Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/115

 SEISACHTHEIA, (.R RKLlEt-LAW. 99 directed. The relief which it aflbided was complete and imme- diate. It cancelled at once all those contracts in which the debtor had borrowed on the security of either his person or of his land : it forbade all future loans or contracts in which the person of the debtor was pledged as security : it deprived the creditor in future of all power to imprison, or enslave, or extort work from hi? debtor, and confined him to an effective judgment at law, author izing the seizure of the property of the latter. It swept off all the numerous mortgage pillars from the landed properties in Attica, and left the land free from all past claims. It liberated, and restored to their full rights, all those debtors who were actually in slavery under previous legal adjudication ; and it even provided the means we do not know how of repurchasing in foreign lands, and bringing back to a renewed life of liberty in Attica, many insolvents who had been sold for exportation.' And while Solon forbade every Athenian to pledge or sell his own person into slavery, he took a step farther in the same direc- tion, by forbidding him to pledge or sell his son, his daughter, or an unmarried sister under his tutelage, excepting only the case in which either of the latter might be detected in unchastitv. 2 1 Sec the valuable fragment of his Iambics, preserved by Plutarch and Aristides, the expression of which is rendered more emphatic by the appeal to the personal Earth, as having passed by his measures from slavery into freedom (compare Plato, Legg. v, pp. 740-741) : ravr' !iv cv ditty Kpovov Sauiwuv 'Ofapiriuv, 'Aptara, TTJ /xeAaiva, riyc eyw 'Opot'c avfl/.ov irohha Tlpo<T&cv 6e dov/.evovua, vvv 'A/./.ov diKaiuf ' rorf (T uvayKairie VJTO bv Aeyovraf, yZuoaav OVKET' 'A.rrm;}v df uv ir Tore (5* Iv&a6' O.VTOV tiovfarjv ue f, 7/61) (Jftr^o fiiso Plutarch. Solon, c. 15. piricns (Pyrrhon. Ilypot. iii. 24, 211), that Solon enacted a law permitting fathers to kill (Qovevftv) their children, cannot be true, and must be copied
 * Plutarch, Solon, c. 23 : compare c. 13. The statement in Sextus Em-