¹ For the date see Wallace, R. W., ‘The date of Solon's reforms’ AJAH viii (1983) 81–95Google Scholar. Solon's poems are numbered according to West's, M. L. edition, Iambi et elegi Graeci (Oxford 1972Google Scholar). The following abbreviations of modern works are employed: Carlston, = Carlston, K. S., Social theory and African tribal organisation (Urbana, Chicago and London 1968Google Scholar); Hansen = M. H. Hansen, Apagoge, endeixis and ephegesis against kakourgoi, atimoi and pheugontes (Odense 1976); Harrison (i) and (ii) = Harrison, A. R. W., The law of Athens: (i) The family and property; (ii) Procedure (Oxford 1968 and 1971Google Scholar) respectively; Jones, = Jones, J. W., The law and legal theory of the Greeks (Oxford 1956Google Scholar); MacDowell, = MacDowell, D. M., The law of classical Athens (Ithaca 1978Google Scholar); Osborne, = Osborne, R., Demos: the discovery of classical Attika (Cambridge 1985Google Scholar); Rhodes, = Rhodes, P. J., A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politela (Oxford 1981Google Scholar); Ruschenbusch, = Ruschenbusch, E., ΣΟΛΩΝΟΣ ΝΟΜΟΙ, (Wiesbaden 1966Google Scholar); Whitehead, = Whitehead, D., The demes of Attica (Princeton 1986Google Scholar).

² It is a sobering thought that the standard story in the secondary literature about Attike before Solon is based on sources writing at least 150 and more often over 250 years after Solon; that the earliest of those sources make little reference to what little existed in the way of written evidence; and that their successors, like us, depend on their predecessors' efforts. In his very first paragraph Thukydides, writing in the fifth century, admits that he found it impossible to acquire precise knowledge not only of the distant past but even of the period preceding his own (i 1.3). In AP's time the Solonian period was ‘ancient’ (6.2). Solon's period was as distant for Plutarch as the thirteenth century is for us.

³ Brief, critical and reasonably recent discussions of the literature can be found in Rhodes 118–79 with Hansen, M. H., ‘Review article’, CP lxxx (1985) 51–66Google Scholar, and Welskopf, E., ed., Terre et paysans dépendants dans les sociétés antiques (Paris 1979Google Scholar). Max Weber's discussion is still useful, and conveniently available in The agrarian sociology of ancient civilisations trans. Frank, R. I. (London 1988) 177–96Google Scholar; this book-length article was originally published as ‘Die sozialen Gründe des Untergangs der antiken Kultur’ in Die Wahrheit (May 1896).

⁴ 2.2. Slight variant in 4.5: ἡ χώρα бι’ ὀλίγων ἦν, ‘the khora was in the hands of a few’.

⁵ Cf. AP 29.1, Aristotle Pol. 1306a17.

⁶ Finley rightly stressed that ‘debt-bondage is not an institution which simply withers away without any reason. Nor can it be abolished by simple fiat, unless sufficient force is present to back up the decrees and workable alternatives exist for both classes—a substitute labour force for the creditor class and guarantees for the emancipated (and potential) debtors’, Economy and society in Ancient Greece³, Shaw, B. D. and Saller, R. P., edd. (Harmondsworth 1983) 162Google Scholar. Nevertheless, he asserts that in Greece and Rome ‘debt-bondage was abolished tout court, by political action’ (166, my emphasis), yet he offers no arguments for the ‘sufficient force’ component, nor for the ‘guarantees for the debtor class' component, and only the woefully inadequate argument that the ‘alternative for the creditor class’ was increased chattel slavery—as if one could just pop along to the corner shop and purchase a few more c.590 BC. Finley's treatment is equally cavalier in both Ancient slavery and modern ideology (London 1980) and Early Greece: the Bronze and Archaic Ages (London 1981). His interpretation remains one of a debt-bondage system abolished by fiat, without sufficient force to back up the decree, without workable alternatives for the ‘debtor class’, and without any independent argument for a sudden growth in chattel slavery in Athens around Solon's time. Moreover, by using the seisakhtheia as the mainspring of his model for the growth of slavery in Athens, Finley fails to account for the large slave populations in e.g. Aigina, Khios, Korinth and Samos.

⁷ This is particularly true of the debt version (on which see also Rhodes' discussion of the problems, 94, 125–7), but also of the serf version, where it is used to explain why the peasants entered into such an arrangement with their more powerful neighbours in the first place. See also Beringer, W., ‘Freedom, family and citizenship in early Greece’, in The craft of the ancient historian, Eadie, J. W. and Ober, J., edd. (Lanham, MD 1985) 41–56Google Scholar, esp. 51f.

⁸ The settlements in the Khalkidike in which Peisistratos was involved were Eretrian, not Athenian, D. Viviers, ‘Pisistratus’ settlement on the Gulf, Thermaic, JHS cvii (1987) 193–5Google Scholar.

⁹ On this see Whitehead's discussion, The ideology of the Athenian metic (Cambridge 1977) 141–3, and p.123 below.

¹⁰ As pointed out long ago, but apparently to little effect, by Hammond, N. G. L., Studies in Greek history (Oxford 1973) 106Google Scholar; this chapter was originally published as ‘Land tenure in Attica and Solon's seisachtheia’, JHS lxxxi (1961) 79–98. See also the objections raised by Gallant, T. W., ‘Agricultural systems, land tenure and the reforms of Solon’, BSA lxxvii (1982) 111–24Google Scholar. Gallant argued that the land in question in the Solonian crisis was previously uncultivated and unoccupied land, but for some reason saw this as rendering irrelevant to the problem the question of land ownership and tenure. I would argue to the contrary that many of the problems can be more easily explained by recognising its relevance.

¹¹ This later evidence may be argued to be a consequence of Solon's seisakhtheia, but then one must face the logical consequences of that argument and assert that Solon did redistribute land, contrary to his own denial and that of all subsequent sources.

