Chapter 5. Solon's Release of Debts: A Single Act, a Permanent Rule, and Those Who Paid

The historical claim of this section is that the two ancient accounts of Solon's measures describe a single general cancellation of existing debts, joined to a permanent prohibition on loans secured by the debtor's person, carried out by a man given extraordinary authority for a crisis; that the accounts were written long after the event and disagree, on the testimony of their own sources, about whether the cancellation was a cancellation or a reduction; and that they name, in detail, the parties who bore the cost. To the clean-slate debate the case adds a Greek instance that matches the general and restorative features of the clean slate but not its periodicity, and to the debate over rules and discretion it adds an ancient account of what happens when a discretionary act is known in advance by a few.

5.1The crisis as Plutarch describes it

Plutarch opens the episode with the city's division into parties by region and then turns to debt. "At that time, too, the disparity between the rich and the poor had culminated, as it were, and the city was in an altogether perilous condition; it seemed as if the only way to settle its disorders and stop its turmoils was to establish a tyranny." The next sentences describe the debtors:

"All the common people were in debt to the rich. For they either tilled their lands for them, paying them a sixth of the increase (whence they were called Hectemoiroi and Thetes), or else they pledged their persons for debts and could be seized by their creditors, some becoming slaves at home, and others being sold into foreign countries."

"Many, too, were forced to sell their own children (for there was no law against it), or go into exile, because of the cruelty of the money-lenders."

The account gives two forms of dependence. One is a share of the crop, a sixth, paid by those who worked the land of others. The other is debt secured on the person, which ends in slavery at home or sale abroad. The parenthesis "(for there was no law against it)" places the sale of children outside any legal limit, which is the point at which this Athenian picture differs most from Hammurabi's law 117, where the sale of a debtor's son and daughter is allowed but limited to three years.

The demands of the debtors are then given: "But the most and sturdiest of them began to band together and exhort one another not to submit to their wrongs, but to choose a trusty man as their leader, set free the condemned debtors, divide the land anew, and make an entire change in the form of government." Three demands: freedom for those condemned for debt, a new division of land, and a new constitution. The measures that followed answered the first fully, refused the second, and, on Plutarch's account in chapter 16, came to the third only after the first had been accepted.

This is the picture Graeber's note describes in general terms, a period in which debt bondage grew. It is also the picture behind Hudson's contrast between the Near East and Greece, in which debt led to the concentration of land and to dependence. The ancient text is a later history, and Plutarch's note says its details are debated. It is nonetheless the text from which the modern picture of the Athenian crisis is drawn, and its picture is of a crisis without any standing rule like law 117 to limit what a creditor could do.

5.2The mandate

Chapter 14 describes how Solon came to act. "At this point, the wisest of the Athenians cast their eyes upon Solon. They saw that he was the one man least implicated in the errors of the time; that he was neither associated with the rich in their injustice, nor involved in the necessities of the poor." Plutarch reports a hostile version as well: "And yet Phanias the Lesbian writes that Solon of his own accord played a trick upon both parties in order to save the city, and secretly promised to the poor the distribution of land which they desired, and to the rich, validation of their securities."

The appointment itself is given in a single sentence: "However, he was chosen archon to succeed Philombrotus, and made mediator and legislator for the crisis, the rich accepting him readily because he was well-to-do, and the poor because he was honest." A saying of Solon's, that equality bred no war, pleased both sides for opposite reasons, "the former expecting to have equality based on worth and excellence, the latter on measure and count."

The mandate is extraordinary. Solon is chosen as archon, an ordinary office, and made "mediator and legislator for the crisis", which is not. Plutarch describes the pressure on him to take the further step of tyranny and his refusal: "To his friends he said, as we are told, that a tyranny was a lovely place, but there was no way down from it."

