Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2015
A great advance in this subject was made by A. J. V. Fine, who studied the extant ὅροι and some of the literary evidence, but the general tendency in recent writing about Solon has been to dwell on the views of other scholars rather than to assess the ancient evidence. In seeking to redress the balance in this paper, I acknowledge my debt to the authors of the books and articles which I have used and cited. Our chief task is to discover the conditions under which various forms of property and especially landed property were held in seventh-century Athens; for this is essential, if we are to shed any light on Draco's laws of debt and Solon's Seisachtheia.
Many explanations of Solon's work have been based on the axioms that land in Attica had passed into the possession of individuals long before the time of Solon and was therefore available in his time for mortgage, seizure and sale. This axiom was expressed thus by Swoboda: ‘one thing is quite certain, that private ownership is of high antiquity among the Greeks and the persistence of clan- or family-ownership till Solon's day appears absolutely excluded’; and Glotz drew the logical deduction that during the seventh century land in Attica was changing hands more and more from day to day. The purpose of this paper is to show that this axiom is incorrect in respect of one kind of land and that a new explanation may be advanced. It is divided into five parts: the organisation of society in early Attica, the tenure of property, the Seisachtheia, fourth-century explanations of Solon's reform, and a summary of conclusions.
1 Fine, A. J. V., ‘Horoi’ in Hesperia Suppl. 9 (1951) 167 f.Google Scholar I am grateful for criticisms and suggestions made by members of the Hellenic Society, the Oxford and Cambridge Philological Societies, and the Bristol, Manchester and Southampton branches of the Classical Association, at whose meetings the ideas contained in this paper were aired.
2 In ‘Beiträge zur griechischen Rechtsgeschichte’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung 26 (1905) 241, ‘Eines ist ganz gewiss, dass das Privateigentum bei den Griechen von hohen alter ist und der Fortbestand von Geschlechts- oder Familien-eigentum bis auf Solon als ganz ausgeschlossen erscheint.’ Cf. CAH iv (1926) 34, ‘the stage when a peasant's land was the common property of the clan and could not be pledged had passed in Attica before the time of Solon’.
3 Histoire Grecque i (1938) 407.
4 Cf. Moeris s.v. gennetae and Harpocration s.v. gennetai: The same point is inherent in Iliad 9. 63 where every free man is assumed to have a phratry just as he has a household hearth. The inclusion of the entire free population in the Athenian system is emphasised by Wade-Gery, H. T. in CQ 25 (1931) 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar and by Hignett, C., A History of the Athenian Constitution (1952) 48Google Scholar, whereas Francotte, H., La Polis grecque (1907) 10Google Scholar and Jacoby, F., Atthis (1949), 318Google Scholar, hold that the organisation was limited to members of the ‘aristocracy’.
5 The meaning of this aside is doubtful. I take it to be that the thirty senior members of a genos were ‘those prescribed for the gene’ or ‘those assigned to the gene’ for purposes of representation; and that they were called gennetai proper, as appears also from Ath. Pol. fr. 5 (from Schol. Plat. Axioch. 371 D) The thirty men were known as a τριακάς (cf. Pollux viii 111 ) and the same term was later used of the thirty men who represented a deme for religious purposes (IG ii2 1214.18). It was also used at Sparta (Hdt. i 65, 5).
6 Editors of Ath. Pol. and Harpocration have usually done just the opposite, that is supplied ἐξ in Ath. Pol.; so Jacoby, , FGrH 328Google Scholar F 35b and apparatus criticus.
7 Lysias vi 10; Ath. Pol. 39. 2; 57. 1; Photius, Eteoboutadai.
8 So Jacoby, , FGrH iii B 1 p. 114Google Scholar middle and p. 321.
9 This passage disproves Wade-Gery, 's theory in CQ 25Google Scholar, 8 and 77 that ‘the Archons were always Eupatrids’ and ‘the Areopagus and the Eupatrid Order are two aspects of the same Peerage: Patres and Patricii’. The εὐπατρίδαι among the Areopagites were excluded from a court dealing with bloodshed probably because they were themselves involved in the purifying ceremonies of blood-guilt (this is more probably so if we accept the emendation εὐπατριδῶν for θυγατριδῶν in Athenaeus 410a). It appears too from Schol. Soph. OC 489 that the εὐπατρίδαι played no part in the sacrifice to the Eumenides. See Persson, A. W., Die Exegeten und Delphi 15 f.Google Scholar on the Eupatridae as priests.