¹² This old chestnut has resisted solution through several paradigm shifts in the theory of early Greek society. For example, Hammond pointed out that it was ‘unthinkable that any clique in the seventh century had capital resources of [the] order [necessary to buy up all the land in Attica]’, (n. 10) 134, and about twenty-five years later P. Halstead pointed out that ‘agriculture seems to offer only modest potential for accumulating wealth … the problem of how the rich first got rich—before they had accumulated extensive estates—is even more difficult to resolve from this perspective’, ‘Traditional and ancient rural economy in Mediterranean Europe: plus ça change?’ JHS cvii (1987) 86. The two hypotheses currently dominant are either that they owned it from time immemorial or that they acquired it by gradual accumulation as hektemoroi sought assistance or defaulted; the former is not of course an explanation, and the latter is based on problematic assumption (iii).

¹³ As with the principal victims, whom we associate with the term hektemoroi, Solon does not use a regular name for ‘the few’ either, and the vague and much later attested group label ‘Eupatridai’ does not rescue their identities. And see n. 81 below.

¹⁴ Quite apart from being a late fifth century republication, Drakon's only surviving law involves a lot of ‘history from square brackets’; see Badian, E., ZPE lxxix (1989) 59–70Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Crook, J. A., Law and life of Rome² (London 1984) 139Google Scholar. See Harrison (i) 201 and MacDowell 133.

¹⁶ Berman, H. J., Law and revolution (Cambridge, MA. 1983Google Scholar).

¹⁷ Such as medieval landholding ‘of’ a superior.

¹⁸ Harrison (i) 214–7; Isager, S. & Hansen, M. H., Aspects of Athenian society in the fourth century BC (trans. Rosenmeier, J. H.) (Odense 1975) 122fGoogle Scholar; MacDowell 145f.

¹⁹ On the ideological aspect of land and status, see Rosivach, V. J., ‘Autochthony and the Athenians’, CQ xxxvii (1987) 294–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 300–3.

²⁰ AP 12.3 and Solon fr. 34 there quoted.

²¹ Even in the fourth century the archon swore an oath to the effect that no redistribution of land would take place within his term of office (AP 56.2), and one version of the heliastic oath includes an undertaking not to permit any redistribution of land or houses of Athenian citizens (Dem. xxiv [Tim] 149).

²² See Jones 198f, and Den Boer, W., Private Morality in Greece and Rome, Mnemosyne Supp. lvii (1979) 186Google Scholar. See also § 2.2 below.

²³ E.g. amongst the Ashanti, the Ibo, the Kamba, the Nandi, the Nuer, the Nyakyusa and the Yoruba, Carlston 415 and references there.

²⁴ See Harrison (i) 217–21 with references to earlier literature; Isager and Hansen (n. 18) 144–6. This procedure may date back to Solon: see Ruschenbusch F 36b with Harrison (i) 311–2 and 220 n. 2. On atimia see below § 3, § 4.2.2 Exclusion.

²⁵ See Jones 202. Cf. our own term ‘property’, from ‘what is proper to’ one.

²⁶ Which may be nuclear, extended or a lineage, it may be real or fictive, and the individual member often has several ‘families’ to choose from; the choice need not be permanent.

²⁷ Consider the practice of confiscation (repossession) of a criminal's property, often imposed in addition to atimia, exclusion from the group, as a penalty for harming the community. In an extreme case the repossession even extended to the plot of land in which the criminal or his ancestors were buried. The law on ostracism attributed to Kleisthenes—which was introduced about a hundred years after Solon of course—represents a major step in development here; in anticipation of his future return the state does not repossess (confiscate) the exile's property.

²⁸ So Hesiod's father acquired a farm in Askra, W&D 635–40. Within one generation, if not already, it was possible to alienate land in Askra, W&D 341. However, an individual's ability to waive his and his descendants' right does not imply that the right of other people has vanished. To take a clear example from our own society, the abdication of a British monarch does not imply the dissolution of the monarchy, and neither the abdicator nor his heirs can thereafter reclaim the throne, κτάομαι, ‘acquire’, is commonly used in early literature with reference to property of all kinds. Scholars usually assume that it means acquired by fair trading, but there is no reason to assume the involvement of another person: property can be acquired by taking as well as trading, and with respect to real property it may sometimes refer to land brought under cultivation. The development of the concept of metic is a major step here—after Solon again: immigrants are no longer accepted as full members of the community and may only possess land or a house in Attike by special dispensation of the ekklesia, through a grant of enktesis. See Whitehead (n. 9) 140–7.

²⁹ Carlston 415ff. See also Lewis, I. M., Social anthropology in perspective² (Harmondsworth 1981) 184–9Google Scholar.

³⁰ Moore, Barrington, Privacy (New York and London 1984) 30Google ScholarPubMed.

³¹ Subunits of the polis were subject to the same law as private individuals, Finley, M. I., Studies in land and credit (New Brunswick 1952) 93Google Scholar; Harris, E. M., ‘The liability of business partners in Athenian law’, CQ xxxix (1989) 339CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Greeks do not seem to have developed the convenient fiction of a juristic person for a group of owners, thereby giving the group corporate identity; the group remained joint several owners, cf. Finley (ibid.) 89 and nn.4, 5; Harris (ibid.) 339 and nn.1, 2, 3; Harrison (i) 242 and n.1; Jones 165, 199. The Yoruba and the Nandi also distinguished between land devoted to public needs and land for use by lineage groups—the latter subject to limited public rights such as the right to hunt, to collect firewood, and to pass over it for access to water, Carlston 183ff, 416.

³² Most of the evidence for which is, naturally, from the classical period.

³³ See Isager & Hansen (n. 18) 105f; and Hopper, R. J., Trade and industry in Classical Greece (London 1979) 180–86Google Scholar for discussion.

