Solon and other poets 25 



problems of an age of unrest, among the causes of which the introduc- 

 tion of metallic coinage, susceptible of hoarding and unaffected by 

 weather, played a great part. Poverty, debt and slavery of debtors, 

 hardship, begging, the insolence and oppression of rich and greedy 

 creditors, are common topics. The sale of free men into slavery 

 abroad is lamented by Solon, who claims to have restored many 

 such victims by his measures of reform. In particular, he removed 

 encumbrances on land, thus setting free the small farmers who were in 

 desperate plight owing to debt. The exact nature and scope of his 

 famous reform is a matter of dispute. Whether he relieved freeholders 

 from a burden of debt, or emancipated the clients 1 of landowning nobles 

 from dependence closely akin to serfdom, cannot be discussed here, 

 and does not really bear on the matter in hand. In either case the 

 persons relieved were a class of working farmers, and the economic 

 reform was the main thing:, political reform was of value as tending to 

 secure the economic boon. It is remarkable that Solon, enumerating 

 a number of trades (practically the old Homeric and Hesiodic list), 

 speaks of them merely as means of escaping the pressure of poverty, 

 adding 'and another man 2 is yearly servant to those interested in 

 ploughing, and furrows land planted with fruit-trees.' This man seems 

 to be a wage-earner (%) working for a large farmer, probably the 

 owner of a landed estate in the rich lowland (TreSm?) of Attica. The 

 small farmers were mostly confined to the rocky uplands. Evidently 

 it is not manual labour that is the hardship, but the dependent position 

 of the hired man working on another's land. The hard-working inde- 

 pendent peasant, willing to till stony land for his own support, is the 

 type that Solon encouraged and Peisistratus 3 approved. 



The life of such peasant farmers was at best a hard one, and little 

 desired by men living under easier conditions. Two fragments from 

 Ionia express views of dwellers in that rich and genial land. Phocylides 

 of Miletus in one of his wise counsels says * if you desire wealth, devote 

 your care to a fat farm (iriovos aypov), for the saying is that a farm is 

 a horn of plenty.' The bitter Hipponax of Ephesus describes a man 

 as having lived a gluttonous life and so eaten up his estate (rov K\ripov): 

 the result is that he is driven to dig a rocky hillside and live on common 

 figs and barley bread mere slave's fodder (Sov\iov xoprov). Surely the 

 'fat farm' was not meant to be worked by the owner single-handed; 

 and the 'slave's fodder' suggests the employment of slaves. Ionia was 

 a home of luxury and ease. 



1 The view of M Clerc Les mttiques Athtniens pp 340-5. 



2 aXXos yriv rtpvuv troXvdtvdpeov et's tviavrbv Xarpetfet TOI<TIV KafiirtX' Aporpa ,uA. Mr Lin- 

 forth takes the last four words as defining aXXos, the plowman. I think they refer to the 

 employers, spoken of as a class. 



3 Aristotle 'A0 iro\ ir, 12, 16. 