A radically different account of the origin and organisation of the Eupatridae is given in Plu. Theseus 24–5 and 32. There the narrative is romantic and anachronistic. Theseus is portrayed as visiting the inhabitants of Attica κατά δήμονς καὶ γενη and persuading them with promises δημοκρατία and ἰσοụοιρία to form one state, giving to the new state a new name ‘Athens’, founding the Panathenaic and Metoecic Festivals, consulting Delphi, and inviting ‘all peoples’ to join his new state, which was then flooded by an indiscriminate influx It was from this indiscriminate mass that Theseus separated out three classes, Eupatridae and Geomoroi and Demiourgoi (25.2), and put them as it were on an equality, because the first earned respect for their religious functions, the second for their services and the third for their numbers. This narrative is not derived from the Athenaion Politeia, which took the history of the Athenian state from the time of Ion (frs. 1 and 2, and 41.2), knew of only two classes, Georgoi (not Geomoroi) and Demiourgoi, in the early state down to the time of Cleisthenes (fr. 5), gave importance to ‘demes’ only in the reform by Cleisthenes (21.4–5), regarded Solon as the first source of δημοκρατία (41.2), and spoke of the constitution of Theseus as (ibid.). Plutarch himself reveals the fact that he was using a different source, because at 25.3, when he had finished his narrative, he quoted or rather misquoted Aristotle as saying of Theseus perhaps he hoped thereby to heal the breach between his source and Aristotle. Again in chapter 32 there is a rhetorical and anachronistic picture of Menes-theus as the first demagogue misleading the people, and it is alleged that he excited the men of influence who considered that Theseus had stripped each of of their offices (these ‘Eupatrids of the deme’ being clearly not Theseus' own newly created Eupatrids). I take it then that Plutarch's account of the Eupatrids rests on a late and worthless source. However, Wade-Gery, H. T. in CQ 25 (1931) 4 f. and 78 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, claims that much of Plu. Theseus 25 is taken from the Ath. Pol., accepts ‘the founding of the Order of Nobility, the Eupatridae’, and supposes that the Areopagus Council consisted only of Eupatrids chosen by an ‘Order of Eupatrids’ to be Archons and then Areopagites.
10 The existence of any trittyes before the time of Cleisthenes was denied by some scholars despite the literary evidence, but their survival into the fifth century has been demonstrated by an inscription (see J. H. Oliver in Hesperia 4 (1935) 5 f.).
11 In this passage gene certainly means groups of kindred; it therefore has this meaning earlier in the chapter in the phrase and not that of ‘classes’ as suggested by Wüst, F. R. in Historia 6 (1957).Google Scholar
12 Phratry, clan and family are seen in action for instance in D.57.67.
13 For instance Hesychius s.v.
14 The occasion for these fragments may have been a commentary on Pericles' law of the citizenship, as Boeckh and others have suggested.
15 Jacoby, , FGrH iii B 1 321 f.Google Scholar and Miller, M. in JHS 73 (1953), 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, seem to regard γεννῆται and όμογάλακτες as synonymous terms; but it is not possible to say that γεννῆται belonged to their γένος not by race but by association. Suidas also indicates that aliens were legally inserted into the gene and so into the phratries at some time: s.v. γεννῆται and
16 See [D.] 44–62 and Isaeus 11.11
17 The dependence of οὕς on ἀποικία οἰκίας is like that of οὕς in the earlier sentence at 1252b 13 The words are correctly bracketed by Susemihl as a gloss, because they conflict with Aristotle's argument; they are, however, retained by Jacoby, , FGrH iii B 1 323.Google Scholar The word ὁμογάλακτες was peculiar to Attica (Pollux vi 156). Longus (4. 9) used it much later to describe the relationship between a slave messenger and his master, in the sense not that they were foster brothers but that the slave was a household slave of the master. No doubt the word could be used also of brothers by the same mother as a variant for ὁμομήτριοι (Pollux iii 23); this usage may have originated at a matrilinear stage in the dim beginnings of tribal development as M. Miller, loc. cit., suggests. Further references are given by Jacoby, FGrH iii B2 230.Google Scholar
18 See Schol. Ar. Ach. 146 A festival at Athens was called γαλάξια from the milk drunk in honour of the Mother of the Gods (Hesychius s.v., and Bekker, Anecdota 229.25Google Scholar). An adopted son carried on the sacra of the household after the death of his adopter.