³⁴ See Osborne 103–8, esp. 105.

³⁵ Note that the holder of the earliest (341 BC) of the three extant quarry leases is a metic. This inscription was published by Meritt in Hesp. v (1936) 401 n. 10.

³⁶ See Lysias vii [Sekos], AP. 60.2. B. Jordan & J. Perlin draw attention to the long standing and widespread religious beliefs about trees in general, ‘On the protection of sacred groves’, Stud. Pres. Sterling Dow, ed. Rigsby, K. J. (Durham, NC 1984) 153–9Google Scholar. See also Métraux, G., Western Greek land-use and city planning in the archaic period (New York and London 1978) 66fGoogle Scholar.

³⁷ See Cohen, D., Theft in Athenian law (Munich 1983) 113fGoogle Scholar for an incomplete but convenient list.

³⁸ See e.g. Sokolowski, F., Lois sacrées des cités grecques (Paris 1969) 36Google Scholar, provenance the Peiraieus; on the deforestation debate see Meiggs, R., Trees and timber in the ancient world (Oxford 1982Google Scholar) chapter 7, esp. 188–91, and Rackham, O., ‘Observations on the historical ecology of Boeotia’, BSA lxxviii (1983) 291–351Google Scholar.

³⁹ Osborne 224 n. 82; Osborne, R., Classical landscape with figures (London 1987) 46Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Hodkinson, S., ‘Animal husbandry in the Greek polis’, Pastoral economies in Classical Antiquity, Whittaker, C. R. ed. (Cambridge 1988) 51–57Google Scholar.

⁴¹ After the war the boundaries of the Pelargikon were reestablished, altar building was restricted, and the cutting and removal of stones and earth were prohibited, ML 73.54–9. The earth may well have been taken as the litter for nightsoil, on which see Owens, E. J., ‘The ΚΟΠΡΟΛΟГΟΙ at Athens’, CQ xxxiii (1983) 44–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² Lynch, J. P., ‘Hipparchos' wall in the Academy at Athens’, Stud. Pres. Sterling Dow (n.36) 173–9, esp. p. 175Google Scholar.

⁴³ Kolonos: Soph. Oid. Kol. 39, see also 155–63, 1265–7. Delium: Thuk. iv 97.2–3.

⁴⁴ Jordan and Perlin (n. 36) 153–6.

⁴⁵ Whitehead 153 n. 21 and references there; see also Connor, W. R., ‘Sacred and secular’, Ancient Society xix (1988) 161–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More generally see Finley (n. 31) 95, 97 and n. 45, and Harrison (i) 234f. Lewis confined himself to public property specifically designated as demosia and excluded hiera in his very useful account of ‘Public property in the city’, chap. 10 in The Greek city edd. Murray, O. and Price, S. (Oxford 1990Google Scholar): he himself seems to regret this decision, p. 259f. Note his comments on p. 259, ‘Although the Athenians drew their distinction between demosia and hiera…I do not think that we can rationally support their attitude. It was they themselves, after all, who decided that Athena was going to make the loan. Similarly, the emphasis I have laid on the fact that Athens rarely retained land for leasing ceases to be very meaningful when we consider that there was sacred land at Athens which was leased on the instructions of the Assembly by public officials.

⁴⁶ E.g. the Kcrukes and Eumolpidai of Eleusis.

⁴⁷ The famous speech by Sarpedon, Iliad xii 310–21, strongly implies that the leaders' temenos — comprising orchards, vineyards and arable (313 sq.)—was a gift of the community at large, and was an honour which could be withdrawn if unearned, Donlan, W., ‘Reciprocities in Homer’, CW lxxv (1981/1982) 137–75Google Scholar; see also Rihll, T. E., ‘The power of the Homeric βασιλεῖς’, in Homer ′87 (Liverpool 1991Google Scholar to appear). Similarly individual holding of land in Mycenaean Greece should not be confused with private property because of the sociopolitical character of land holding, as Wood, E. M. points out, Peasant, citizen and slave (London and New York 1988) 85Google Scholar. An allocation of land came with an office, status or occupation and was held on condition that the individual provided appropriate services or goods.

⁴⁸ See e.g. AP 39.2 on Eleusis, and 57.1 on the other (popularly elected and ex-officio) epimeletai of Eleusis. Such a change from private citizen to paid official is detailed for the organisation of the Great Dionysia in AP 56.4; the first known individual (who actually failed to win election) is dated 349/8, Develin, R., Athenian officials (Oxford 1989) 350CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but this does not tell us much about the age of the office—the first known thesmothetes is 444/3, yet that office apparently predates Drakon and there were six of them each year.

⁴⁹ Osborne, R., ‘Social and economic implications of the leasing of land and property in Classical and Hellenistic Greece’, Chiron xviii (1988) 279–323Google Scholar, quote from 323.

⁵⁰ Osborne 230 nn. 43, 51. See also the series of inscriptions discussed by Walbank, M. B., ‘Leases of sacred properties in Attica’, Hesperia lii (1983) 100–135CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Part I), 177–231 (Parts II-IV), and his comments on them pp. 100, 220–2, 225–30.

⁵¹ Lewis, D. M., ‘The Athenian Radones Centesimarum’, in Finley, M. I., ed., Problèmes de la terre en Grèce ancienne (Paris and The Hague 1973) 197Google Scholar.

⁵² Elsewhere we find, for example, that Byzantium sold off (minor) religious spaces and ancestral cults, which were snapped up by neighbouring property owners, whilst the dispossessed celebrants were assigned public lands (χωρία τά δημόσια) such as those around the agora, harbour and gymnasia (c 390 BC), [Aristotle] Oik. 1346b13–18.

⁵³ Lewis (n. 51) 198, Osborne 56–9.