Among the models of emergency power that Gross and Ní Aoláin set out, this mandate sits closest to the accommodation of emergency powers within the law: a lawful office given a crisis power, held by a man who declined to step outside it. The fit is loose, as Section 2.3 said; their subject is the derogation from rights in modern states. The contrast with Hammurabi's law 48 is nonetheless sharp. Law 48 needed no one to be appointed when the storm came. Solon's measures needed an appointment, and the appointment was for the crisis.

5.3What Solon did, in Plutarch's account

Chapter 15 begins with a statement of method that bears directly on the term of the measures. Solon, Plutarch writes, did not act mildly or make concessions to the powerful. "Nay, where a condition was as good as it could well be, he applied no remedy, and introduced no innovation, fearing lest, after utterly confusing and confounding the city, he should be too weak to establish it again and recompose it for the best." What he did, he did "Combining both force and justice together", in a line Plutarch quotes from his poems; and when asked later whether he had given the Athenians the best laws, "he replied, The best they would receive."

The measure itself follows a remark on the Athenian habit of giving ugly things kind names. "But Solon was the first, it would seem, to use this device, when he called his cancelling of debts a disburdenment. For the first of his public measures was an enactment that existing debts should be remitted, and that in future no one should lend money on the person of a borrower."

Two measures in one sentence, with two different relations to time. The first looks backward: "existing debts should be remitted". It is an act on a stock of obligations as they stood on one day. The second looks forward without limit: "in future no one should lend money on the person of a borrower". It is a rule. Neither is given a term. The first needs none, since a debt once remitted stays remitted; the second is given none, so it runs on.

Plutarch then reports that his sources disagree about the first measure. "Some writers, however, and Androtion is one of them, affirm that the poor were relieved not by a cancelling of debts, but by a reduction of the interest upon them, and showed their satisfaction by giving the name of disburdenment to this act of humanity, and to the augmentation of measures and the purchasing power of money which accompanied it." He gives the arithmetic of the change in the coinage: "For he made the mina to consist of a hundred drachmas, which before has contained only seventy-three, so that by paying the same amount of money, but money of a lesser value, those who had debts to discharge were greatly benefited, and those who accepted such payments were no losers."

This is a second relief of a quite different kind. A reduction of interest together with a reform of the coinage relieves debtors without cancelling their debts, and on Androtion's account as Plutarch gives it, the creditors "were no losers". If that version were right, the cost of the relief would not fall on the creditors in the way a cancellation's would. Plutarch does not accept it: "But most writers agree that the disburdenment was a removal of all debt, and with such the poems of Solon are more in accord". He cites the poems: from the mortgaged lands Solon "took away the record-stones that everywhere were planted"; "Before, Earth was in bondage, now she is free"; and of the citizens whose persons had been seized for debt, some he brought back from abroad and some at home he set free.

The ancient record of the measure is thus already a debate. Plutarch, writing long after, weighs a majority of his sources and Solon's own verses against a minority led by Androtion, and decides for cancellation. Solon's verses, as Plutarch quotes them, speak of stones removed from land and of persons freed; they do not, in the lines quoted, speak of debts as such. The cancellation of debts is Plutarch's and his majority's reading of what the removal of the stones meant.

5.4The anticipation and the cost

The passage that follows is the only one in either case that describes what people did when they learned of a relief before it was made. "This undertaking is said to have involved him in the most vexatious experience of his life. For when he had set out to abolish debts, and was trying to find fitting arguments and a suitable occasion for the step, he told some of his most trusted and intimate friends, namely, Conon, Cleinias, and Hipponicus, that he was not going to meddle with the land, but had determined to cancel debts. They immediately took advantage of this confidence and anticipated Solon’s decree by borrowing large sums from the wealthy and buying up great estates."

"Then when the decree was published, they enjoyed the use of their properties, but refused to pay the moneys due their creditors."

The friends knew two things in advance: that debts would be cancelled and that land would not be redistributed. They borrowed, bought land, and kept it when the debts were cancelled. The creditors who lent to them in the days before the decree bore the loss. The story turns on the exact boundary of the measure that Skeptron's record, in Section 5.7, takes care to draw: the cancellation of debts was one measure, the redistribution of land was another, and only the first was made.

