Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/151

PROHIBITIONS OF SOLON 135 pfcrfect manner in which his laws come before us, there does not seem to have hcen any attempt at a systematic order or classifi- cation. Some of them are mere general and vague directions, while others again run into the extreme of speciality. By far the most important of all was the amendment of the law of debtor and creditor which has already been adverted to, and the abolition of the power of fathers and brothers to sell their daughters and sisters into slavery. The prohibition of all contracts on the security of the body, was itself sufficient to pro- duce a vast improvement in the character and condition of the poorer population, a result which seems to have been so sen- sibly obtained from the legislation of Solon, that Boeckh and some other eminent authors suppose him to have abolished villen- age and conferred upon the poor tenants a property in their lands, annulling the seignorial rights of the landlord. But tliia opinion rests upon no positive evidence, nor are we warranted in ascribing to him any stronger measure in reference to the land, than the annulment of the previous mortgages. 1 The first pillar of his laws contained a regulation respecting exportable produce. He forbade the exportation of all produce of the Attic soil, except olive-oil alone, and the sanction employed to enforce observance of this law deserves notice, as an illustra- tion of the ideas of the time ; the archon was bound, on pain of forfeiting one hundred drachms, to pronounce solemn curses against every offender. 2 We are probably to take this prohi- 1 See Boeckh, Public Economy of the Athenians, book iii, sect. 5. Titt- mann (Gricchisch. Staatsverfass. p. 651) and others have supposed (from Aristot. Folit. ii, 4, 4) that Solon enacted a law to limit the quantity of land which any individual citizen might acquire. But the passage does not seem to me to bear out such an opinion. 2 Plutarch, Solon, 24. The first law, however, is said to have related to the insuring of a maintenance to wives and orphans (Harpokration, v, Strof). By a law of Athens (which marks itself out as belonging to the century after Solon, by the fulness of its provisions, and by the number of steps and official persons named in it), the rooting up of an olive-tree in Attica was forbidden, under a penalty of two hundred drachms for each tree so de- stroyed, except for sacred purposes, or to the extent of two trees jrei annum for the convenience of the proprietor (Demosthen. cont. Makartat c 16, p. 107-n