⁵⁴ Often of the order of 8% of the value of the property, Osborne 57, see also Osborne (n. 49) 285 n. 21; but in one known instance it was (and in others it may have been) 12%, Walbank (n. 50) 215f.

⁵⁵ Whitehead 152f, 155.

⁵⁶ The agora in Sounion, for example, seems to have become seriously overbuilt by the mid-fourth century, and a new one was given to the deme by one of its members, IG ii² 1180; see Osborne (n. 39 [CL]) 79 for discussion.

⁵⁷ For example, a quarry in Eleusis (the property of the demesmen) was leased for the first time in 332/1, although it had almost certainly been worked before, since it is referred to as a quarry, SEG xxviii 103. The honouring of the man who suggested leasing it is most easily explained if the novelty lie not in the abstract idea of leasing, which is unsustainable at this late date, but in the idea of leasing this particular property. See Osborne 104f for a discussion of the problem.

⁵⁸ Cf. Walbank (n.50) and Osborne (n.49). See Lewis (n.45) for urban land and other types of public property. The 10% set aside for the gods on Lesbos (Thuk. iii 50.2) is not, I suspect, representative—the (is)land was acquired in war, and the 10% is effectively dekate, tenth-part of the spoils for the gods.

⁵⁹ See Finley (n.31) 61 with Harrison (i) 202.

⁶⁰ AP 52.1, Aristotle Pol. 1321b19–27, [Xen.] Poroi 3.12, 4.35–6, 49, and the obscure reference to public buildings in AP 46.2.

⁶¹ AP 50.1, see also Aristotle Pol. 1231b20–21. The number (ten) should be seen in the context of the ten phulai rather than that of the workload: one board member per phule.

⁶² See Lewis (n.45) 250f.

⁶³ See Hansen, M. H., ‘The construction of Pnyx II and the introduction of assembly pay’, C&M xlvii (1986) 89–98Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Agora xiv, esp. 16, 19. This area had been a cemetery; we may assume cemeteries to have been common property. Burial within the city stopped c.500 BC and was unusual from c.600, Wycherley, R. E., The stones of Athens (Princeton 1978) 253Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ AP 50.2, 54.1, Aristotle Pol. 1321b20–1. See also [Aristotle] Oik. 1347a4–7 on Hippias' sale of anything projecting into or over public streets.

⁶⁶ Dem. lv (Kall) 10.

⁶⁷ Soph. Oid. Kol. 10.

⁶⁸ Homer Od. xx 264f, see also n.47 above. For outside Attike see e.g. ML no. 5.33; no. 13.3, and the late but very interesting Heraklea tablets, Dareste, R., Haussoullier, B., Reinach, T., Receuil des inscriptions juridiques grecques ii (Paris 1892Google Scholar) no. 12, on which see also Métraux (n.36) 59–75.

⁶⁹ Hansen 113; see also his discussion pp. 113–118.

⁷⁰ Apud Plutarch Sol. 19.4; Ruschenbusch F 70. Quoted below p. 121.

⁷¹ Scaley, R., ‘How citizenship and the city began’, AJAH viii (1983 [1987]) 99Google Scholar § 1.1.

⁷² Likewise the modern idea that although all ancient sources (with the single exception of Pollux ix 61) say that the only penalties allowed by Drakon were death or atimia, there was only one penalty, because the ancients have misunderstood archaic atimia, which the moderns think is tan tamount to the death penalty for all persons so condemned, for supposedly mild classical atimia.

⁷³ Ruschenbusch F 38a. Recently, for: Goldstein, J. A., ‘Solon's law for an activist citizenry’, Hist, xxi (1972) 538–45Google Scholar, Bers, V., ‘Solon's law forbidding neutrality’, Hist, xxiv (1975) 493–8Google Scholar, Develin, R., ‘Solon's law on stasis’, Hist, xxvi (1977) 507–8Google Scholar, Manville, P. B., ‘Solon's law of stasis’, TAPA cx (1980) 213–21Google Scholar, Rhodes 157t Against: Hansen 78 and n.22, von Fritz, K., ‘Nochmals das solonische Gesetz gegen Neutralität’, Hist, xxvi (1977) 245–7Google Scholar, Sealey (n.71) 105, David, E., ‘Solon, neutrality and partisan literature’, MH xli (1984) 129–38Google Scholar, Longo, C. P., ‘Sulla legge ‘Soloniana’ contro la neutralità’, Hist, xxxvii (1988) 374–9Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ At which Sealey admits the bearing of arms by the parties concerned.

⁷⁵ Assuming that Dem. xxiii [Arist] is accurate; the restoration of the inscription assumes that it is, Stroud, R. S., Drakon's law on homicide (Berkeley 1968Google Scholar); ML no. 86.

⁷⁶ See also Stroud (last note) 46–49.

⁷⁷ This explanation of the archaeological evidence was suggested by Gernet, L., ‘Sur l'exécution capitale’, REG xxxvii (1924) 261–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sealey's attempt (n.71) 110f to explain this in purely selfhelp terms might be plausible if he could explain why the relatives who supposedly rescued the corpses did not detach their bonds before burial. See also n.72 above; the ancients believed that Drakon imposed the death penalty.

⁷⁸ Dem. xxiv [Tim] 105; Lys. x [Theo] 16.

⁷⁹ E.g. frr. 5, 6, 34, 36.20–27, 37.

⁸⁰ Frr. 4, 6. Cf. ἡγεμονίας δικαστηρίων, e.g. Aiskhines iii [Ktes] 14, 27, 29 &c, Dein, i [Dem] 40, 72, 74. For judicial development at about this time outside Attike see ML no. 8.

