The Rise of Athens:
Solon and His Reform
(638–558 B.C.)
Lecturer: Wu Shiyu
Sparta and Athens
Two great states of classical Greek history.
Standing side by side, drove back the Persian
threat of conquest.
Engage in a Great War, the Peloponnesian War
from 431 to 404, fighting against one another and
ultimately bringing the golden age of Greece to its
end.
Contrasts: Sparta and Athens
Sparta, the land of freedom but the freedom under the
law, Athens also the land of freedom, but one that
focused upon individual freedom;
Sparta, forbidding commerce, Athens, a great
commercial democracy;
Contrasts: Sparta and Athens
Sparta, a land that trained its soldiers to citizenship
and to civic virtue, Athens also a land of mighty
warriors who took great pride in their patriotism, but
were also creative, setting standard in art and
architecture, and literature that would forever define
the very concept of what is classic.
And these foundations for Athens as the great
commercial democracy, the land of creativity, were
laid by Solon, one of the seven wise men of Greece,
in later tradition, like Lycurgus.
The National Academy in Athens, with Apollo and Athena on their columns, and Socrates and
Plato seated in front.
Athens Church
Social Background
Athens, like many other Greek city-states enmeshed
（使陷入) into political chaos, economic turmoil (549
B.C.):
• Commercial expansion;
• Coinage invented, people go into debts, lost their land;
• Great gulfs between the rich and poor, sold their children
and themselves into slavery.
Early Athenian Coin
Social Background
Economic dissension(分歧) brought forth political
dissension, and Athens was divided into three parties:
•
•
•
The Party of the Plain: wealthy landowners who came
from the aristocratic families, dominating the full share of
the politics.
The Party of the Coast :the trading commercial class but
did not have a full share in politics.
The Party of the Hill: crushed between the two like the
millstone, as Solon would describe it.
Solon and His Reform
Fearing the outbreak of the civil war, Solon was
asked to give new laws, to be like Lycurgus.
Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet.
Poets were believed to be inspired by the gods, and
poetry was used to convey political wisdom. (p149,
148)
From Aristocratic family, his father squandered their
wealth, and solon had to go out and earned a living, he turned
to trade;
Believed that trading and commerce were a very respectable
way of earning an income;
Money was a good thing and he made quite a bit of it as a
merchant;
Going as far as Egypt and going to Ionia, but not simply in
search of wealth, also in search of wisdom, one of his favorite
sayings was “grow older every day, and learn something new
every day,”
Grow older every day, learn something new every day
So while he was in Asia Minor, in cities like Miletus,
he studied and learned, he took part in the scientific
developments of the time,
Came back to Athens, a well-rounded individual:
wealthy, aware of the outside world, and imbued
with the idea,
The worse thing you could do is be excessive.
“Nothing in Excess” and “Know Thyself”
Athènes ( statues of the Erechtheion on its Acropolis)
Solon’s Reform
His intention: no one should suffer from the
constitution that he would put in place (the rich and the
poor:“I wanted to guide the ship of state through the
narrow channels safely in the middle.”
His goal: establish a balanced constitution for Athens:
to establish social equality, essential to democracy, and
to establish the economic opportunity, critical to both
social equality and democracy.
Solon’s Reform
First step: the casting off of burdens, throwing off the
burden of slavery, and, once and for all,
Abolished all debts, all debts were gone, and those who
had been sold into slavery were brought back home,
from far away back to the land of Athens.
Solon’s Reform
The next thing: make sure that this never
happen again, and so it was forbidden to
sell yourself into slavery, or to sell your
children into slavery.
Make sure that the economy of Athens
prospered, and
So he fostered commerce and trade,
He made a law that every parent had to
teach his son a trade, and if your father
had not taught you trade, you did not have
to take care of him in his old age .
Wanted the Athenians to be merchants, to produce
goods:
“Who will come to the city,” he said, “where there
is nothing to buy? ”
The produce of Athens became famous, above all its
magnificent pottery, which began to flourish at the time
of Solon, spotted all over in Greek world, even to
regions beyond it.
The ruins of the Roman Agora, the second commercial centre of ancient Athens.
Solon’s Reform
Believed that agriculture was essential,
Most agricultural goods can not be exported, be
kept there in Athens, to prevent the market from
rising too high so that people could buy stables like
bread,
Fostering trade and commerce.
Solon’s Reform: economy
Encouraged foreigners to come to Athens,
Anybody who had a trade, who would move to Athens
with their families, and who would swear allegiance (忠
诚) to Athens, and break their allegiance to their former
country, could become Athenian citizen.
Let them come and let them find opportunity here,
and all will prosper.
Solon’s Reform
Solon also wanted Athens to move towards a
balanced democracy.
Abolished the Draconian Law: The laws of
Draco were written and published and set up in
the stone, the trouble is they were awfully harsh,
if you stole a cabbage you were put to death.
Solon’s Reform: Timocracy
Solon established a timocracy (timor=wealth or
honor; cracy=to rule): one based upon wealth.
Recognized the importance of wealth and divided the
Athenians into four categories based on their wealth
At the very top: whose estate was worth 500 bushels of
grain( oil, produce, cash, all of these that’s reckoned up);
Those between 300 and 500 bushels;
Next lowest were 200 to 300 bushels;
Below 200 bushels
Reserved office holding for the wealthy: only those who had
500 bushels or more, should hold the highest office of the
state, and these alone could be archon(执政官), holding the
highest magistracy (地方行政官,执法官).
Gave every citizen the right to vote. Even the poorest
could vote, and so be responsible for the civic
obligation, and also be able to reward those who served
well.
