Solon, the son of Exekestides, entered the history of ancient Greece as a great reformer, the founder of the polis democracy of Athens. Among his contemporaries and among subsequent generations of Hellenes, he enjoyed the glory of a great poet and sage. Solon came from a very ancient royal family of Codrids. According to legend, Codrus is the last king of Athens, who sacrificed his life to save his native city. He was buried on the Acropolis, and the grateful Athenians honored him as a hero.
According to his property status, Solon belonged to people of average income. His father spent all his fortune on helping those in need, and Solon in his youth made a lot of efforts to get rich:poverty was not respected, and the passion for wealth was considered natural. In his poems, Solon openly admits that he wants to be rich, stipulating, however, that he is attracted only by honestly acquired things:“I want to be rich, but I don’t want to own this wealth dishonestly:the hour for retribution will come later.” He emphasizes that honor and a good name are dearer to him than wealth:“Many low people are rich, but a good one gets poorer. We will not exchange valor for a bag of money.”
Most of the aristocratic contemporaries of Solon got rich by engaging in usury and enslaving their debtors. Solon considered this method unfair and turned to maritime trade. He became a merchant and traveler. Distant countries attracted the young aristocrat, obviously, not only by the opportunity to make a fortune. His lively and inquisitive mind yearned for knowledge and vivid impressions. Even at an advanced age, he did not lose interest in new knowledge:“I am getting old, but I always learn a lot everywhere.”
Solon lived through a difficult time. The former order, based on the domination of the tribal nobility, was dying away, the demos (the people) rose to fight against the aristocracy. Ignorant, but wealthy citizens considered unfair the undivided dominance of the aristocracy in the courts and administration. Breaking the traditional foundations of life painfully responded in the minds of people. It was hard to live for a peasant who fell into debt bondage and lost faith in the justice of the strong. With hopeless longing, the aristocrats looked at life - cursing, invoking heavenly punishments on the heads of the “self-thinking mob”, not seeing anything good in the future. The Megarian aristocratic poet Theognid, expelled from his native city, assured:“The best lot for mortals is to never be born into the world. And never see the bright sun rays.
Solon was a cheerful and even frivolous man, as defined by his biographer Plutarch. He loved life and, having endured many failures and disappointments, he wrote:“Now Dionysus, Cyprida and the Muses have become dear to me - those whose amusements instill joy in people.” The enmity and hatred that flared up in society made him suffer too:“Yes, I understand, and grief sunk deep into my heart:I see how the former first country of the Inter-Ionian lands is bowing down.” He was close to the new people who rose from the people, understood their needs, realized their strength. Therefore, unlike the aristocrats who persisted in adherence to the old order, he was ready to contribute to the establishment of a new socio-political system and knew how to do it.
Even before becoming a legislator, Solon was actively involved in the political life of Athens. His hometown waged a long war with the neighboring city of Megara for the possession of the island of Salamis, which lies off the coast of Attica. After another defeat, the Athenian popular assembly forbade under pain of death to raise the issue of resuming the war. Many citizens, dissatisfied with the ban, did not dare to openly oppose it. Then Solon, in order to raise the morale of the Athenians, ran out, pretending to be crazy, into the square and sang verses in which he called for the capture of Salamis. The poems made such a strong impression on the citizens of Athens that they immediately decided to start a war with the Megarians and appointed Solon as commander. The island was reconquered, and Solon gained significant political authority. There is nothing strange in the fact that the performance of a madman was taken seriously by his compatriots:madness, the ancients believed, was from the gods. And in this case, the gods expressed their will through Solon.
Solon's actions characterize him as a rational person. Constantly referring to the authority of the gods, in worldly affairs he preferred to be guided by common sense. Proving the original belonging of Salamis to Athens, Solon was not afraid to open several graves on the island and show the Megarians that the dead were buried according to the custom of the Athenians. Moreover, he went on a frank forgery:using the authority in Greece of Homer's poems, he inserted into one of them a line proving Salamis's long-standing connection with Athens. Such tricks were not considered a vice at that time - on the contrary, they created a reputation for a person as a smart and subtle politician. Solon began to be invited to mediate in disputes between noble Athenian families. Respect and fame throughout Greece brought him a speech in defense of the Delphic temple of the god Apollo, whose land was seized by the inhabitants of the city of Kirra.
