Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/121

SEISACHTHEIA, OR RELIEF-LAW. 105 livity, and brought them back to their home. It is certain that no measure, simply and exclusively prospective, would have sufficed for the emergency : there was an absolute necessity for overruling all that class of preexisting rights which had pro- duced so violent a social fever. While therefore, to this extent, the seisachtheia cannot be acquitted of injustice, we may confi- dently affirm that the injustice inflicted was an indispensable price, paid for the maintenance of the peace of society, and for the final abrogation of a disastrous system as regarded insolvents. 1 And the feeling as well as the legislation universal in the modern European world, by interdicting beforehand all contracts for selling a man's person or that of his children into slavery, goes far to sanction practically the Solonian repudiation. One thing is never to be forgotten in regard to this measure, combined with the concurrent amendments introduced by Solon in the law, it settled finally the question to which it referred. Never again do we hear of the law of debtor and creditor as disturbing Athenian tranquillity. The general sentiment which grew up at Athens, under the Solonian money-law, and under the democratical government, was one of high respect for the sanctity of contracts. Not only was there never any demand in the Athenian democracy for new tables or a depreciation of the money standard, but a formal abnegation of any such projects was inserted in the solemn oath taken annually by the numerous diokasts, who formed the popular judicial body, called heliiva, or the heliastic jurors, the same oath which pledged them to 1 That which Solon did for the Athenian people in regard to debts, is less than what was promised to the Roman plcbi (at the time of its secession 10 the Mons Sacer in 491 B. c.) by Mcnenius Agrippa, the envoy of the senate, to appease them, but which does not seem to have been ever realized (Dionys. Hal. vi, 83). He promised an abrogation of all the debts of debtors unable to pay, without exception, if the language of Dionysius is to be trusted, which probably it cannot be. Dr. Thirlwall justly observes respecting Solon, " He must be considered as an arbitrator, to whom all the parties interested submitted their claims, with the avowed intent that they should be decided by him, not upon the footing of legal right, but according to his own view of the public interest. It was in this light that he himself regarded his office, and he appears to have discharged ft faithfully and discreetly." (History of Greece, ch. xi. vol ii, p. 42.)