Solon - Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens

Solon the Thinker

Political Thought in Archaic Athens

John David Lewis

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

www.bloomsbury.com

First published in 2006 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.

First paperback edition 2008

John David Lewis 2006

John David Lewis has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN-13: 978-1-4725-2114-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Ray Davies

Articles reflecting research used in this book include:

Slavery and Lawlessness in Solonian Athens, in Dike 7 (2005): 19-40.

The Intellectual Context of Solons Dike, in Polis 18.1&2 (2001): 3-26.

Dike, Moira, Bios and the Limits to Understanding in Solon, 13 (West), in Dike 4 (2001): 113-35.

Earlier formulations presented at conferences:

Slavery and Lawlessness in Solonian Athens, Law and Public Order in Ancient Societies Panel, Colloquium on Ancient Law, The American Philological Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, 5 January 2002.

Political Thought in Ancient Greece, Second Renaissance Conference, Palo Alto, California, 5-10 July 2002.

The Horoi and the Bridge between the 4th and 6th Centuries, Place and Genre in Greek Epigraphy Conference, University of Cambridge, January 1999.

The research grew out of my PhD dissertation at the University of Cambridge. A dissertation, however, is ones final college paper, and few certainly not mine should become books. This book draws from the research, but is completely re-written. In the research I received patient help from Paul Cartledge, Paul Millett, Dorothy Thompson, Pat Easterling and many others, none of whom has seen the book. Thank you to Mary Beard for the chance to sit in the Museum of Classical Art and Archaeology in Cambridge, under the statue of the Sunium Kouros. Regular tea with A.J. Graham and Harold Mattingly, Jr, was like sitting between Zeus, who sees all, and Prometheus, who never hesitates to share the fire of his intellect.

I value the material and intellectual support that the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship offered towards the pursuit of intellectual values and this book. I appreciate Ashland Universitys use of an Anthem Foundation grant to allow me course release so early in my academic career. I thank Fred Miller and Robert Mayhew for their kind words and comments, and Ed Harris for the chance to participate in the APA Panel. Thanks to Sean Templeton, who proofread it. I am especially indebted to C. Bradley Thompson for his encouragement, and for his example of one who understands his principles and stands by them. I edited the paperback edition while a visiting scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University.

Most of all, to my wife Casey, I owe more than I can write or say. I am so glad she had a chance to run off to Nice for a month, while I contemplated the sculptures in the Cambridge Classics Library.

Latinized forms of Greek names are used throughout the text, for ease of reading.

Attic forms of Greek terms are given, except where quoting from Solon or referring directly to his verses. For instance, I use Dusnomi because that is Solons form (and capitalized as such), but in discussing it I may compare it to anomia. Thus in some cases the Attic and Ionian forms may be mixed in a single sentence.

In the bibliography and citations, the cited date refers to the date of the edition used, not necessarily the original date of publication.

Poems and fragments of Solon and other archaic poets are numbered as by M.L. West, Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus. Ancient authors are generally abbreviated as in LSJ.

CAH = Cambridge Ancient History

DK = H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker

FGrH = F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker

HCT = A.W. Gomme, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides

IESS = D.L. Sills, The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

IG = Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin, 1873-)

KA = R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci

LSJ = H.G. Liddell, R. Scott and S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon

KRS = G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers

MW = R. Merkelbach and M.L. West, Fragmenta Hesiodea

OED = Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edn, 1991)

PMG = D.L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci

Smyth = H.W. Smyth, Greek Grammar

A short time will show the townsmen whether I am crazy,

with the truth coming out into the middle

Solon 10

The purpose of this book is to examine the poetic fragments of Solon as early Greek political thought. The focus is on Solons preserved poetry, not on laws or institutional reforms attributed to him by later writers, and not on his place in a literary or historical tradition. What rises out of Solons verses is an all-embracing way of looking at his world a way of understanding Athens and the men in it, of grasping the certainty of justice and the arbitrariness of fate, and of judging rulers both bad and good that is rooted in a new world-view that was sweeping the Aegean world. His preserved verses, even though fragmentary, often cast in epic form, and motivated by an opaque rhetorical purpose, nevertheless present an enlightened frame of reference, an energetic moral programme and a well-organized set of ideas. His words mark the birth of thought about the polis as a lawful, just community.

Solon, selected as chief official of Athens around 594 BC, is one of the most revered figures in Greek history.approach, but one that is surprisingly controversial: we must look at everything Solon says about these ideas, in all of his fragments. Solon is not an extension of a genre he is a person in his own right, with a distinct point of view, who should be read as such.

There has been an exciting revival of interest in Solon over the past five years, and a plethora of full-length studies dedicated to his poems.