Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/116

100 HIST Ofi Y OF GREKCK. Whether this last ordinance was contemporaneous with the seisach- theia, or followed as one of his subsequent reforms, seems doubtful. By this extensive measure the poor debtors, the thetes, small tenants, and proprietors, together with their families, ivere rescued from suffering and peril. But these wera not the only debtors in the state : the creditors and landlords of the exoner- ated thetes were doubtless in their turn debtors to others, and were less able to discharge their obligations in consequence of the loss inflicted upon them by the seisachtheia. It was to assist these wealthier debtors, whose bodies were in no danger, yet without exonerating them entirely, that Solon resorted to the additional expedient of debasing the money standard ; he lowered the standard of the drachma in a proportion something more than twenty-five per cent., so that one hundred drachmas of the new standard contained no more silver than seventy-three of the old, or one hundred of the old were equivalent to one hundred and thirty-eight of the new. By this change, the credi- tors of these more substantial debtors were obliged to submit to a loss, while the debtors acquired an exemption, to the extent of about twenty-seven per cent. 1 from some untrustworthy authority : compare Dionys. Hal. A. K. ii, 20, where he contrasts the prodigious extent of the ptttria potcstas among the early Romans, with the restrictions which all the Greek legislators alike, Solon, Pittakus, Charondas, either found or introduced : he says, however, that the Athenian faiher was permitted to disinherit legitimate male children, which does not seem to be correct. Meier (Der Attische Prozess, iii. 2, p. 427) rejects the above -mentioned statement of Scxtus Empiricus, and farther contends that the exposure of new-born infants was not only rare, but discountenanced as well by law as by opinion ; the evidence in the Latin comedies to the contrary, he considers as manifestations of Roman, and not of Athenian, manners. In this latter opinion I do not think that he is borne out, and I agree in the statement of Schomann (Ant. J. P. Graec. eect. 82), that the practice and feeling of Athens as well as of Greece generally, left it to the discretion of the father whether ne would consent, or refuse, to bring up a new-born child. 1 Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. See the full exposition given of this debasement of the coinage, in Boeckh's Mctrologie, ch. ix, p. 115. M. Boeckh thinks (ch. xv, s. 2) that Solon not only debased the coin, but also altered the weights and measures. I dissent from his opinion on thii latter point, and have given my reasons for so doing, in a review of his va? uable treatise in the Classical Museum, No. 1.