19 This fragment is discussed by Jacoby in his note and by Hignett, C., A History of the Athenian Constitution (1952), 390.Google Scholar
20 The word σύνοδος was used by Solon in a general meaning (3.22 ). Unless one accepts the word orgeones in the Linear B tablets Er 312.7 and Un 718.11 which are deciphered as wo-ro-ki-jo-ne-jo by ProfessorPalmer, and Brown, W. E. in Historia 5 (1956), 399Google Scholar, the earliest mention of the word in literature is in the Hymn to Apollo 389. The sacrificial meals of the orgeones are known from inscriptions and lexicographers (e.g. Pollux viii 107); they had been regulated by legislators at Athens (of whom Solon was probably one; cf. Gaius Digest quoted below) according to Athenaus v 185 c: The lexicographers derive the word orgeon from the Mystery cults, and this derivation. may well be correct, if the orgeones were naturalised aliens bringing such religious beliefs with them and not participating in the local family worship.
It should be noted that Ferguson, W. S. in Harvard Theological Review 37 (1944), 64Google Scholar has seen an equally early reference to orgeones in the excerpt from Solon's. code which is cited in Gaius Digest 47.22.4. Unfortunately I find his view unacceptable, because it rests on his own emendation which is palaeographically without justification. The text gives examples of associations: (BS, but F reads for ) The reading of F ἢ ναὕται is not acceptable because ‘sailors’ would be included in the last group, but the words ἢ ναὕται have seven letters like μηνυταί and differ only in the three initial letters. Yet Ferguson reads he changes three words, adds an ἢ, substitutes 23, letters for 19 letters and generally treats the manuscript quite freely. However, ὅργια … σεμνά and ἱερά are as early as Solon (in Hymn to Demeter 476–81), the phrase ἱερὰ ὄργια is like ἀγνὰ ὅργια and σεμνὰ ὅργια. in Aristophanes (Ran. 384; Thesmoph. 948), and μηννταί may have been analogous in early Greek to ἐξηγηταί, so that the meaning may well be ‘instructors of sacred rites’ (cf. Plu. Theseus 25, 2 ) and the reference be to an association of initiates. For μηνταί Mommsen more cautiously suggested Ούται and Garducci αυνθύται, being five and eight letters instead of seven; if μηνυταί is to be rejected, I suggest μύσται and note Photius:
21 Pollux iii 52 the οὗτοί referring to members of the phratries.
22 The same limit appears in Pollux viii 118 and in [D.] 47.72.
23 I do not see any other explanation of the choice of 300 jurors ἀριστίνδην. If it is suggested that the choice was made among the Athenians of pure descent (there being no orgeones) then one would have needed a special de Brett to assess their claims—a thing of which there is no inkling in the ancient tradition.
24 Müller, C., FHG fr. 58Google Scholar of Philochorus; Jacoby does not include this fragment. In registering his ‘profound distrust’ of the phrase ἀριστίνδην καὶ πλουτίνδην in Ath. Pol. 3(CQ 25, 77) H. T. Wade-Gery does not refer to these other passages. Isocrates 7.37 says that in the time of οἱ πρόγονοι membership of the Areopagus was restricted to which emphasises birth but omits wealth.
25 Ath. Pol. 12 See my article on the Seisachtheia and Nomothesia of Solon in JHS 60 (1940) 78.Google Scholarvon der Mühll, P. in Klio 35 (1942) 99Google Scholar, rejects the setting which Ath. Pol. gives for the poem, and seems to suppose that the words θέσμονς ἔγραψα must refer to Solon's second commission and reform of the constitution; but his rejection is arbitrary and unjustified.
