Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/157

SOLON'S REWARDS TO THE OLYMPIC VICTORS. 141 Other penal enactments of Solon are yet to be mentioned. He forbade absolutely evil-speaking with respect to the dead : he for- bade it likewise with respect to the living, either in a temple or before judges or archons, or at any public festival, on paiii of a forfeit of three drachms to the person aggrieved, and two more to the public treasury. How mild the general character of his punishments was, may be judged by this law against foul language, not less than by the law before mentioned against rape : both the one and the other of these offences were much more severely dealt with under the subsequent law of democrat- ical Athens. The peremptory edict against speaking ill of a deceased person, though doubtless springing in a great degree from disinterested repugnance, is traceable also in part to that fear of the wrath of the departed which strongly possessed the early Greek mind. It seems generally that Solon determined by law the outlay for the public sacrifices, though we do not know what were his particular directions : we are told that he reckoned a sheep and a medimnus (of wheat or barley ?) as equivalent, either of them, to a drachm, and that he also prescribed the prices to be paid for first-rate oxen intended for solemn occasions. But it astonishes us to see the large recompense which he awarded out of the public treasury to a victor at the Olympic or Isthmian games : to the former five hundred drachms, equal to one year's income of the highest of the four classes on the census ; to the latter limits the expense of funerals upon a graduated scale, according to the census of the deceased (Legg. xii, p. 959). Demosthenes (cont. Makartat p 1071) gives what he calls the Solonian law on funerals, different from Plutarch on several points. Ungovernable excesses of grief among the female sex are sometimes mentioned in Grecian towns : see the [tavinbv irev&of among the Milesian women (Polyacn. viii, 63): the Milesian women, however, had a tinge of Karian feeling. Compare an instructive inscription, recording a law of the Greek city of Gambreion in jEolic Asia Minor, wherein the dress, the proceedings, and the time of allowed mourning, for men, women, and children who had lost their relatives, are strictly prescribed under severe penalties (Franz, FQnf Innchrif- tcn und fiinf Stadtc in Kleinasien, Berlin, 1340, p. 17). Expensive cere monies in the celebration of marriage are forbidden by some of the old Scandinavian laws (Wil.lu, P ; . <;i!,lf >w< sen im -MittdalKT. p. 18).