Solonian Constitution

The Solonian constitution was created by the Athenian statesman Solon in the early sixth century BC, at a time when the Athenian state was nearly falling apart under dissension between the rival parties into which its population was divided. Solon set out to revise or abolish the older laws of Draco, and he promulgated a code of laws covering the whole of public and private life whose effects lasted long after his own constitution had ended. Under his reforms all debts were abolished and debt-slaves were freed, in measures known as the Seisachtheia, and the status of the hektemoroi, workers who farmed under an early form of serfdom, was likewise abolished. Solon's constitution reduced the power of the old aristocracy by making wealth rather than birth the criterion for holding political office, a system called timokratia, and it divided citizens into four classes based on their land production: the pentacosiomedimnoi, hippeis, zeugitae and thetes. He gave the lower assembly the right to hear appeals and created a higher assembly as well, both intended to reduce the power of the aristocratic council, the Areopagus. The only part of Draco's constitution that Solon retained was its laws on homicide. The constitution itself was written as poetry, and as soon as it was introduced Solon went into a self-imposed exile of ten years so that he would not be tempted to seize power as a tyrant.