26 In this section I have not discussed the figures in Ath. Pol. fr. 5, because they are not integral to my argument, but it may be desirable to comment on them as many scholars reject the numbers and therefore doubt the validity of the context in which they occur. The figures for the social units of early Attica are given thus: 4 tribes, 12 phratries, 360 gene and 10,800 men representatives of the gene, these numbers being compared respectively with the seasons of the year, the months, the days of a year of thirty-day months, and nothing. Scorn may be misplaced; for in early times the natural system and the social system were regarded as matters of religion in which number mattered, and even later a sceptic might mock at an account of Cleisthenes' system for Attica or Plato's system for his state in the Laws. The only numbers in fact which are in serious doubt are the 360 gene and the 10,800 men; the latter is reasonable for the prosperous period of the Late Mycenaean age, and even so it constitutes only about a third of the fifth-century population.
27 Odyssey vi 10 καὶ ἐδάσσατ' ἀρούρας. Finley, , Historia 6 (1957) 154Google Scholar, points out that δατέομαι is used regularly for division of, e.g., spoils among individuals; but this is incidental to the more frequent occasions of division in the epic and does not preclude division among families for instance.
28 The difference is overlooked by those who deduce that the original lots at Syracuse were alien able from the story of Aethiops (Athen. 167d = Archilochus fr. 145). When Aethiops sold he was on the journey out with Archias, the actual founder; he sold his prospective claim to an estate and not an estate already vested in himself and his descendants. It is hardly possible to explain the position of Gamoroi at Syracuse and the Geomoroi at Samos with their land and houses (τὴν γῆν αὐτῶν καὶ οἰκίας Thuc. viii 21), except on the usual view that their original estates had in fact not been alienated from the original settlement until the fifth century.
29 The earliest ‘democracy’ of which we know in a Corinthian colony was at Ambracia on the fall of the younger Periander as tyrant, c. 580 (Arist. Pol. 1304a 31). For a similar law about inalienable estates at Corcyra Nigra in the fourth century, see Ditt. Syll 3 141.
30 Woodhouse, W. J., Solon the Liberator (1938) 74 f.Google Scholar, and Lewis, N., AJP 62 (1941) 148Google Scholar have argued that family estates in Attica were inalienable before Solon's time; but they do so mainly on analogy with other states or on inference from Solon's reforms.
31 Pheidon of Corinth, in Arist. Pol. 1265b 12; Philolaus of Corinth acting at Thebes, ibid., 1274b 5; Zaleucus may have been responsible for the law at Epizephyrian Locri, ibid., 1266b 20; and the concern of Charondas and Epimenides of Crete (who came to Athens in Solon's time) with the family organisation may have been in the same context, ibid., 1252b 14.
32 This was pointed out by Dunbabin, T. J., The Western Greeks (1948) 57 n. 4.Google Scholar
33 For the emphasis marked by the hiatus αἰεὶ εἰωθέναι, see my article in CQ (1952) 129. Gomme's comment on ἑτέρων μᾶλλον ‘not more than agricultural and socially and economically backward states, but than those of similar development to Athens, Corinth, Argos, Chalcis, Miletus and many others’ shows that he missed Thucydides' point which is concerned with very early times and not with sixth- or seventh-century developments (Gomme, A. W., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, ii (1956) 48Google Scholar). The comparison is with other mainland states during the migratory period and later, such as Sparta, Boeotia, Thessaly, etc.; we shall see later that Athens was more conservative in the matter of adoptions than Sparta and Gortyn (see Gernet, L., ‘La création du testament’ in Revue des Études Grecques 33 (1920) 154 n. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 160 n. 3 and 163).
34 Thucydides' phrase ἡ κατὰ τὸ ὰρχαῖον πολιτεία looks back to the earlier mention of the settlement made by Theseus and to the use of ἀρχαῖος throughout chapter 15.
