some truth in the old view of Androtion (Plut. c. 15), that Solon only reduced the rate of interest while altering the money-standard. The point is really obscure. Cp. Abbott, Hist. of Greece, i, 407–8; Grote, ii, 472–76; Meyer, ii, 651–52; Cox, Gen. Hist. of Greece, 2nd ed. pp. 76–79. So far are we from exact knowledge that it is still a moot point whether the tenant Hektemorioi or "Sixth-men" paid or received a sixth part of their total product. Cp. Mitchell and Caspari, abr. of Grote, p. 14, note; Cox, Gen. Hist. of Greece, 2nd ed. p. 77; Bury, Hist. of Greece, ed. 1906, p. 181; Meyer, ii, 642; Abbott, Hist. of Greece, i, 289.
While the burdened peasants and labourers were thus ostensibly given a new economic outlook on life, they were further humanised by being given a share in the common polity. To the Ecclesia or "Congregation" of the people Solon gave the power of electing the public magistrates; and by way of controlling somewhat the power of the Areopagus or Senate, he established a "pre-considering" Council or "Lower House" of Four Hundred, chosen from all save the poor class, thus giving the State "two anchors." And though the executive was in the hands of the aristocracy, subject only to popular election, the burdens of the community were soundly adjusted by a new or improved classification of citizens according to their incomes ("timocracy"), which worked out somewhat as a graduated income-tax, whether by way of a money-rate or in respect of their share in military duties and public "liturgies," which had to be maintained by the richer citizens.
As to this vexed question, see Boeckh, Staatsaushaltung der Athener, B. iv, c. 5 (Grote's ref. wrong), as expounded and checked by Grote (ii, 485–88). Messrs. Mitchell and Caspari, in their abridgment of Grote (pp. 22, 49, notes), reject the whole interpretation (which is reached by a combination of ancient data, Plutarch [c. 18] telling nothing as to taxation). But they adduce only the negative argument that "as we know that Peisistratos, the champion of the poorer classes, subsequently levied a uniform tax of five or ten per cent., it is absurd to suppose that the highly democratic principle of a sliding-scale had been previously adopted by Solon. Peisistratos would not have dared to attempt a reaction from a sliding-scale income-tax to a sort of poll-tax." To this it might be replied that the "flat rate" of Peisistratos—which ought to modify the conception of him as the "friend of the poor"—may have been an addition to previous taxes; and that the division of citizens into income-classes must have stood for something in the way of burdens. The solution would seem to be that these were not regular money taxes. "Regular direct taxes were as little known in free Athens as in any other ancient State; they are the marks of absolute monarchy, of unfreedom" (Meyer, ii, 644). "Seemingly, it was not until later times that this distribution of classes served the purposes of taxation" (Maisch, Manual of Greek Antiquities, Eng. tr. p. 40). But already the cost of certain public services, classed under the head of "liturgies," was laid upon the rich; and there may well have been a process of collective contribution towards these at a time when very rich citizens cannot have been numerous.
Doubtless the graduated income-tax would have been unworkable in a systematic way, though in the "Servian" timocracy of early Rome a tributum seems to have been imposed on the classes (Livy, ii, 9).
At yet other points Solon prepared the ground for the democratic structure of the later Athenian polity. By overthrowing the sacrosanct power of the aristocratic priestly houses, who had aggrandised themselves by it like the nobles of early Rome, he prevented the growth of a hierocracy. By constituting out of all the citizens, including the Thetes or peasant cultivators, a kind of universal jury-court, out of which the panels of judges were to be taken by lot, he put the people on the way of becoming a court of appeal against the upper-class archons, who recruited the Areopagus. "The constitution of the judicial courts (Heliaia) out of the whole people was the secret of democracy which Solon discovered. It is his title to fame in the history of the growth of popular government in Europe."[106]
The whole reform was indeed a great achievement; and so far definitive that from that time forward Athens needed no further resort to "Seisachtheia" or to alteration of the money-standard. Solon had in fact eliminated the worst disruptive force at work in the community—the enslavement of the debtor; a reform so radical,[107] when considered as one man's work, that to note its moral limits may seem to imply blindness to its value. Henceforth, on the lines of the democracy which he made possible, Athenians were so far homogeneous that their slaves were aliens. Beyond that point they could not rise; after Solon, as before, they were at daggers drawn with neighbouring Statelets, and to the end it remained tolerable to them to enslave the men of other Greek-speaking communities. Floated over the first reef by Solon, they never found a pilot to clear the second—the principle of group-enmity. Upon that the Hellenic civilisation finally foundered.
Even in respect of what he achieved, Solon received but a chequered recognition in his own time. The peasantry had expected him to divide the land among them;[108] and when they found that the abolition of enslavement for debt did not mean much less stress of life, they were ready to forfeit all the political rights he had given them for some more tangible betterment.
The simple fact that a generation later Peisistratos was able to become tyrant in the teeth of the aged Solon's vehement opposition is intelligible only as standing for the feeling of many of the common people that through a tyrannos alone could their interests be maintained against the perpetual conspiracy of the upper class to overreach them.[109] It may be that Solon had alienated the rural folk by his concern for commerce, which would be likely to mean the encouragement of imports of food.[110] Peisistratos, we know, was the leader of the Diakrioi, the herdsmen and crofters of the uplands, and was "accounted the most thorough democrat" as against the landlords of the plains (Pediaioi), led by Lycurgos, and the traders of the coast (Paraloi), led by Megacles.[111] The presumption is that by this time the fertile plain-lands were largely owned by rich men, who worked them by hired labour; but the nature of the conflicting forces is not now to be clearly ascertained. The credit given afterwards to Peisistratos for maintaining the Solonian laws points to an understanding between him and the people;[112] and their acceptance of him in Solon's despite suggests that they even identified the latter with the failure of his laws to secure them against further aristocratic oppression.
Nonetheless, Solon's recasting of the political structure of the State determined the future evolution. As Athens grew more and more of an industrial and trading city, her people reverted more and more surely to the self-governing ideal; albeit the Solonian constitution preserved the unity of the State, keeping all the people of Attica "Athenians." The rule of Peisistratos was twice upset, and that of his house in all did not last much above fifty years. When the last member was driven out by Kleisthenes (510 B.C.), the constitution was re-established in a more democratic form than the Solonian; all freemen of Attica became burghers of Athens; and thousands of unenfranchised citizens and emancipated slaves obtained full rights of citizenship. For better and for worse, republican Athens was made—a new thing in the ancient world, for hitherto "democratical government was a thing unknown in Greece—all Grecian governments were either oligarchical or despotic, the mass of the freemen having not yet tasted of constitutional privilege."[113]
What followed was an evolution of the old conflicting forces on a new constitutional basis, the balance of power and prestige being on the side of the demos and its institutions, no longer on that of a land-owning and dominant aristocracy. But the strife never ceased. Kleisthenes himself found "the Athenian people excluded from everything" once more, and, "being vanquished in the party contest with his rival, took the people into partnership."[114] The economic tendencies of all