Every citizen could serve on jury: To put ordinary
citizens in the role of jurors. Juries at Athens were large,
501 would sit on a particular case, that was the key to
make him a democracy.
Citizens should sue one another, and he
encouraged them to sue, to bring charges and
accusations both civil and criminal,
On the idea that this is how you learn to use power,
how you made magistrates (地方法官, 治安官)
afraid of ordinary citizen, by bringing them upon
charges,
So Solon laid the bases which some later thinkers
such as Plato and Aristotle would criticize Athens, he
made them the most litigious (好打官司的; 好争论
的) people in the world, he did so knowingly.
Set up a system of check the power of the Assembly
of all Athenians:
• Set up a supreme court, to check the law passed by the
assembly of all the Athenians;
• It could declare a law passed by the people as
unconstitutional;
Set up a Council of Four Hundreds, chosen by lot, to
prepare legislation for presentation to the Assembly.
6.3 Solon’s Reform: Timocracy
So at both stages, before they passed the law, after
a law had been passed, there was a check,
And this was what made solon the eyes of the
founder of countries like American, such a good
statesman, such an admirable figure, for he had seen
the importance of democracy, but also saw the need
of checks, and balances.
Solon’s Reform
Solon introduced sumptuary legislation that limited conspicuous
consumption by the wealthy:
A. Dowries were limited.
B. Women could not wear more than three cloaks at a time or
ride in a particular kind of chariot.
C. It was forbidden to hold excessive funerals.
D. These reforms encouraged the rise of whistle blowers.
Athenian aristocrats decided important matters of state during Solon's time.
( The Areopagus )
Significance of Solon’s Reform
So Solon had established the commercial foundation,
for broadening the economy, and economic viability for
democracy, he gave the instruments of balanced
democracy to the Athenians
After the Reform
And then having carried out his reforms, he
stepped back. He set sail, traveled. “People thought that
I was a fool,” he wrote it in his poems, “I had absolute
power and could have done anything I wanted, and yet
I chose not to, I chose not to abuse my power, I set the
ship of state in place, and let it sail.” And so he went,
he traveled to Egypt and there spent a considerable time,
we are told studying with priests of Egypt and learning
from them about a faraway island, called Atlantis.
6.3 After the Reform
When he came back to Athens that was going to be his
life’s work, to write a long epic poem, about the fate of
Atlantis, he traveled to Asia Minor, he met the king of
Lydia, King Croesus. and then right been years came back
to Athens, once more time, and then lived the long and
fruitful life, and continually to learn something new every
day.
In Plato's account, Atlantis was a naval power lying "in
front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many
parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before
the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a
failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the
ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune".
Intellectual Climate of Solon’s Age
The age when Solon lived in 8th century B.C.,
was a time of tremendous intellectual and spiritual
creativity, wise men like Periander, Thales were
counterpart in their cities to Solon. They were
interested in science.
Thales, for example, was to predict the first
eclipse that we know about European history.
6.4 Intellectual Climate of Solon’s Age
It was also a time of spiritual longing, was a time in
which the gods described by Homer no longer satisfied
questioning mind. Xenophanes, one of the wise man of
the age, asked the question: why, if the god insists on the
morality (道德) for us, don’t they act the moral way? Why
is Zeus having all these affairs? Now I tell you something,
said, Xenophanes, “If dogs have gods, they would look
like dogs; if frogs have gods, they would like frogs. All of
these just are just our reading of ourselves into the world
of a divine.
6.4 Intellectual Climate of Solon’s Age
Xenophanes also criticized the worship of Athletes of
his age. “Why do we pay so much attention to these
overweight muscled-up boxers who went to the Olympic
Game? What have they ever done to serve anyone? Why
should they receive food and board to their rest of their
lives and make fortunes?
So it is a time of questioning social values.
Heraclitus was another this wise man and he too
wondered why everything changes. “Every thing flows,”
he said, “We never step into the same river twice.”
6.4 Intellectual Climate of Solon’s Age
Of these men, none was more mysterious than Pythagoras:
Traditionally, he was born in Samos 560 B.C.
He was a follower of the religious of Orpheus, which believed in the
existence of the soul and in the transmigration of souls.
He established a community, a community of wise men seeking after the
truth, he followed science, discovering harmonies in music, geometrical
(几何) discoveries. And so teaching this wisdom. But this was too much
for his age, the community was persecuted. He was driven to exile in
Italy and was later set upon fired (burned).
6.4 Intellectual Climate of Solon’s Age
He was credited with numerous fundamental
discoveries in arithmetic, music (harmony), and
geometry.
He taught that knowledge should be sought out
and shared with others as the ultimate statement
of civic virtue.
The Pythagorean theorem: The sum of the areas of the two squares on the legs (a and b) equals the area of the square
on the hypotenuse (c).
Medieval woodcut showing Pythagoras with bells in Pythagorean tuning
Pythagoras, the man in the center with the book, teaching music, in The School of Athens
Sparta, the land of freedom but the freedom under the law,
Athens also the land of freedom, but one that focused upon
individual freedom;
Sparta, forbidding commerce, Athens, a great commercial
democracy.
Sparta, a land that trained its soldiers to citizenship and to
civic virtue, Athens also a land of mighty warriors who took
great pride in their patriotism, but were also creative, setting
standard in art and architecture, and literature that would
forever define the very concept of what is classic.
And these foundations for Athens as the great commercial
democracy, the land of creativity, were laid by Solon, one of
the seven wise men of Greece, in later tradition, like Lycurgus.
谢 谢！