35 The family tombs were placed on family land; cf. [D.] 43.79
36 Cf. Xen. Hellenica ii 4.31 and 38 and Dorjahn, A. P., Political Forgiveness in Old Athens (1946) 25 f.Google Scholar
37 See CQ 6 (1956) 118 for the date.
38 Schol. Wasps 947 Similar provision was made for the oligarchs at Eleusis in 403/402 (Ath. Pol. 39.1).
39 This happened at Sparta in the fourth century (Arist. Pol. 1270a 20 f.). Most of the seventh-century lawgivers of whom we know were concerned with this problem; Solon, who called the heiress an ἐπικληρῑτις (Pollux iii 33), also passed laws on the subject (Ath. Pol. 9.2), some of which are noted above.
40 Plu. Solon, 21.3; other references, e.g. Isaeus 7.13 in Gernet, loc. cit., 149, who concludes that before Solon's reform it was not fully legal even to adopt relations; cf. Freeman, K., The Work and Life of Solon (1926) 115 f.Google Scholar
41 Solon's law is quoted in [D.] 43.51.
42 Later terms of differentiation are πατρῷα and αὐτόκτητα, cf. Gernet, 267 f.
43 He did presumably relate other forms of wealth (cf. his poem 14) to agricultural produce.
44 When Pericles offered to let his estates be under the control of the state if the Spartans did not ravage them, he was probably referring to the revenues from them rather than the out and out possession of them (Thuc. ii 13.1).
45 The farm of Hesiod's father in Ascra (Works and Days 640) was probably on such land, as he was an immigrant; and Laertes was driven to cultivate similar land (Odyssey xxiv 205 f.).
46 There cannot have been much uncultivated land in Attica at this time; for Attica was heavily populated just before the Ionian migration (Thuc. i 2.6), and it had been developed over many centuries. French, A. in CQ 6 (1956) 13 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar makes too much of over-population since Athens joined in no colonial ventures c. 6oo B.C. Lotze, D. in Philologus 102 (1958) 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar also thinks there was a serious shortage of land.
47 Both εὐπατρίδαι and ἄγροικοι were used collo-quially in a general sense, the former for instance in Eur. Alc. 920 and the latter in Ar. Clouds 46 There is not space here to discuss the ten archons of 580 B.C. at length: Ath. Pol. 13.2 shows that they were the representatives of groups of persons, 5 for eupatridai, 3 for agrikoi and 2 for demiourgoi, which on the basis of the interpretation offered here are the gennetae of Athenian racial descent, the cultivators or shepherds of hill lands, and the craftsmen, etc., who formed the bulk of the orgeones. See further p. 97 below.
48 Hommel, H. in Klio 33 (1940–1941), 186CrossRefGoogle Scholar has shown, I think, that this is the correct form.
49 It is significant that on the 200 or so ὅροι extant ‘the only mention of orgeones … is in three Lemnian texts’ (Finley, M. I., Land and Credit in Ancient Athens (1952), 98Google Scholar). See the interesting discussion on demiourgoi by Murakawa, K. in Historia 6 (1957), 385 f.Google Scholar The word had different associations in different states, just as georgoi had for instance in Attica and Crete.
50 Thuc. ii 52.4; ii 59.1; ii 65.2; vii 19.2; vii 27; Hell. Oxy. 12.4.
51 Cratinus fr. 333 (Kock, , CAF i 110Google Scholar) and Pherecrates fr. 58 (ibid., 161). The meanings of στιγματίας and ὑπώβολος are well discussed by Fine, J. V. A. in Hesperia Suppl. 9 (1951), 170 f.Google Scholar
52 An example is given in Tod, , GHI 86Google Scholar, for 409 B.C. Land was granted c. 431 B.C. to a cult of Thracians by the Athenian state (see Ferguson, W. S. in Harvard Theological Review 37 (1944), 98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hesperia Suppl. 8 (1949), 130 f.).
53 W. J. Woodhouse, op. cit., 199, saw this result: ‘family estate before very long became fully commercialised and passed from hand to hand without at any rate any restraint of law’. Unfortunately he dated this revolution to the archonship of Solon and not to the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War.
