latest / Ancient Greece: Philosophy, Democracy, and Endless War — Fexingo History / The Lawgiver Solon: How One Man Averted Revolution in Athens
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Athenian democracy — its birth under Cleisthenes, its practice on the Pnyx, its dark moments like the trial of the generals. But before any of that could happen, Athens had to survive its own near-death experience. Around 594 BCE, the city was on the verge of outright civil war. And the man who stepped in to fix it wasn't a general — he was a poet and a merchant named Solon. Luna: Solon — the lawgiver, right? I've heard the name but I don't know much beyond that. Lucas: Right. Solon was elected archon — the chief magistrate — with extraordinary powers to resolve a crisis that was tearing Athens apart. The core problem was debt. Many farmers, called hektemoroi — 'sixth-parters' — had fallen into a kind of serfdom. They worked the land of the rich and kept only one-sixth of the produce; the rest went to their creditors. And if they couldn't pay their debts, they and their families could be sold into slavery. It was brutal. The poor were demanding a redistribution of land — the rich were refusing to budge. Stasis was imminent. Luna: So Solon had to choose sides. What did he do? Lucas: What's remarkable is that he refused to side with either faction. Instead, he did something that made everyone unhappy — but that arguably saved the city. First, he canceled all existing debts and freed all debt-slaves. He called it the seisachtheia — literally 'shaking off of burdens.' He even found Athenians who had been sold abroad and brought them back. But he did NOT redistribute land. The rich kept their estates. So the poor were furious that he didn't give them land; the rich were furious that he canceled debts. Solon's own poetry survives, and he wrote: 'I stood with a strong shield over both parties, and I allowed neither to win an unjust victory.' Luna: He actually wrote poems about his reforms? That's fascinating. What else did he change? Lucas: He overhauled the entire political system. Before Solon, political power was based on birth — the aristocratic Eupatridae families held all the offices. Solon created a timocracy: a system where political rights were tied to wealth, not ancestry. He divided citizens into four classes based on annual agricultural production: the pentakosiomedimnoi — men who produced 500 medimnoi of grain or equivalent; the hippeis — cavalry class, 300 medimnoi; the zeugitai — hoplite class, 200 medimnoi; and the thetes — laborers, below that. Only the top three classes could hold higher offices, but the thetes could participate in the ekklesia — the assembly — and serve on the new popular courts, the heliaia. Luna: So he let even the poorest have a voice in the assembly. That's huge. Did the rich go along with it? Lucas: Grudgingly. Solon also created a Council of 400 — one hundred members from each of the four traditional tribes — to prepare business for the assembly. That was a check on the Areopagus, the old aristocratic council. He also revised the legal code. Up to then, the law was the Draconian code — so harsh that it was said to be written in blood. Solon repealed most of Draco's laws except the one on homicide. He introduced the concept that any citizen could bring a lawsuit on behalf of someone wronged, not just the victim. That was radical. And he wrote the new laws on wooden axones and triangular kybeis that were set up in the Agora for everyone to read. Luna: But his reforms didn't last forever, did they? I know Athens eventually fell to tyranny. Lucas: No, they didn't last. Solon's system was a compromise, and compromises are fragile. Within a few years, factional strife returned. In 561 BCE — about thirty years after Solon's archonship — Peisistratus, a nobleman from the countryside, seized power as tyrant. But interestingly, Peisistratus mostly preserved Solon's laws and institutions. He just made sure his allies held the key positions. And even after the tyranny fell, Cleisthenes' reforms in 508 drew heavily on Solon's framework — the four classes, the assembly, the popular courts. So Solon's legacy is really the foundation of Athenian democracy. Luna: It's like he built the scaffolding that later generations could build on. Did Solon live to see the tyranny? Lucas: Yes, and he was deeply disappointed. After enacting his reforms, Solon left Athens for ten years — he made the Athenians swear to uphold his laws for that period. He traveled to Egypt, Cyprus, and Lydia. According to Herodotus, while in Lydia, he met King Croesus and gave him that famous warning: 'Call no man happy until he is dead.' When he returned, he found Athens already sliding back into factionalism. He tried to warn against Peisistratus, but nobody listened. He died shortly after, around 559 BCE. Still, his poetry survived — and his reputation as a wise lawgiver grew in the centuries that followed. Luna: It sounds like he was a genuinely wise person — someone who wasn't just after power. Lucas: Exactly. When he had the chance to make himself tyrant — and many urged him to — he refused. He wrote: 'I did not become tyrant — I did not stain my hands with shameful things.' In a world where ambitious men routinely grabbed power, Solon's restraint is remarkable. And his reforms, even if imperfect, gave Athens a political vocabulary that later democrats could use. He introduced the idea that law should be written and accessible, and that citizenship carries some rights regardless of wealth. Luna: Speaking of things that are accessible, I'm realizing how much I take for granted being able to listen to this show without ads. And if it's been worth even a fraction of what we just covered to you, you can support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's the whole ask — just if it's worth a coffee. Lucas: Yeah, we keep it simple. No tiers, no perks — just a way to keep this ad-free and conversation-driven. Alright — so Solon's reforms. One of the most interesting details is how he dealt with the hektemoroi. He didn't just cancel debts — he tore up the boundary markers, the horoi, that had been placed on the farmers' land. Luna: Horoi — those were like stone pillars that recorded a debt, right? Lucas: Exactly. They were literal stones on the land that said 'this property is mortgaged.' Solon removed them. And he freed the hektemoroi from their obligation. But he didn't go so far as to redistribute the land. He said in his poetry: 'I did not let the fat of the earth be scraped away into the hands of the few.' He wanted a middle way. And that middle way — the idea of balancing the interests of rich and poor — became a hallmark of Athenian political thought. Luna: It's almost like he invented the concept of a moderate compromise. Did other Greek cities look to him as a model? Lucas: They did. In the ancient world, he was one of the Seven Sages of Greece — a group of wise men whose sayings were proverbial. His laws were studied and admired. Later, the Romans would look back to him too. Cicero said Solon was one of the few who understood how to balance liberty and order. And modern political scientists sometimes trace the idea of a 'mixed constitution' back to his reforms. He showed that you don't have to choose between oligarchy and democracy — you can blend elements of both. Luna: That's a powerful legacy for someone who only held power for a year. Lucas: One year as archon — but his influence lasted centuries. And his laws even survived the Persian invasion of 480 BCE. The Athenians took them to Salamis for safekeeping. When they returned, they set them up again in the Agora. They were still being consulted in the 4th century. So in a very real sense, the foundations of Athenian democracy were written by Solon. Luna: Do we have any of his laws verbatim, or just through later writers? Lucas: Good question. We don't have the original axones or kybeis — they were probably destroyed over time. But fragments of his laws survive in quotations by orators like Demosthenes and in Plutarch's Life of Solon, which is our main source. And of course, we have his poetry. About 300 lines of his verse survive — and they're incredible because they give us his own voice, his arguments, his justifications. He writes things like: 'I gave the people as much power as is sufficient, neither taking away their honor nor giving them too much.' That's the voice of a man who believed in measured reform. Luna: Alright — I want to ask about one specific reform: the heliaia. How did that court work? Lucas: The heliaia was a popular court open to all citizens, including the thetes. It became the main judicial body for most cases. Solon also allowed appeals to a jury of citizens — which was unprecedented. Before him, the archons had essentially final say. By giving ordinary people the power to judge, Solon shifted a huge amount of authority away from the aristocracy. Later, under Cleisthenes and Pericles, the courts became even more democratic — jurors were paid, and they were chosen by lot to prevent bribery. But the seed was Solon's. Luna: So he really did create the framework for everything that came later. I can see why he's remembered as the founder of Athenian democracy. Lucas: And yet, he was never fully satisfied. One of his poems ends with a warning to the Athenians: 'If you suffer evil because of your own folly, do not blame the gods.' He knew that no set of laws can fix a society if the citizens themselves aren't willing to live by them. And indeed, it took another century of struggle — tyranny, reforms, war — before Athens became the democracy we think of today. But Solon's moment gave them the tools. Without him, the story might have been very different. Luna: I'm thinking about the Athenians who were freed from debt slavery — do we know any stories of individuals? Lucas: Unfortunately, no names survive. But Solon's poetry says he 'brought back to Athens, to their homeland, many who had been sold abroad, some unjustly, some justly.' He speaks of them in the plural — anonymous people whose lives he changed. And that's part of his legacy too: the idea that law should protect the weak, not just the powerful.