⁸¹ Il. 18–20. There is no justification for reading ‘the nobles’ or suchlike into agathoi and ‘the unwashed masses' or suchlike into kakoi; no-one so reads/r. 15: πολλοὶ γἀρ πλουτέουσι κακοί, ἀγαθοἱ δἐ πένονται, ‘many kakoi are rich and many agathoi are poor’. When Solon draws a contrast between the demos and its enemies he uses a variety of terms for the latter, such as οἳ δ’ εĨχον δύναμιν καὶ χρήμασιν ἦσαν ἀγητοί (those who had power and were envied for wealth, fr. 5.3–4). ἡγεμόνες (leaders, fr. 6.1), and ὅσοι δὲ μείζους καὶ βίην ἀμείνονες (those who were greater and stronger, fr. 37.4), but he does not call them ἀγαθοί. The ἀγαθοί of frr. 36 and 15 and the ἐσθλοί of fr. 34 are contrasted with κακοί, not demos. He nowhere contrasts demos with agathoi or esthloi, or contrasts kakoi with the powerful and wealthy or the leaders or the greater and stronger. Therefore it is unjustified to equate agathoi/esthloi with powerful/ wealthy/ greater/ stronger/ leaders, and kakoi with demos. See also Lewis' (n.45) Appendix on Liddell & Scott s.v. δῆμος and on Whitehead's Appendix 1.

⁸² And in the poem's context: Demosthenes' attack on Aiskhines for corruption while ambassador, xix [Pres] esp. 255.

⁸³ See also Hesiod's complaint about bent judges, W&D 220 sq.

⁸⁴ Pol. 1274a15–17 and 1281b32–34.

⁸⁵ Cf. Ostwald, M., From popular sovereignty to the sovereignty of law (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1986) 12–14Google Scholar (Areopagus) and Wallace, R. W., The Areopagus Council to 307 BC (Baltimore 1985, 1989) 53fGoogle Scholar (demos); Wallace is surely correct.

⁸⁶ ML no. 2. Presumably here as elsewhere in Krete, the kosmoi were the chief magistrates.

⁸⁷ It is pushing the literal meaning of ‘useless’ too far to suggest that the atimia is specifically confined to office holding; χρή (impers.) means fated, necessary; χρῆμα something that one uses or needs; χρήματα means money, goods, property, chattels. The association between these ideas and slavery is close in the elements of compulsion, of fate, of use, and of possession; consequently the Tegeans' pledge to the Spartans not χρηστούς ποιεῖυ the Messenians may have been a promise not to make them practically useful, i.e. slaves, rather than, as Jacoby, suggested, ‘ΧΡΗΣΤΟΥΣ ΠΟΙΕΙΝ’, CQ xxxviii (1944) 15–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, politically useful, i.e. citizens. More generally on this phrase, all the evidence we have suggests that Greek poleis were not wont to make foreigners citizens, and were wont to enslave them.

⁸⁸ Kosmoi were immune from litigation during their term of office, perhaps to prevent them becoming ‘useless’ and having to resign the post; see Willetts, R. F., Aristocratic society in ancient Crete (London 1955) 167–9Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Willetts, R. F., ed., The law code of Gortyn (Berlin 1967) col. ix 31–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁰ Ibid. 74, my emphasis.

⁹¹ ZPE lxxiv (1988) 159–65.

⁹² Membership of which was essential for citizen status, as of sussitia in Sparta, on which see Hodkinson, S., ‘Social order’, Chiron xiii (1983) 251–4Google Scholar. Spensithios received the income from several temene.

⁹³ For example, avoiding military service, failing to act as arbitrator, or non-payment of debts to the polis or the gods.

⁹⁴ Hansen 1976, 67, on Plato Apol. 37a-c, and Dem. xxv [Aristog] 92.

⁹⁵ This subsection is necessarily very speculative and therefore has been kept short and vague.

⁹⁶ See Gearing, F., ‘Sovereignties and jurai communities in political evolution’, Essays on the problem of tribe, Helm, J., ed. (Seattle and London 1968) 111–19Google Scholar. A jurai community is a group of sovereignties whose interrelations are governed by some form of law; there are established procedures for the resolution of disputes between members and limits to the level of force or violence employed in obtaining satisfaction, for example. Disputes with groups outside a jurai community are handled through war, without the constraints prevailing inside the community. It seems to me that the theoretically problematic ethnos might be profitably considered in terms of a jurai community.

⁹⁷ Starr, C. G., Individual and Community (Oxford 1986) 48Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ Whitehead, chapters 5 and 9.

⁹⁹ For example, and with varying degrees of probability: population growth; expansion of agricultural operations, plant or animal; expansion of clay, mineral or metal extraction and processing; expansion of craft production; expansion of timber felling and processing; any other development which has been or can be associated with the transformation of Greek society in general and Athenian society in particular between the Dark Age and C.650 BC.

¹⁰⁰ For comparative evidence see e.g. Carlston 417, and 184f 188 on the Yoruba.

¹⁰¹ I think this has to be understood as a fixed amount, so many measures, since if the portion had been relative to the harvest from the land in any particular year and place, then default would have been very difficult to establish. Later Athenian understanding (or rather, lack of understanding) of capital, return, productivity etc. reinforces this argument.

¹⁰² Cf. Solon fr. 4.9 sq read literally rather than metaphorically. Entries by two late lexicographers may be relevant here: according to Pollux ἐπίμορτος γῆ was a technical term for land worked on condition that part of the produce (the morte) was surrendered to others. It referred to a system of land tenure of some kind, operating on some portion of the territory (since it is distinguished from ‘Ordinary’ land). He goes on to say (vii. 151) that this phrase occurred παρὰ σόλωνι, but it is not mentioned in his extant fragments. Hesychius adds that it was arable land, and connects it with hektemoroi (s.v. ἐπίμορτος). Both sources conveniently in Martina, A., Solone (Rome 1968) 145Google Scholar no. 296.