54 Fine, loc. cit., and Finley, op. cit., agree that not one from a total of some 200 ὅροι can be dated with certainty before the early fourth century.
55 Cf. IG ii2 1289 line 6. The probable explanation is that these lands were inalienable: Finley, op. cit., 98, suggests that the Eikadeis may have quarrelled among themselves, but the inscription has at least the appearance of an agreed policy published by that body.
56 The word κλῆρος, a lot or allotment, came to mean an inheritance because the allotment was inherited. Lawsuits involving inheritance by metics were introduced by the archon polemarchus (Ath. Pol. 58.3).
57 Solon uses the word in a metaphorical sense here, in 8.4 and in 10.4; he uses δουλίη for actual slavery in 24.13.
58 The word πεπηγότα is correctly used of a marker (ὅρος) which was fixed in the ground; cf. Thuc. iv 92.4 εῖς ὅρος … παγήσεται and Lycurgus c. Leocratem 73 ὅρονς … πήξαντες. Similarly Solon speaks of himself metaphorically as being set up as a ὅρος in no man's land (25.9 ). Here it is certain that the ὅροι were actual markers which recorded an obligation of ‘slavery’ for the land, and their removal liberated the land.
69 The meaning of κακοί and ἐσθλοί is like that of κακός and ἀγαθός in 24.18. The meaning may be the same in 1.33 and 4.9 (which is common to Theognis, who uses these words similarly in 183 f.).
60 In other places Solon speaks of γῆ μέλαινα meaning rich land (26.4), γῆ πυροφόρος (1.20 and 14.2), πίών γαῖα (1.23), γῆ πολυοένορεος (1.47), and in each case the epithet is meaningful.
61 This is the view of ancient commentators with the exception of Eustathius to Odyssey xix 28; he thinks they paid five-sixths, but even in rich Messenia the Helots paid only a half.
62 Plu. Solon 15, Ath. Pol. 6.1, D.5. 1.79.4, D.L. 1.45, Heracl. ep. 5; Hesych., Photius., Suidas s.v. seisachtheia.
63 These were evidently ‘markers’ showing that the produce of the land was committed in this way by law. They had the same purpose as those of the fourth century, namely ‘to prevent third parties from acting with respect to the property’ (Finley, M. I., Land and Credit in Ancient Athens 15Google Scholar, quoting Bekker, Anecdota i 285.12
64 Perhaps at a rate fixed by Draco's law; for Solon made the rate of interest free, presumably changing the previous law (Lysias 10.18 ).
65 Including, probably, the sale of daughters and sisters for prostitution which was forbidden by Solon (Plu. Solon 23.2).
66 This is well explained by M. I. Finley, Land and Credit in Ancient Athens 91 and 94 ‘once he was formally entered as a public debtor, Nicodemus’ property was subject to confiscation in toto'.
67 This has been accepted by writers from Prinz, R., De Solonis Plutarchi fontibus (1867)Google Scholar, and Bergmann, H., Quaestiones Soloneae (1875)Google Scholar, down to von der Mühll, P. in Klio 35 (1942) 89.Google Scholar
68 The different accounts which appear both within Plutarch's life and in the Ath. Pol. are clearly derived from different sources (see P. von der Mühll, loc. cit., 96, for example). Thus a faction between three parties—Diacrioi, Paraloi and Pedieis—is given in Plu. Solon 13.2 before Solon's first commission, in Plu. Solon 29.1 after Solon's departure, and in Ath. Pol. 13.4 in connexion with the rise of Pisistratus; on the other hand a faction between two parties—rich and poor—is given in Plu. Solon 13.3 and Ath. Pol. 2 and 5 just before Solon's first commission. As regards the reform of the currency, Ath. Pol. 10 gives an account which is different from the account of Androtion as recorded in Plu. Solon 15.3; and there were doubtless other versions of which Plutarch was aware when he wrote
69 Thetes and Pelatai (in Ath. Pol. 2.2) are used as synonyms of Hectemoroi in Schol. Plato, Euthyphro 4C: Cf. Pollux iv 165, 3.82, and Photius s.v. πελάται.
