Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/138

 122 HISTORY OF GREECE. Solon, comprised four hundred members, taken in equal propor- tions from the four tribes, not chosen by lot, as they will be found to be in the more advanced stage of the democracy, but elected by the people, in the same way as the archons then were, persons of the fourth or poorest class of the census, though contributing to elect, not being themselves eligible. But while Solon thus created the new preconsidering senate, identified with and subsidiary to the popular assembly, he mani- fested no jealousy of the preexisting areopagitic senate : on the contrary, he enlarged its powers, gave to it an ample supervision over the execution of the laws generally, and imposed upon it the censorial duty of inspecting the lives and occupations of the citizens, as well as of punishing men of idle and dissolute habits. He was himself, as past archon, a member of this ancient senate, tmd he is said to have contemplated that, by means of the two senates, the state would be held fast, as it were with a double anchor, against all shocks and storms. 1 Such are the only new political institutions, apart from the laws to be noticed presently, which there are grounds for ascrib- ing to Solon, when we take proper care to discriminate what really belongs to Solon and his age, from the Athenian constitu- tion as afterwards remodelled. It has been a practice common with many able expositors of Grecian affairs, and followed partly, even by Dr. Thirlwall, 2 to connect the name of Solon with the whole political and judicial state of Athens as it stood be- tween the age of Perikles and that of Demosthenes, the reg- 1 Plutarch, Solon, 18, 19, 23; Philochorus, Frag. 60, ed. Diclot. Athcnaeus, iv, p. 168; Valer. Maxim, ii, 6. 2 Meursius, Solon, passim; Sigonius, De Ecpubl. Athen. i, p. 39 (though in some passages he makes a marked distinction between the time before and after Kleisthcnes, p. 28). See Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, rol. i, sects. 46.47; Tittmann, Griechische Staatsverfassungcn, p. 146; Plai- ner, Der Attische Prozess, book ii, ch. 5, pp 28-38 ; Dr. Thirlwall, History of Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, pp. 46-57. Nicbuhr, in his brief allusions to the legislation of Solon, keeps duly in view the material difference between Athens as constituted by Solon, and Athens as it came to be after Klcisthcnos ; but he presumes a closer analogy between the Roman } ^tricians and the Athenian eupatridoe than we are en- titled to count upon.