Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/133

 CENSUS AND LIABILITY. 117 in future. His constitutional changes were great and valuable : respecting his laws, what we hear is rather curious than important. It has been already stated that, down to the time of Solon, the classification received in Attica was that of the four Ionic tribes, comprising in one scale the phratries and gentes, and in another scale the three trittyes and forty-eight naukraries, while the eupatridae, seemingly a few specially respected gentes, and per haps a few distinguished families in all the gentes, had in their hands all the powers of government. Solon introduced a new principle of classification, called, in Greek, the timocratic prin ciple. He distributed all the citizens of the tribes, without any reference to their gentes or phratries, into four classes, according to the amount of their property, which he caused to be assessed and entered in a public schedule. Those whose annual income was equal to five hundred medimni of corn (about seven hundred imperial bushels) and upwards, one medimnus being considered equivalent to one drachma in money, he placed in the highest class ; those who received between three hundred and five hun- Ired medimni, or drachms, formed the second class ; and those be /ween two hundred and three hundred, the third. 1 The fourth ind most numerous class comprised all those who did not possess land yielding a produce equal to two hundred medimni. The first class, called pentakosiomedimni, were alone eligible to the archonship and to all commands : the second were called the knights or horsemen of the state, as possessing enough to enable them to keep a horse and perform military service in that ca- pacity : the third class, called the zeugitae, formed the heavy- armed infantry, and were bound to serve, each with his full panoply. Each of these three classes was entered in the public 1 Plutarch, Solon, 18-23; Pollux, viii. 130; Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 4; Ari> tot Frngm. -epl TlofaTeiuv, Fr. 51, ed. Neumann; Harpokration and Pho- tius, v. '[--uf ; Etymolog. Mag. Zevyiaiov, QIJTIKOV; the Etym. Mag. Zev- yiaiov, and the Schol. Aristoph. Eqnit. 627, recognize only three classes. He took a medimnns (of wheat or bailey?) as equivalent to a drachm, and The medimnus seems equal to about 1 2-5 ( l - 4) English imperial bushel consequently 500 medimni = 700 English imperial bushels, or 87-i quarters
 * sheep at the same value ('&. c. 23).