70 There are, however, some who have made difficulties for themselves. For example, French, A. in CQ 6 (1956), 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar writes thus: ‘Plutarch, in an ambiguous passage, declares that ‘either they tilled the lands (of the rich) or took loans on personal security and were subject to seizure by their creditors’. I take this to mean … that the impoverished masses were either in a state of serfdom … or, if they accumulated further debts (my italics), they became mere chattels’. But the Greek text says nothing of ‘the lands (of the rich)’ and does not make either anterior in time to ἷσαν or conditional or cumulative. W. J. Woodhouse, op. cit., 57, implies that there were not two but three groups in Plutarch's text: ‘either they tilled their lands … or they borrowed on the security of their persons, or were sold abroad’. Lotze, D. in Philologus 102 (1958), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar thinks that ὑπόχρεως may mean abhängig, ‘dependent on’; but the context shows this is not so, for the explanatory γάρ leads us to χρέα λαμβάνοντες and then to τῶν δανειστῶν.
71 K. Ziegler in the Teubner edition of 1957 reads συνᾴδει, which is Bryan's unnecessary and misleading emendation of the MS. αυνᾴδειν.
72 K. Ziegler reads ὑποκειμένης in preference to προυποκειμένης. The Seitenstettensis codex has the former with the letters προ deleted, and three interrelated manuscripts have the latter. The choice of reading does not affect my argument.
73 The best definition of ὅροι in a case of ὑποθήκη is given by Harpocration:
74 Cf. Fine, J. V. A., Hesperia Suppl. 9 (1951), 177Google Scholar ‘the fully developed mortgage contract, according to which the creditor on non-payment of the debt due can … become owner of the real property which had served as a security, cannot exist unless real estate is alienable’.
75 See note 69 above.
76 For the meaning of δι' ὀλίγων here and in 4.5 see Ath. Pol. 29.1 fin. and Arist. Politics 1306a 17 Control rather than possession may be emphasised, but ownership is implicit in their ability to charge rents for landed property.
77 Cf. Ath. Pol. 47.4 τὰς μισθώσες τῶν τεμένων and Isoc. Areop. 32 For the use of ὅροι to record a μίαθωσις cf. Isaeus 6.36.
78 This question is put too by Lotze, D. in Philologus 102 (1958), 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar in the form: ‘was soll man mit ihnen(ὅροι) und der anfangen, wenn nur die Person verpfändet und das Land gar nicht direkt betroffen wurde’?
79 The best example of the practice, which is recorded on many extant ὅροι, is in Demosthenes' speech Against Pantaenetus 4 f., where the contract of πρᾱσις ἐπὶ λύσει contains a rent and a time limit: The system is admirably described by SirAdcock, F. E. in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 188 (1946), 20.Google Scholar The sale was of course a legal one; the purchase money was not regarded as a loan on the security of the land (this process was known as ὑποθήκη), and the rent was an actual rent, not interest (τόκος) on a loan.
80 As land already forfeited would have no ὅροι on it (so W. J. Woodhouse, op. cit., 100), Solon must have referred in poem 24.6 to the first group only.
81 Indeed the modern fashion is to defer the introduction of coined money into Athens until the early sixth century; even if it is dated to the seventh century, as I believe, it is very unlikely that large accumulations of capital were available.
82 We do not know the ratio between land value and land produce, but if the ratio was similar to that used in fixing rent in the speech against Pantaenetus, it was some 12 per cent, and therefore one-sixth of the produce was 2 per cent of the land value. It is incredible that a peasant who held the full land value in cash and worked the land itself could not find this 2 per cent. As K. von Fritz has pointed out in AJP 61 (1940), 55 the rent must be one-sixth and not five-sixths of the produce, because no man in his senses could call five-sixths of the produce a rent. It was, as he says in AJP 64 (1943), 41, a ‘seemingly reasonable rent’. Pisistratus levied a tax of one-tenth of the produce from those he supported (Ath. Pol. 16.6), and the Spartans took one-half from the Helots who were working arable land (Tyrtaeus 5.3).
