Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/379

 CHAP. Vll THE PLEBS ENTER THE CITY. 373 peasants of the mountain and the patient opposition of the rich men of the shore waged war against the Eu- patrids. Finally, those who were wisest among the three parties agreed to intrust to Solon the care of terminating the discords, and of preventing still greater misfortunes. Solon had the rare fortune to belong at the same time to the Eupatrids by birth, and to the merchants by the occupation of his earlier years. His poetry exhibits him to us as a man entirely free from the prejudice of caste. By his conciliatory spirit, by his taste for wealth and luxury, by his love of pleasure, he was far removed from the old Eupatrids. He belonged to new Athens. We have said above that Solon began by freeing the land from the old domination which the religion of the Eupatrid families had exercised over it. He broke the chains of clientship. So great a change in the social state bi'ought with it another in the political order. The lower orders needed thenceforth, according to the expression of Solon himself, a shield to defend their newly-found liberty. This shield was political rights. Solon's constitution is fur from being well known to us; it appears, however, that all the Athenians made from that time a part of the assembly of the people, and that the senate was no longer composed of Euj)a- trids alone ; it appears even that the archons could be elected outside the ancient priestly caste. These grave innovations destroyed all the ancient rules of the city. The right of suffrage, magistracies, priesthood, the direction of society, all these had to be shared by the P^upatrid with the inferior caste. In the new constitu- tion no account was taken of the rights of primogeni- ture. There were still classes, but men were no longer