Плутарх - Plutarch's Lives - Volume I

Solon moreover is said to have purposely worded his laws vaguely and with several interpretations, in order to increase the powers of these juries, because persons who could not settle their disputes by the letter of the law were obliged to have recourse to juries of the people, and to refer all disputes to them, as being to a certain extent above the laws. He himself notices this in the following verses:

Thinking that the weakness of the populace required still further protection, he permitted any man to prosecute on behalf of any other who might be ill–treated. Thus if a man were struck or injured, any one else who was able and willing might prosecute on his behalf, and the lawgiver by this means endeavoured to make the whole body of citizens act together and feel as one. A saying of his is recorded which quite agrees with the spirit of this law. Being asked, what he thought was the best managed city? "That," he answered, "in which those who are not wronged espouse the cause of those who are, and punish their oppressors."

XIX. He established the senate of the Areopagus of those who had held the yearly office of archon, and himself became a member of it because he had been archon. But in addition to this, observing that the people were becoming turbulent and unruly, in consequence of their relief from debt, he formed a second senate, consisting of a hundred men selected from each of the four tribes, to deliberate on measures in the first instance, and he permitted no measures to be proposed before the general assembly, which had not been previously discussed in this senate. The upper senate he intended to exercise a general supervision, and to maintain the laws, and he thought that with these two senates as her anchors, the ship of the state would ride more securely, and that the people would be less inclined to disorder. Most writers say that Solon constituted the senate of the Areopagus, as is related above; and this view is supported by the fact that Drakon nowhere mentions or names the Areopagites, but in all cases of murder refers to the Ephetai. However, the eighth law on the thirteenth table of the laws of Solon runs thus:—

"All citizens who were disfranchised before the magistracy of Solon shall resume their rights, except those who have been condemned by the Areopagus, or by the Ephetai, or by the king—archons, in the prytaneum, for murder or manslaughter, or attempts to overthrow the government and who were in exile when this law was made."

This again proves that the senate of the Areopagus existed before the time of Solon; for who could those persons be who were condemned by the court of the Areopagus, if Solon was the first who gave the senate of the Areopagus a criminal jurisdiction; though perhaps some words have been left out, or indistinctly written, and the law means "all those who had been condemned on the charges which now are judged by the court of the Areopagus, the Ephetai, or the Prytanies, when this law was made, must remain disfranchised, though the others become enfranchised?" Of these explanations the reader himself must consider which he prefers.

XX. The strangest of his remaining laws is that which declared disfranchised a citizen who in a party conflict took neither side; apparently his object was to prevent any one regarding home politics in a listless, uninterested fashion, securing his own personal property, and priding himself upon exemption from the misfortunes of his country, and to encourage men boldly to attach themselves to the right party and to share all its dangers, rather than in safety to watch and see which side would be successful. That also is a strange and even ludicrous provision in one of his laws, which permits an heiress, whose husband proves impotent, to avail herself of the services of the next of kin to obtain an heir to her estate. Some, however, say that this law rightly serves men who know themselves to be unfit for marriage, and who nevertheless marry heiresses for their money, and try to make the laws override nature; for, when they see their wife having intercourse with whom she pleases, they will either break off the marriage, or live in constant shame, and so pay the penalty of their avarice and wrong–doing. It is a good provision also, that the heiress may not converse with any one, but only with him whom she may choose from among her husband's relations, so that her offspring may be all in the family. This is pointed at by his ordinance that the bride and bridegroom should be shut in the same room and eat a quince together, and that the husband of an heiress should approach her at least thrice in each month. For even if no children are born, still this is a mark of respect to a good wife, and puts an end to many misunderstandings, preventing their leading to an actual quarrel.

In other marriages he suppressed dowries, and ordered the bride to bring to her husband three dresses and a few articles of furniture of no great value; for he did not wish marriages to be treated as money bargains or means of gain, but that men and women should enter into marriage for love and happiness and procreation of children. Dionysius, the despot of Syracuse, when his mother wished to be married to a young citizen, told her that he had indeed broken the laws of the state when he seized the throne, but that he could not disregard the laws of nature so far as to countenance such a monstrous union. These disproportioned matches ought not to be permitted in any state, nor should men be allowed to form unequal loveless alliances, which are in no sense true marriages. A magistrate or lawgiver might well address an old man who marries a young girl in the words of Sophokles: "Poor wretch, a hopeful bridegroom you will be;" and if he found a young man fattening like a partridge in the house of a rich old woman, he ought to transfer him to some young maiden who is without a husband. So much for this subject.

XXI. Besides these, Solon's law which forbids men to speak evil of the dead is much praised. It is good to think of the departed as sacred, and it is only just to refrain from attacking the absent, while it is politic, also, to prevent hatred from being eternal. He also forbade people to speak evil of the living in temples, courts of justice, public buildings, or during the national games; and imposed a fine of three drachmas to the person offended, and two to the state. His reason for this was that it shows a violent and uncultivated nature not to be able to restrain one's passion in certain places and at certain times, although it is hard to do so always, and to some persons impossible; and a legislator should frame his laws with a view to what he can reasonably hope to effect, and rather correct a few persons usefully than punish a number to no purpose.

He gained credit also by his law about wills. Before his time these were not permitted at Athens, but the money and lands of a deceased person were inherited by his family in all cases. Solon, however, permitted any one who had no children to leave his property to whom he would, honouring friendship more than nearness of kin, and giving a man absolute power to dispose of his inheritance. Yet, on the other hand, he did not permit legacies to be given without any restrictions, but disallowed all that were obtained by the effects of disease or by administration of drugs to the testator, or by imprisonment and violence, or by the solicitations of his wife, as he rightly considered that to be persuaded by one's wife against one's better judgment is the same as to submit to force. For Solon held that a man's reason was perverted by deceit as much as by violence, and by pleasure no less than by pain.