Solon rewrote Athens' laws, then left town for ten years
Around 594 BC Athens handed Solon sweeping power to heal its feuds. He cancelled crushing debts, scrapped nearly all of Draco's harsh laws and laid foundations later credited with birthing democracy. Then, to stop anyone pressuring him into undoing his reforms, he gave up his authority and sailed abroad for a decade.
Solon, born in Athens around 630 BC into a noble clan, was a statesman, lawgiver and poet counted among the Seven Sages of Greece. His family line was said to reach back to Codrus, the last king of Athens; a brother was reportedly an ancestor of Plato, and his mother was a cousin of the mother of Pisistratus. Later writers sniffed that his work in sea trade was beneath an aristocrat. He first made his name in a war with neighbouring Megara over the island of Salamis, rallying dispirited troops with a patriotic poem and winning around 595 BC. When Megara kept its claim, Sparta arbitrated and awarded the island to Athens on the strength of Solon's argument.
Chosen archon, or chief magistrate, in 594 BC, he kept Draco's homicide laws and repealed the rest. His debt relief became celebrated as the seisachtheia, the shaking off of burdens. One story shows the price of integrity: friends who learned of the plan in advance borrowed money to buy land, and to clear himself of suspicion Solon forgave debts owed to him worth five talents, or fifteen in some accounts. Aristotle called him the first champion of the people, and Demosthenes credited him with starting a golden age.
His absence did not keep the peace. Within four years old rivalries returned, officials clung to posts or left them empty, and eventually his own relative Pisistratus seized power as tyrant. Plutarch has Solon scolding Athenians for their foolishness and cowardice in allowing it.
His travels became legend. Herodotus says he met the pharaoh Amasis II in Egypt, and Plato's dialogues claim priests at Sais told him the story of Atlantis. In Cyprus a grateful king named a new capital Soloi after him. At Sardis he warned the wealthy Croesus not to call anyone happy until life was over, since fortune can turn; Croesus understood only after losing his kingdom to Cyrus. Much of this rests on authors writing long afterward, and Solon's own poems survive only in fragments.
Source: Solon