83 Cf. W. J. Woodhouse, op. cit., 88 on ὑποθήκη: ‘a security for loan which did not come into the creditor's possession unless and until the debtor defaulted’.
84 It is of course difficult for anyone who accepts the statement in Ath. Pol. 2.2 and 4.5, that, ‘the land was in the hands of a few’, to explain how this ceased to be so, unless Solon carried out a redistribution of land, which is the one thing we know he did not do (Solon 23.21). Already in Solon's property class qualifications we see that Attica was full of smallholders (for the limits for Pentacosiomedimni, Hippeis and Zeugitae mean holdings of perhaps 62, 38 and 25 acres respectively); at the end of the Peloponnesian War the number of citizens who did not possess land was only 5,000 (Hypothesis of Dionysius Hal. to Lysias' speech 34), and the requirement that a general should possess land in Attica was in force in 324 B.C. (Dinarchus 1.71).
86 In his lively and original book W. J. Woodhouse believed that he could combine a system of inalienable land (e.g., p. 81) with the practice of πρᾶσις ἐπὶ λύσει (e.g., p. 97, ‘the hypothesis here advanced is that this form of contract came into use before the time of Solon’). But, as Lewis, N. remarked in AJP 72 (1941), 144 f. and 181 f.Google Scholar, if land is inalienable, it cannot be sold, and, if the tenant-occupier is sold into slavery, the land reverts to the next of kin and not to the supposed purchaser. Sir F. E. Adcock saw clearly that the land must have been alienable if πρᾶσις ἐπὶ λύσει was being practised (CAH iv 34), but the fact remains that land was not being alienated from Athenian families until late in the fifth century.
86 Solon 4.2 ‘Iaonia’ is probably an archaising name for Greece rather than a term for the various Ionic-speaking states.
87 Ath. Pol. frs. 1 and 5 and 41.2 init.
88 Jacoby, , FGrH 328Google Scholar (Philochorus) F35b, Harpocration s.v. Pollux viii 111.
89 Thuc. i 2.6.
90 Jacoby, , FGrH 328 F 35aGoogle Scholar; Pollux iii 52; Jacoby, , FGrH 341 (Seleucus) F 1Google Scholar; Pollux viii 107.
91 Ath. Pol. fr. 5; Harpocration quoted in Jacoby, , FGrH 328Google Scholar (Philochorus) F 35b; Pollux viii 111; IG iii 267 and 1335; Bekker, Anecdota 257Google Scholar has an apt description of the priestly Eupatridae:
92 Jacoby, , FGrH 324Google Scholar (Androtion) F 4 and 328 (Philochorus) F 20b, especially the words πλὴν ἐξ εὐπατριδῶν.
93 Ath. Pol. 3.1 and 3.6; C. Müller, FHG Philochorus fr. 58; Jacoby, , FGrH 324Google Scholar F 4 and 328 F 20b; Isocrates 7.37.
94 Ath. Pol. 1.1; Plu. Solon 12.3.
95 Pollux viii 125.
96 Tod, GHI 87, line 20.
97 E.g. Arist. Politics 1266b 21.
98 Ath. Pol. fr. 5.
99 Ath. Pol. 13.2; Hesych.,
100 Arist. Politics 1266b 16.
101 Pollux vii 151; Hesych. s.v.; Plu. Solon 13.4; Ath. Pol. 2.2.
102 Plu. Solon 13.4; Ath. Pol. 2.2; 4.5; 9.1.
103 The three groups which appear under different names in Ath. Pol. 13. 2–3 and 13.4–5 are certainly the same in personnel; it may be noted that one cause, impoverishment due to the cancellation of loans, is mentioned both in 13.3 and 13.5. The names of the factions occur also in Arist. Politics 1305a 23; Hdt. i 59.3; Plu. Solon 13.2 (antedated) and 29.1.
104 Ath. Pol. 21.6.
105 Plu. Solon 15.6 and Ath. Pol. 2.2. Hesychius or his source seems to have identified the eupatridae with the georgoi, which is the occupational name of the plain-land gennetae; he wrote under For ἀγροιῶται cf. Odyssey xxi 85.