Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/117

 KEISACIITHKIA, OR RELTKF-LAW. ^01 Lastly, Solon decreed that all those who had been condemned oy the archons to atlmy (civil disfranchiseraent) should be restored to their full privileges of citizens, excepting, however, from this indulgence those who had been condemned by the ephetrc, or by the areopagus, or by the phylo-basileis (the four kings of the tribes), after trial in the prytaneium, on charges either of murder or treason. 1 So wholesale a measure of amnesty affords strong grounds for believing that the previous judgments of the archons had been intolerably harsh ; and it is to be recollected that the Drakonian ordinances were then in force. Such were the measures of relief with which Solon met the dangerous discontent then prevalent. That the wealthy men and leaders of the people, whose insolence and iniquity he has him self so sharply denounced in his poems, and whose views in nom- inating him he had greatly disappointed,'- should have detested propositions which robbed them without compensation of so many of their legal rites, it is easy to imagine. But the statement of Plutarch, that the poor emancipated debtors were also dissatisfied, from having expected that Solon would not only remit their debts, but also redivide the soil of Attica, seems utterly incredi- ble ; nor is it confirmed by any passage now remaining of the Solonian poems. 3 Plutarch conceives the poor debtors as having in their minds the comparison with Lykurgus, and the equality of property at Sparta, which, as I have already endeavored to show, 4 is a fiction ; and even had it been true, as matter of history long past and antiquated, would not have been likely to work upon the minds of the multitude of Attica in the forcible way that the biographer supposes. The seisachtheia must have ex- asperated the feelings and dimininished the fortunes of many persons ; but it gave to the large body of thetes and small pro- prietors all that they could possibly have hoped. And we are 1 Plutarch, Solon, c. 19. In the general restoration of exiles throughout the Greek cities, proclaimed first by order of Alexander the Great, after- wards by Polysperchon, exception is made of men exiled for sacrilege 01 homicide (Diodor. xvii, 109; xviii, 8-46). trpof i/dovr/v TUV Ehofiivuv Mero rorf vouovc, etc. 'Plutarch, Solon, c. 1C. 4 See above vol. ii, part ii, ch. vL LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORM
 * Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. oiiSs pahaiiuc, ol'd' irreiKt^v rote dwapevotf oiS>