the world--combined with the recognition of slavery as a legitimate
status, and of the right of one man to sell himself as well as that of
another man to buy him. Every debtor unable to fulfil his contract was
liable to be adjudged as the slave of his creditor, until he could find
means either of paying it or working it out; and not only he himself,
but his minor sons and unmarried daughters and sisters also, whom the
law gave him the power of selling. The poor man thus borrowed upon the
security of his body (to translate literally the Greek phrase) and upon
that of the persons in his family. So severely had these oppressive
contracts been enforced, that many debtors had been reduced from freedom
to slavery in Attica itself, many others had been sold for exportation,
and some had only hitherto preserved their own freedom by selling their
children. Moreover, a great number of the smaller properties in Attica
were under mortgage, signified--according to the formality usual in the
Attic law, and continued down throughout the historical times--by a
stone pillar erected on the land, inscribed with the name of the lender
and the amount of the loan. The proprietors of these mortgaged lands, in
case of an unfavorable turn of events, had no other prospect except that
of irremediable slavery for themselves and their families, either in
their own native country robbed of all its delights, or in some
barbarian region where the Attic accent would never meet their ears.
Some had fled the country to escape legal adjudication of their persons,
and earned a miserable subsistence in foreign parts by degrading
occupations. Upon several, too, this deplorable lot had fallen by unjust
condemnation and corrupt judges; the conduct of the rich, in regard to
money sacred and profane, in regard to matters public as well as
private, being thoroughly unprincipled and rapacious.

The manifold and long-continued suffering of the poor under this system,
plunged into a state of debasement not more tolerable than that of the
Gallic _plebs_--and the injustices of the rich, in whom all political
power was then vested--are facts well attested by the poems of Solon
himself, even in the short fragments preserved to us. It appears that
immediately preceding the time of his archonship the evils had ripened
to such a point, and the determination of the mass of sufferers to
extort for themselves some mode of relief had become so pronounced, that
the existing laws