l privilege helps to explain the
weakness of the government in repelling the aggressions of Pisistratus,
and exhibits the importance of the revolution afterward wrought by
Clisthenes, when he abolished (for all political purposes) the four old
tribes, and created ten new comprehensive tribes in place of them.

In regard to the regulations of the senate and the assembly of the
people, as constituted by Solon, we are altogether without information:
nor is it safe to transfer to the Solonian constitution the information,
comparatively ample, which we possess respecting these bodies under the
later democracy.

The laws of Solon were inscribed on wooden rollers and triangular
tablets, in the species of writing called _Boustrophedon_ (lines
alternating first from left to right, and next from right to left, like
the course of the ploughman)--and preserved first in the Acropolis,
subsequently in the Prytaneum. On the tablets, called _Cyrbis_, were
chiefly commemorated the laws respecting sacred rites and sacrifices; on
the pillars or rollers, of which there were at least sixteen, were
placed the regulations respecting matters profane. So small are the
fragments which have come down to us, and so much has been ascribed to
Solon by the orators which belongs really to the subsequent times, that
it is hardly possible to form any critical judgment respecting the
legislation as a whole, or to discover by what general principles or
purposes he was guided.

He left unchanged all the previous laws and practices respecting the
crime of homicide, connected as they were intimately with the religious
feelings of the people. The laws of Draco on this subject, therefore,
remained, but on other subjects, according to Plutarch, they were
altogether abrogated: there is, however, room for supposing that the
repeal cannot have been so sweeping as this biographer represents.

The Solonian laws seem to have borne more or less upon all the great
departments of human interest and duty. We find regulations political
and religious, public and private, civil and criminal, commercial,
agricultural, sumptuary, and disciplinarian. Solon provides punishment
for crimes, restricts the profession and status of the citizen,
prescribes detailed rules for marriage as well as for burial, for the
common use of springs and wells, and for the mutual interest of
conterminous farmers in planting or hedging their properties. As far as
we can judge from the imperfect