Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/159

SOLON'S CENSURE OF .NEUTRALITY. U3 enters into distinctions and mentions both places and forms of procedure, -which we cannot reasonably refer to the 4Gth Olym- piad. The public dinners at the prytaneium, of which the archons and a select few partook in common, were also either first established, or perhaps only more strictly regulated, by Solon : he ordered barley cakes for their ordinary meals, and wheaten loaves for festival days, prescribing how often each per son should dine at the table. 1 The honor of dining at the table of the prytaneium was maintained throughout as a valuable re- ward at the disposal of the government. Among the various laws of Solon, there are few which have attracted more notice than that which pronounces the man, who in a sedition stood aloof and took part with neither side, to be dis- honored and disfranchised. 2 Strictly speaking, this seems more in the nature of an emphatic moral denunciation, or a religious curse, than a legal sanction capable of being formally applied in an individual case and after judicial trial, though the sentence of atlmy, under the more elaborated Attic procedure, was both definite in its penal consequences and also judicially delivered. We may, however, follow the course of ideas under which Solon was induced to write this sentence on his tables, and we may trace the influence of similar ideas in later Attic institutions. It is obvious that his denunciation is confined to that special case in which a sedition has already broken out : we must suppose that Kylon has seized the acropolis, or that Peisistratus, Megakles, and Lykurgus are in arms at the head of their partisans. As- suming these leaders to be wealthy and powerful men, which part of his work, he copies a Solonian law from the wooden amoves on the authority of Aristotle (ii, 12). Plato, in his Laws, prescribes the paena dupli in all cases of theft, without distinction of circumstances (Lcgg. ix, p. 857; xii, p. 941); it was also the primitive law of Rome: li Posuerunt furem duplo condemnari, foenera- torem quadruple." (Cato, Do Re Rustica, Prooemium), that is to say, in cases of furtum nee maniftstum ("Walter, Geschichte des Romisch. Rechts. sect. 757). 1 Plutarch, Solon, 24 ; Athens, iv, p. 137 ; Diogen. Laert. i, 58 : /rat ?rp<j- rof TTJV ffvvcyuyijv ruv ivvea ap%6vTuv eirotqaev, elf rb avvfixeli, where perhaps, avvdeiirvelv is the proper reading. 3 Plutarch, Solon, 20, and De Sera Numinis Vindictn, p. 550; Aulas Gell U, 12.