terminate
proportions, after his death. Such a law was the more likely to prevail
at Athens, since the perpetuity of the family sacred rites, in which the
children and near relatives partook of right, was considered by the
Athenians as a matter of public as well as of private concern. Solon
gave permission to every man dying without children to bequeath his
property by will as he should think fit; and the testament was
maintained unless it could be shown to have been procured by some
compulsion or improper seduction. Speaking generally, this continued to
be the law throughout the historical times of Athens. Sons, wherever
there were sons, succeeded to the property of their father in equal
shares, with the obligation of giving out their sisters in marriage
along with a certain dowry. If there were no sons, then the daughters
succeeded, though the father might by will, within certain limits,
determine the person to whom they should be married, with their rights
of succession attached to them; or might, with the consent of his
daughters, make by will certain other arrangements about his property. A
person who had no children or direct lineal descendants might bequeath
his property at pleasure: if he died without a will, first his father,
then his brother or brother's children, next his sister or sister's
children succeeded: if none such existed, then the cousins by the
father's side, next the cousins by the mother's side,--the male line of
descent having preference over the female.

Such was the principle of the Solonian laws of succession, though the
particulars are in several ways obscure and doubtful. Solon, it appears,
was the first who gave power of superseding by testament the rights of
agnates and gentiles to succession,--a proceeding in consonance with his
plan of encouraging both industrious occupation and the consequent
multiplication of individual acquisitions.

It has been already mentioned that Solon forbade the sale of daughters
or sisters into slavery by fathers or brothers; a prohibition which
shows how much females had before been looked upon as articles of
property. And it would seem that before his time the violation of a free
woman must have been punished at the discretion of the magistrates; for
we are told that he was the first who enacted a penalty of one hundred
drachmas against the offender, and twenty drachmas against the seducer
of a free woman. Moreover, it is said that he forbade a bride when