Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/141

 SOLON FOUNDER OF ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. W fall to pieces. 1 And it would be a marvel, suck as nothing short of strong direct evidence would justify us in believing, that in an age when even partial democracy was yet untried, Solon should con- ceive the idea of such institutions : it would be a marvel still greater, that the half-emancipated thetes and small proprietors, for whom he legislated, yet trembling under the rod of the eupatrid archons, and utterly inexperienced in collective business, should have been found suddenly competent to fulfil these as- cendent functions, such as the citizens of conquering Athens in the days of Perikles, full of the sentiment of force and actively identifying themselves with the dignity of their community, became gradually competent, and not more than competent, to exercise with effect. To suppose that Solon contemplated and provided for the periodical revision of his laws by establishing a nomothetic jury, or dikastery, such as that which we find in ope- ration during the time of Demosthenes, would be at variance, in my judgment, with any reasonable estimate either of the man or of the age. Herodotus says that Solon, having exacted from the Athenians solemn oaths that they would not rescind any of his laws for ten years, quitted Athens for that period, in order that he might not be compelled to rescind them himself: Plutarch in- forms us that he gave to his laws force for a century absolute.' 3 Solon himself, and Drako before him, had been lawgivers, evoked and empowered by the special emergency of the times ; the idea of a frequent revision of laws, by a body of lot-selected dikasts, belongs to a far more advanced age, and could not well hare been present to the minds of either. The wooden rollers of Solon, like the tables of the Roman decemvirs, 3 were doubtless intended as a permanent " fons omnis publici privatique juris." If we examine the facts of the case, we shall see that nothing more than the bare foundation of the democracy of Athens as it stood in the time of Perikles, can reasonably be ascribed to Solon. " I gave to the people," Solon says, in one of his short 1 DC-mosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 26, p. 731 : compare Aristophanes Ekkle- siazus. 302. 2 Herodot. i, 29 ; Plutarch, Solon, c. 25. Aulus Gellius affirms that the Athenians swore, under strong religious penalties, to observe them forevji (H, 12).
 * Livy iii, 34.