Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/132

Hfi HISTORY OF GREECE. there occurred at Rome several political changes which brought about new tables^ or at least a partial depreciation of contracts, no phenomenon of the same kind ever happened at Athens, during the three centuries between Solon and the end of the free working of the democracy. Doubtless there were fraudulent debtors at Athens, and the administration of private law, though it did not in any way connive at their proceedings, was far too imperfect to repress them as effectually as might have been wished. But the public sentiment on the point was just and decided, and it may be asserted with confidence, that a loan of money at Athens was quite as secure as it ever was at any time or place of the ancient world, in spite of the great and important superiority of Rome with respect to the accumulation of a body of authoritative legal precedent, the source of what was ultimately shaped into the Roman jurisprudence. Among the various causes of sedition or mischief in the Grecian com- munities,' 2 we hear little of the pressure of private debt. By the measures of relief above described, 3 Solon had accom- plished results surpassing his own best hopes. He had healed the prevailing discontents ; and such was the confidence and gratitude which he had inspired, that he was now called upon to draw up a constitution and laws for the better working of the strong proof that they were not depreciated, and that no loss was incurred by giving the old coins in exchange for them. 1 " Sane vetus Urbi fcenebre malum (says Tacitus, Ann. vi, 16) et seditlo- num discordiarumque crcberrima causa," etc: compare Appian, Bell. Civil. Prafat. ; and Montesquieu, Esprit dcs Lois, 1. xxii, c. 22. The constant hopes and intrigues of debtors at Rome, to get rid of their debts by some political movement, are nowhere more forcibly brought out than in the second Catilinarian Oration of Cicero, c. 8-9 : read also the striking harangue of Catiline to his fellow-conspirators (Sallust, B. Catilin. c. 20-21). 2 The insolvent debtor, in some of the Boeotian towns, was condemned to sit publicly in the agora with a basket on his head, and then disfranchised (Nikolaus Damaskenus, Frag. p. 152, ed. Orelli). According to Diodorus, the old severe law against the body of a debtor, long after it had been abrogated by Solon at Athens, ntill continued ia other parts of Greece (i, 79). 3 iSolon, Frag. 27, ed. Sclmeid. "A HEV ueATrra aiiv tisolaiv i/wrf, uAAc> *' ov fturtiv "Epfov.