haking off of burdens, was directed. The relief
which it afforded was complete and immediate. It cancelled at once all
those contracts in which the debtor had borrowed on the security either
of his person or of his land: it forbade all future loans or contracts
in which the person of the debtor was pledged as security; it deprived
the creditor in future of all power to imprison, or enslave, or extort
work, from his debtor, and confined him to an effective judgment at law
authorizing the seizure of the property of the latter. It swept off all
the numerous mortgage pillars from the landed properties in Attica,
leaving the land free from all past claims. It liberated and restored to
their full rights all debtors actually in slavery under previous legal
adjudication; and it even provided the means (we do not know how) of
repurchasing in foreign lands, and bringing back to a renewed life of
liberty in Attica, many insolvents who had been sold for exportation.
And while Solon forbade every Athenian to pledge or sell his own person
into slavery, he took a step farther in the same direction by forbidding
him to pledge or sell his son, his daughter, or an unmarried sister
under his tutelage--excepting only the case in which either of the
latter might be detected in unchastity. Whether this last ordinance was
contemporaneous with the Seisachtheia, or followed as one of his
subsequent reforms, seems doubtful.

By this extensive measure the poor debtors--the Thetes, small tenants,
and proprietors--together with their families, were rescued from
suffering and peril. But these were not the only debtors in the state:
the creditors and landlords of the exonerated Thetes were doubtless in
their turn debtors to others, and were less able to discharge their
obligations in consequence of the loss inflicted upon them by the
Seisachtheia. It was to assist these wealthier debtors, whose bodies
were in no danger--yet without exonerating them entirely--that Solon
resorted to the additional expedient of debasing the money standard. He
lowered the standard of the drachma in a proportion of something more
than 25 per cent., so that 100 drachmas of the new standard contained no
more silver than 73 of the old, or 100 of the old were equivalent to 138
of the new. By this change the creditors of these more substantial
debtors were obliged to submit to a loss, while the debtors acquired an
exemption to the extent of about 27 per cent.

Lastly, Solon d