Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/150

 134 HISTORY OP GREECE. at least sixteen, were placed the regulation s respecting matters profane. So small are the fragments which have come down to us, and so much has been ascribed to Solon by the orators, which belongs really to the subsequent times, that it is hardly possible to form any critical judgment respecting the legislation as a whole, or to discover by what general principles or purposes he was guided. He left unchanged all the previous laws and practices respect- ing the crime of homicide, connected as they were intimately with the religious feelings of the people. The laws of Drako on this subject therefore remained, but on other subjects, according to Plutarch, they were altogether abrogated : J there is, however, room for supposing, that the repeal cannot have been so sweep- ing as this biographer represents. The Solonian laws seem to have borne more or less upon all the great departments of human interest and duty. We find regulations political and religious, public and private, civil and criminal, commercial, agricultural, sumptuary, and disciplinarian. Solon provides punishment for crimes, restricts the profession and status of the citizen, prescribes detailed rules for marriage as well as for burial, for the common use of springs and wells, and for the mutual interest of conterminous farmers in planting or hedging their properties. As far as we can judge, from the im- wc learn, also, that the thirteenth u^uv contained the eighth law (c. 19) : the twenty-first law is alluded to in Ilarpokration, v, 'Ort oi ironj-oi. Some remnants of these wooden rollers existed in the days of Plutarch, in the Athenian prytaneium. See Ilarpokration and Photius, v, Kv(>/3ei( Aristot. -rrpt Ilo/Urnon', Frag. 35, ed. Neumann; Euphorion ap. Ilarpokrat. 'O Kurudev vouof. Bekker, Anecdota, p. 413. What we read respecting the ufovef and the Kvpfietf docs not convey a clear idea of them. Besides Aristotle, both Scleukus and Didymus are named as having written commentaries expressly about them (Plutarch, Solon, i ; Suidas, v, 'Opyeuvef ; compare also Mcursius, Solon, c. 24; Vit. Aristotelis ap. Westermann. Vitarum Scriptt. Grsec. p. 404), and the collec- tion in Stephan. Thesaur. p. 1095. 'Plutarch, Solon, c. 17; Cyrill. cont. Julian, v, p. IG'.t, ed. Spanheim. The enumeration of the different admitted justifications for homicide, which we find in Demosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 637, seems rather too copious and systematic for the age of Drako ; it may have been amended by Solon, OB perhaps, in an nge subsequent to Solon