¹⁰³ Cf. Solon fr. 4a. I suspect that some of the problems were caused by selective flouting of this legislation by those responsible for executing it and those with the power to allocate land; see Cassola, F., ‘Solone, la terre e gli ectemoroi’, PdP xix (1964) 26–68Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ Cf. Ando, H., ‘A study of servile peasantry of Ancient Greece: centering around hectemoroi of Athens’, Forms of control and subordination in antiquity, Yuge, T. and Doi, M., edd. (Tokyo 1988) 323–30Google Scholar, esp. 325. I am indebted to Professor Snodgrass for sending me a copy of this stimulating paper.

¹⁰⁵ As Rhodes 137 and Lévêque (in Welskopf [n.3] 117) also note. Cf. pentakosipmedimnoi as opposed to hippeis, zeugitai and thetes.

¹⁰⁶ See Parke, H. W., Festivals of the Athenians² (London 1986) 18fGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁷ Even in the fourth century some leases still demanded the surrender of a portion of the produce, see Walbank (n.50) 217.

¹⁰⁸ Rihll, T. E., ‘Lawgivers and tyrants: Solon frr. 9–11 W’, CQ xxxix (1989) 277–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁹ Finley (n.31) 91, MacDowell 142. But see further below, § Exclusion. It is in this context, rather than in the private context, that I think we should understand the third Delphic maxim: ‘go surety and disaster will surely follow’.

¹¹⁰ ML 14: ἔδοχσεν τοῖ δέμοι. τ[ὸς ἐ Σ]αλαμ[ῖνι … 8 …] | οἱκε͂ν ἐᾶ Σαλαμῖνι [‥ 5 ‥]λεν [‥ 7 ‥ Άθένε]|σι τελε͂ν καὶ στρατ[εύεσθ]αι: τ[ὰ δ’ ἐ Σαλαμῖνι μ]|ἐ μι[σθ]ốν, ἐἀ μὲ | οἱκ[‥ 7 ‥]ο [. μισθόμενο.:ἐὰ]|ν δὲ μισβοῖ, ἀποτί[νεν τό μισθόμενον καὶ τὸ μ]|ισθốντα Һεκάτερο [ν........ 19 ........] | ἐς δεμόσιο[ν: ἐσπράτεν δὲ τὸν ἄ]|ρχο[ν]τα, ἐὰν [δὲ μέ, εὐθ]ύ[νεσθαι: τ]|ὰ δὲ [Һ]όπλα π[αρέχεσ]θα[ι αὐτὸς: τ]|ριά[κ]οντα: δρ[αχμốν:] Һο[πλισμένο] | ν δὲ [τ]ὸν ἄρχοντ[α τὰ Һόπλα κρίν] | εν: [ἐπ]ὶ τε͂ς β[ο]λε͂[ς … c. 11‥]. Cf. Tod GHI no. 11.

¹¹¹ Why it should have done so at this time has never been explained by the proponents of the idea that it was an old, traditional system. In the model presented here the long term consequences of the system were foreseen by Solon at the time of its invention, and had become apparent to everyone after one generation. See further below.

¹¹² See Rihll (n.108).

¹¹³ Taking κλινομένην (West and others) rather than καινομένην (Kenyon and Rhodes) as making the best sense. Κλίνειν has a strong sense of ‘reclining’, ‘laid down to/at rest’, and here refers I suggest to land lying idle, rather than, for example, ‘tottering’, as von Fritz, K. and Kapp, E. translate, Aristotle's Constitution of Athens and related texts (New York 1966Google Scholar) ad loc‥

¹¹⁴ Harrison (ii) 172. Another mollification of the situation might have been the level of rent: in the classical period it seems to hover around the 8% level (see n.54 above), whereas one-sixth is about 17%. The latter is not terribly harsh; assuming a modest yield of 700 kg of wheat per hectare, roughly 120 kg would have been required for the rent, leaving enough to feed three people for a year from a one hectare plot (yield ratios from Osborne [n.39 CL] 45).

¹¹⁵ Whereas in other matters, for example giving false witness, the full force of the law descended only on those who offended repeatedly.

¹¹⁶ Cf. e.g. Dem. xxiv [Timok] 50; Dem. lviii [Theok] 21, 49. See also Harrison (ii) 173–5.

¹¹⁷ And. i [Myst] 78. According to Andokides' commentary on Patrokleides' Decree, those who were atimoi because they owed money to the people comprised: those magistrates condemned and fined at their euthune; those found guilty in an ejectment case (dike exoules) and thus in debt to the state to the value of the thing which they had wrongfully possessed; those who had brought a public lawsuit and had either withdrawn before the trial or failed to secure 20% of the vote (the antisykophant law); those condemned in court with an order to pay a fine; those who had bid for a public contract but had not paid in the money; and those who had given security (for some public loan or lease) to the treasury. It seems to me that the last two types are not cases of default on debts, but cases where the deadline for payment has not yet arrived. Andokides goes on to say that ‘these were permitted to pay on or before the ninth prytany, and if they failed to do so they would be fined double and their property confiscated’. Those who had taken on public contracts or leases of public or sacred property and who were still within the time allowed for payment may have been considered to be on probation, so to speak. They were paying in arrears, and to that extent were indebted to the community. If lessees were already on the books as debtors (and therefore already atimoi) but not yet as defaulting debtors, the prescribed date for payment could be considered to be like the date for trial; if they had not paid by the required date (the ninth prytany) conviction was automatic, with immediate registration as a defaulting debtor and a fine of the value or a multiple of the value of the unpaid debt. This idea can be refuted by a single example of a person who was simultaneously a lessee of public property and definitely epitimos. I know of no such example.

¹¹⁸ The distinction made by Plutarch Solon 13.3–5 between those who paid one sixth and those who were seized, of which Finley (n.6) 156f and Hammond (n.10) 130f made so much, refers then to solvent and insolvent debtors, rather than to two different types of debtor.

