vated the lands of the rich for a sixth part of the produce. The whole country was in the hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their rent, they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their children with them. Their persons were mortgaged to their creditors...; but the hardest and bitterest part of the condition of the masses was the fact that they had no share in the offices then existing under the constitution. ... To speak generally, they had no part or share in anything."[1]
This is nothing but the familiar story of the
accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, with
the usual ethical results : the deterioration of aristo-
cratic character into plutocratic, and the shifting of
the sense of duty from the State as its object to
individual interests. It is entirely confirmed by
the poems of Solon, the only contemporary evidence
we possess, which formed no doubt the basis of later
accounts, such as that just quoted. The author of
the treatise himself quotes most appositely four lines
which exactly express the new spirit of questioning
as well as its chief cause —
"But ye who have store of good, who are sated and overflow, Restrain your swelling soul, and still it and keep it low; Let the heart that is great within you be trained a lowlier way; Ye shall not have all at your will, and we will not for ever obey."[2]
- ↑ Ath. Pol. ch. 5. Cf. the words of Plutarch, Solon, ch. 13 at end.
- ↑ ὑμεῖς δ' ἡσυχάσαντες ἐνὶ φρεσὶ κάρτερον ἧτορ,
οἲ πολλῶν ἀγαθῶν ἐς κόρον [ἠλ]άσατε,ἐν μετρίοισι τ[ρέφεσθ]ε μέγαν νόον οὔτε γὰρ ἡμεῖς
πεισόμεθ', οὔθ' ὑμῖν ἄρτια τα[ῦτ'] ἔσεταιI have borrowed Mr. Kenyon's spirited translation. These lines were new to us when the treatise was discovered.
