Appraisal of Solon’s reforms (Economic reforms)
An Appraisal of Solon’s Reforms (Economic Reforms)
Albeit the abolishment of enslavement for debt constituted a signal social reform, and the cancellation of debts afforded immediate economic relief.
Solon’s reforms did not altogether resolve the pecuniary difficulties besetting the poor. The most indigent of the erstwhile hectemoroi, notwithstanding their full possession of produce, and those previously compelled by penury into debt-bondage, yet confronted the selfsame trials in endeavouring to secure a sufficient livelihood for themselves and their families. Such individuals now encountered greater obstacles in procuring loans, deprived as they were of the capacity to proffer their own persons as reliable collateral, and inasmuch as creditors entertained apprehensions apropos lending, having already suffered the consequence of a debt cancellation. Their indignation at Solon’s declination to redistribute the land, deemed by them the optimal long-term remedy for their economic distress, is rendered manifest in Solon’s verse:
Solon fr. 34 in Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 12.3
They arrived in quest of plunder, their bosoms replete with hopes of riches, each conceiving he should discover abundant wealth… yet now, incensed towards me, they regard me with suspicion, as if I were an adversary. This is unjust. For, by the grace of the gods, I accomplished all that I had pledged; and moreover, performed other deeds of merit. I elected neither to comport myself with the brutality of a tyrant, nor to apportion equal shares of our fertile fatherland amongst the nobles and the commonalty alike.
Consequently, albeit now liberated in the eyes of the law, numerous individuals were constrained to seek the patronage of the affluent, thus becoming their dependants – a source of physical prowess for politically ambitious aristocrats, yet a destabilising influence within the state in the years succeeding Solon’s archonship.
However, Solon’s economic policy was imbued with long-term objectives, and was conceived to engender future prosperity for the Athenian populace by extirpating the causes that had precipitated, and would re-precipitate absent modification, the extant economic crisis:
Plutarch, Solon 22.1
Discerned that … the preponderance of the land was unproductive and of meagre quality, and that maritime traders were not wont to import goods to those lacking the means of exchange, Solon diverted the citizens towards skilled trades, and enacted a law stipulating that a son, if untutored in a trade, was under no obligation to sustain his father.
In addition, Solon extended Athenian citizenship to all foreign artisans proficient in their trades who were disposed to settle permanently with their families in Athens (Plutarch, Solon 24.2). Furthermore, he legally proscribed the exportation of all agricultural produce, save olive oil (Plutarch, Solon 24.1). The long-term ramifications of this legislation were threefold: firstly, it exhorted farmers to concentrate upon olive oil production, Athens’ most remunerative agricultural export; secondly, it galvanised those possessed of capital to invest in craft manufacture; and thirdly, the augmentation of an industrial base in Athens furnished alternative employment for those citizens who could never derive an adequate livelihood from agriculture.
It is plausibly within this context that Solon – contingent upon his having enacted such a reform, a matter of some contention – may have altered the system of weights and measures with a view to augmenting the Athenians’ market share in foreign trade (Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 10). The reform of coinage is amenable to dismissal, inasmuch as coins were not minted in Athens until a generation subsequent to Solon. Nevertheless, later coins derived their denominations from the original weights of silver, a fact that may have induced later scribes to associate Solon’s reform of weights and measures with an alteration in coinage. Yet it remains feasible to credit that Solon deliberately transitioned to the Euboean standard, employed by Euboea and Corinth, in order to afford a more capacious outlet for Athenian manufactured goods in their respective markets, especially in Sicily and southern Italy. Corroborating evidence for this accrues from the distribution of Athenian black-figure pottery, which, from circa 600 to circa 580, is discovered in abundance at sites in Greece, the Black Sea, the eastern Aegean, and along the trade routes to the west. However, from circa 580 to circa 560, there is not only a dramatic escalation in the volume of black-figure pottery unearthed at these selfsame sites, but also its presence is discerned in inland Asia Minor and in substantial quantities in southern Italy and Sicily; by circa 550, Attic pottery had surpassed its Corinthian counterpart in popularity. Ergo, Solon may be lauded for laying the foundations for Athens’ commercial ascendancy in the sixth and fifth centuries.