¹¹⁹ ἀστοὶ is determined by the poetic form not urban or social reality, see Henderson, W. J., ‘The nature and function of Solon's poetry fr. 3 Diehl, 4 West’, Acta Classica xxv (1982) 21–33Google Scholar esp. 25–9.

¹²⁰ See also fr. 13.71: πλούτου δ’ οὐδὲν τέρμα πεφασμένον ἀνδράσι κεῖται.

¹²¹ Hubris indicates an act of unnecessary affront or violence to other men. For a detailed examination of the concept see Fisher, N. R. E., The concept of hubris from Homer to the fourth century, Diss. (Oxford 1976Google Scholar). Is Solon here making reference to the enslavement of defaulting hektemoroi by the magistrates (hegemones demou)?

¹²² Read literally rather than metaphorically this may support the idea that the sixth parts funded communal feasts. See also frr. 4c; 13.72 sq.

¹²³ Is this a reference to magisterial corruption in the administration of the hektemorage system? See also fr. 15.4.

¹²⁴ Is this a reference to the absence of a euthune? See also frr. 15.1; 36.18–20.

¹²⁵ πενιχρός does not mean ‘poor’, but something akin to ‘someone who works for a living’; see Den Boer's discussion (n.22) 70–78, 151–5.

¹²⁶ See also fr. 36.8–10.

¹²⁷ See also fr. 36.18–20.

¹²⁸ Il. 5–7 … … Γῆ μέλαινα, τῆς ἔγώ ποτε | ὅρους ἀνεῖλον πολλαχῆι πεπηγότας, | πρόσθεν δὲ δουλεύουσα, νῦν ἐλευθέρη …. I removed the horoi which had been fixed in many places; before the black Earth was enslaved, now she is free.

¹²⁹ Il 8–11. The Greek admits either reading, depending on the accentuation of χρειους: ττολλοὐς δ’ Άθήνας πατρίδ’ ἐς θεόκτιτον | ἀνήγαγον πραθέντας, ἄλλον ἐκδίκως, | ἄλλον δικαίως, τοὐς δ’ ἀναγκαίης ὑπὸ (χρείους?) (χρειοῦς?) φυγόντας, … I restored to Athens, their divine fatherland, many people who were sold out of the country, one illegally, another legally, or who were forced to flee by debt/dire necessity …

¹³⁰ Il 13–15: τοὺς δ’ ἐνθάδ’ αὐτοῦ δουλίην ἀεικέα | ἔχοντας, ἤθη δεσποτέων τρομεομένους, | ἐλευθέρους ἔθηκα. And those held in shameful slavery here, trembling at the behaviour of the despots, I set them free.

¹³¹ Apud Plutarch Solon 19.3, Ruschenbusch F 70. I have omitted ‘by the basileis’ from the translation because I think the evidence is too tenuous to justify the usual association of these basileis with the prytaneion alone, and their precise rôle does not matter for this argument.

¹³² See Hansen 68 n.11 for the date.

¹³³ Apud And. i [Myst] 77–79. The status of pheugontes is explicated in § 80.

¹³⁴ i [Myst] 73–6. I follow Hansen's arrangement of § 73–79, Hansen 82–4; see also his discussion of the critical points in this text pp. 84–90, esp. n.31.

¹³⁵ The one example of the latter given seems to be punitive, but presumably most of the punishments in this category were designed to prevent repetition of the offence.

¹³⁶ The documents destroyed include the lists of public debtors kept by the praktores, by the treasurers of Athene and the other gods, by the basileus, and any public or private copies of such (i 77). On debtors as criminals see e.g. Lys. xxix [Phil] 9; Dem. xxiv [Tim] 172; Hansen 69f. The title of this paper is intended to be precise, not perplexing.

¹³⁷ In classical times atimia was a manifold penalty applied to a variety of types of offender, see Hansen 61–72. As the amnesty law shows, atimia was not a uniform (and uniformly harsh) penalty in the archaic period. Atimia could leave one socially, politically and legally little better off than a slave, very much at the mercy of epitimoi acquaintances; I think this is what we should understand by Solon's reference to δεσπόται in fr. 36.13. Atimoi were, literally, dishonourable members of the community: slaves are universally dishonoured persons; atimoi were, in practice, unable to participate in social society, they were ‘socially dead’, in the same way that slaves are socially dead. The term in Drakon's law which is normally translated as ‘to pardon’, αἴδέσασθαι, means ‘to respect the person of (M. Ostwald apud Gagarin, M., Drakon and early Athenian homicide law [New Haven 1981] 48Google Scholar n.52): a slave is quintessentially a person whose person is not respected. It becomes apparent why Solon used the term ‘enslaved’, and why modern scholars consider that usage to be ‘loose’—this is a very fuzzy area, and we who have no experience of slavery (or atimia) have very clear ideas of what it means. Harrison pointed out that ‘there is no doubt that a court … could impose the death penalty on a citizen; it would seem illogical that it should have been precluded from imposing the less extreme penalty of being sold into slavery. On the other hand, early in their constitutional history the Athenians had ruled out enslavement for debt’, (ii) 169. We are concerned with precisely that period and precisely that ruling. Enslavement remained a legal penalty for some offences, e.g. false assumption of citizen rights. For a full discussion of dishonour and the concept of social death see Patterson, O., Slavery and social death (Cambridge, MA 1982Google Scholar).

¹³⁸ Unfortunately paraphrased not quoted by Plutarch Sol 24.2, Ruschenbusch F 75: παρέχει δ’ ἄπορίαν καἴ ὁ τῶν δημοποιήτων νόμος, ὅτι γενέσθαι πολίταις οὐ δίδωσι πλὴν τοῖς φεύγουσιν ἀειφυγίαι τὴν ἑαυτών ἢ πανεστίοις Άθήναζε μετοικιζομένοις ἐπὶ τέχνηι. The law of the demopoietoi (the ‘state-made’) presents a problem (of comprehension), for it did not give the right to become citizens except to those in perpetual exile from their own or those whole families emigrating to Athens and pursuing a craft.

