Solon essays

Solon essays Solon could be called the Abraham Lincoln of his time. Where he did not go as far with democracy as we did he is one of the original founding fathers of it. The origin of the Athenian democracy of the fifth and fourth centuries can be traced back to Solon, who flourished in the years around 600 BCE. Solon was a poet and a wise statesman. (Microsoft Corporation, 2000) Besides the laws he wrote Speeches to the People and Exhortations to himself in elegiacs, and the poems on Salamis and Athenaion Politeia, also Iambics and Epodes. Poetry was for Solon a way to entertain himself. He also used poetry to give his ideas easy access to the minds of the Athenians. Solon was born in a noble family, as a young man he engaged in foreign and economic conditions in Greece. During a crisis in Greece many free Athenian small farmers, who could not pay their debts were sold into slavery to pay off their debts. Solon was elected archon, or chief magistrate, to help reform the oppressive conditions tha t were going on in Greece in 594BCE. (Microsoft Corporation, 2000) Solon immediately dismissed all outstanding debts, and he freed as many Athenians as he could from the slavery they had sold themselves into. He banned any loans that are secured by a promise to enter into slavery if the loan is defaulted, and he tried to bring people who had been sold into slavery abroad back to Athens. At first, both factions were dissatisfied with these measures, the rich at being divested of their loan securities, the poor at Solon's failure to reallocate land or to dictate a strictly equal style of living on all citizens. However, they soon realized the advantages of Solon's policies, and granted him plenipotentiary powers to revise the constitution and code of law. Solon repealed the laws of Dracon, which punished even small offenses with death, so it was said that the laws of Dracon were written in blood instead of ink. Solon reser ...