Undoubtedly, Solon's political views had taken shape and were well known in Athenian society by 594 BC. e. It was then that he was elected the first archon - the highest official in Athens, with broad powers of the esement (intermediary). By this time, the contradictions between the people and the nobility had reached the limit, but the warring parties had the prudence to turn to Solon with a request for the necessary reforms. Solon, not without hesitation, began to transform the political system of Athens. The nobility hoped that Solon, himself being an aristocrat, would strengthen her position. Demos, considering Solon a just man, expected from him a general redistribution of property and the equalization of all rights. Solon was not going to do either one or the other. He considered the claims of the nobility to be excessive and reproached her in his poems:“Calm your mighty heart in your chest:You got a lot of blessings - you are fed up with them, put Measure on the arrogant spirit:otherwise we will stop obeying, and everything will not be to your liking. ". The idea of universal property and political equality was also unacceptable for Solon, which he put on a par with the hated tyranny:“... I don’t like to rule tyranny by force, as well as in the pastures of my relatives To give the thin and noble an equal share.”
According to Solon, the life of society should be governed by law and laws adopted by consensus. These principles were put by Solon in the basis of his reforms. For Solon, the rich and the poor, the noble and the humble, are equal members of a single civil society. For the sake of the unity and prosperity of society, mutual concessions and compromises are necessary. About his role, Solon said in verse:“I got up, covering both with a mighty shield, And I did not give anyone the right to win the others.” Courage and a strong will were required to consistently implement such an intention.
Solon's reforms did not lead to a radical break in Athens by the beginning of the 6th century. BC e. public relations. They only changed what threatened the state with death. Solon freed the demos from debt bondage and forever forbade the enslavement of Athenian citizens for debts. He returned to the peasants the land allotments taken from them by the nobility. All citizens were divided into classes according to their incomes; the political rights of a citizen no longer depended on his origin, but on his condition. Only the rich could be elected to the highest positions, but on the other hand, all citizens, without distinction of property status, now participated in the national assembly and in the jury created by Solon.
The reforms have caused widespread bewilderment and irritation. Trying to explain to fellow citizens the meaning of the transformations, Solon again resorts to poetry. They contain a lot of bitter confessions:"... having gathered all the courage to fight, I was like a wolf circling among a pack of dogs." And one more thing:“Everyone once rejoiced, but now they always see me off with an evil look, as if I were their worst enemy.”
Attempt to achieve universal agreement failed. Not wanting to change anything in his laws, Solon leaves Athens and becomes a traveler again. He sails to Egypt, conducts conversations with the priests there, then goes to Cyprus and helps the local king to found a new city. Ancient authors wrote many stories about Solon's meetings with famous contemporaries. When visiting the capital of the Lydian kingdom - the city of Sardis - for example, he talked with the king Croesus who went down in history and taught him a lesson in Hellenic wisdom.
After ten long years, Solon returned to Athens as an old man. He had to witness how the ongoing struggle between his fellow citizens ended in the establishment of the tyranny of Peisistratus. Although Pisistratus was his relative and in the past they were friends, Solon guessed the aspirations of the ambitious and tried to warn the Athenians about the impending danger:“You are
They turned their attention to the speeches of the treacherous husband.” When Peisistratus captured the Acropolis with his guards, Solon called on the citizens to armed struggle against the tyrant. The close associates of the self-appointed ruler declared him crazy, to which Solon replied:“A short time will show whether I’m definitely crazy:the truth will come to light, no matter how much you swamp it.”
Ancient writers cover the fate of Solon after Peisistratus came to power in different ways. Diogenes Laertes writes that he left Athens and died, having lived to the age of 80, in Cyprus. According to Plutarch, Solon remained in Athens, and Peisistratus managed to win him over to his side, consulting with an old friend in everything. How many years Solon lived under Peisistratus, Plutarch does not know for sure.
Contemporaries turned a deaf ear to Solon's exhortations, but many years later, having put an end to tyranny, the Athenians turned to the precepts of the great reformer. The principles of measure, the "golden mean", civil unity were correctly defined by him as the basis for the existence of the policy. Therefore, the Athenians ranked Solon among the “seven wise men” - this was the name of several of his contemporaries, who, like him, actively participated in the development and creation of the foundations of the state system of the Greek polis.