¹³⁹ Gagarin, M., Early Greek law [Berkeley 1986] 70Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁰ As suggested by Connor, W. R., ‘Tribes, festivals and processions’, JHS cvii (1987) 47–9Google Scholar.

¹⁴¹ Cf. the Roman situation: the Lex Licinia of 367/6 BC had limited the amount of public land which could be held for private use, and imposed a rent of one fifth. This law had been widely flouted. T. Gracchus' Lex Agraria insisted on the policing of the law, but he also gave current possessors the public land which they were (supposedly) renting, up to the legal limit. Gracchus' law did not affect private landholdings, as Solon's did not in the reconstruction here offered. Despite Solon's assertions to the contrary, the later tradition asserted that some people lost out through the seisakhtheia. Whether or not that has any basis in fact, it should perhaps be tied in with Aristotle Pol. 1266b16 sqq., wherein he attributes to Solon a law limiting the amount of land anyone could acquire; it may later have been believed that Solon repossessed land held by individuals over a certain limit.

¹⁴² It depends on the semantics of English ‘country’, particularly in the sense of ‘the country goes to the polls’. But the Greek does not and cannot mean that, for the reference is to the soil, χθονὸς πατρίδος, not to the demos. And see n.81 above.

¹⁴³ It would also have given substance to the allegation that some of Solon's friends, with or without his compliance, had made illegitimate fortunes by leasing land just before the legislation was put through, AP 6.2–4 and Plut. Sol. 15. Note that AP does not contend the point that some families of ‘ancient wealth’ acquired that wealth through Solon's seisakhtheia (as Rhodes 128 points out, ‘there is no sign that any one tried to deny the whole story’), but only the version which claimed that Solon was an accomplice in this sharp dealing. On that point AP was right, since Solon twice defended his actions by saying that he did what he had previously said he would do, frr. 34, 36.1 sq; logically, therefore, he must have announced his intentions in public. Consequently any opportunists who did profit from his reform need not have been his friends or acquaintances. Such people could have greatly increased the span of social and economic distance between themselves and everyone else through the reform—to the chagrin of all.

¹⁴⁴ 36.5–7, quoted above n.128. His use of the term ἐλεύθερος is, I think, significant: ‘Eleutheros originally designated a person belonging to a family that forms an integral part of the community … later it is used to designate anyone who is free in the sense of not being a slave. But the original meaning was never completely forgotten’, Fritz and Kapp (n.113) n.147.

¹⁴⁵ See Stinton, T. C. W., ‘Solon fragment 25 [D]’, JHS xcvi (1976) 159–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the sense of these lines.

¹⁴⁶ Apart from his statement that horoi stood on fertile land, consider for example the Athenians' sacred orgas near the Megarian border; the original meaning of the word orgas is a lush, fertile piece of land, Sokolowski (n.38) 32 n.1.

¹⁴⁷ Geras, like Homeric leaders'. And see n.47 above.

¹⁴⁸ The story of the Peisistratan tax-free farm (for what it is worth) suggests expansion onto particularly poor land—‘all stones’ on Mt Hymettos, AP 16.6.

¹⁴⁹ External migration (i.e. abroad) has different attractions. What we are talking about here is the issue of who, amongst the community of one settlement, should move, say, five kilometers, perhaps onto poorer land, simply to ease the strain in the area they leave behind. The net emigration from the asty to ‘rural’ Attikc for which Snodgrass has argued could be interpreted as a response to the intensity of the problem in the emerging city; see Snodgrass, A. M.Archaeology and the rise of the Greek state (Cambridge, 1977Google Scholar).

¹⁵⁰ Lewis (n.51) App. C. Similarly Osborne (n.49 p. 287) noted of the hekatoste inscriptions (mentioned above § 2.4.2) that many properties described as eskhatiai were of small value and lacked buildings.

¹⁵¹ Quite apart from the human and social dimension there is the practical and pragmatic dimension: a tenant is liable, unless prevented, to follow different principles of land management from those he would employ on land over which he has a more secure and permanent claim. Only excessive exploitation of leased land could have prompted the sort of regulations we find later, expressly forbidding the removal of topsoil, trees and house tiles, for example. Tenancy would have held production well below the land's agricultural potential.

¹⁵² Since Solon had the support of people across the whole social spectrum, and his reforms were accepted by the same, I think we have to allow that a lot of people were involved and that some of them were important people. For the latter, the choice dictated by the hektemorage conditions between more land or public participation—one could not aspire to lead the Athenians as an atimos—would have been particularly galling. And see n.143 above. On the issue of Solon's achievement, Peisistratos' first attempt at tyranny was some 35 years later, and he was not finally installed until some fifty years later. By the standards of Greek politics, and in what was a rapidly changing world, Solon can hardly be said to have failed in his task.

¹⁵³ Greek lyric poetry (Bristol 1982) 233.

¹⁵⁴ Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the Ancient History Seminar at Manchester on 6 November 1986; to the University of Wales Classics Staff Colloquium at Gregynog on 11 May 1990; and to the Classics Seminar at the University of Kent on 19 November 1990. Amongst those present on these occasions I particularly wish to thank Chris Collard, Nick Fisher, Steve Hodkinson, Arthur Keaveney, Alan Lloyd, John Salmon and David Whitehead for their many comments and criticisms. Thanks are also due to David Lewis, Harold Mattingly, Ian Morris, Bjorn Qviller, Peter Rhodes, Richard Seaford, the current and previous editor, and the five anonymous referees, whose generous comments and criticisms encouraged me to pursue this heterodox hypothesis, and to improve it. I am also indebted to J. V. Tucker, who listened to and commented on all the arguments more times than he cares to remember. The views expressed and any errors which remain are, of course, my own.