Plutarch then names a further bearer, Solon himself. The friends' conduct brought Solon "into great condemnation and odium, as if he had not been imposed upon with the rest, but were a party to the imposition. However, this charge was at once dissipated by his well-known sacrifice of five talents. For it was found that he had lent so much, and he was the first to remit this debt in accordance with his law. Some say that the sum was fifteen talents, and among them is Polyzelus the Rhodian. But his friends were ever after called chreocopidae, or debt-cutters."

Three groups of bearers appear in this short passage. The wealthy who lent to the friends lost what they lent. Solon lost his own loan, five talents or fifteen according to the source, and the figure is the only sum in either case. The friends gained, and carried the name of debt-cutters afterwards. The cost of the cancellation is not described in the abstract: it is placed on named people and on a named sum.

The anticipation story sits beside the problem Kydland and Prescott set out for modern policy. A relief decided at the moment, by discretion, can be anticipated by those who know of it, and their decisions on the strength of that knowledge change who bears the relief. Kydland and Prescott's argument concerns a policy maker's incentive to depart from a plan once agents have acted on it; the Athenian story concerns agents who act on a plan before it is announced. The two are related but not the same. The contrast with law 52 is closer at hand. The Babylonian rule closes off a debtor's attempt to qualify for relief by his own conduct. Solon's act, as Plutarch tells it, left open an attempt to profit from relief by borrowing in advance, and the cost of that gap fell on the lenders.

5.5Aristotle's account

Part 6 of the Athenian Constitution tells the same story more briefly and with a stronger defence of Solon. It begins: "As soon as he was at the head of affairs, Solon liberated the people once and for all, by prohibiting all loans on the security of the debtor's person: and in addition he made laws by which he cancelled all debts, public and private. This measure is commonly called the Seisachtheia [= removal of burdens], since thereby the people had their loads removed from them."

The order differs from Plutarch's. Aristotle's account puts the prohibition first and calls it the liberation "once and for all"; the cancellation comes "in addition". It also extends the cancellation explicitly to "all debts, public and private", a scope Plutarch does not state. The words "once and for all" are the nearest either account comes to speaking of a term, and they speak of permanence: the prohibition on loans against the person was meant never to lapse.

The story of the friends follows, with a sharper edge. "For these persons borrowed money and bought up a large amount of land, and so when, a short time afterwards, all debts were cancelled, they became wealthy; and this, they say, was the origin of the families which were afterwards looked on as having been wealthy from primeval times." The account gives the gap in time between the leak and the decree, "a short time afterwards", and traces from it a lasting consequence: the fortunes of families later thought ancient. Aristotle's text, like Plutarch's, reports the charge that Solon shared in the fraud, and rejects it by a different argument: "However, the story of the popular party is by far the most probable." After an argument from Solon's character, the passage ends: "We are therefore bound to consider this accusation to be false."

Part 12 quotes Solon's own verses on his settlement. Two lines state its balance: "I gave to the mass of the people such rank as befitted their need," and "I took not away their honour, and I granted naught to their greed;". Another passage speaks of the land and the persons freed, in Kenyon's version: Solon calls on Earth as witness, "from whose breast", he continues in the next line, "I swept the pillars broadcast planted there," and among those he brought back are the "Exiles from home through debt's oppressive load,". He speaks also of "those that here in vilest slavery" whom he set free, and of how he did it: "Since by the force of law I won my ends". The verses close with an image of resistance to both sides: "Turning at bay like wolf among the hounds."

Kenyon's "pillars" stand where Perrin's "record-stones" stand in the same boast, and Plutarch places the stones on the land "from the mortgaged lands". The article does not read the Greek and does not decide between the renderings. On Plutarch's wording, what was removed was a sign of debt on the land, not the land itself.

5.6Who was displeased, and the mandate that followed

Plutarch's chapter 16 gives the reception of the measures, and with it a precise statement of who bore what. "He pleased neither party, however; the rich were vexed because he took away their securities for debt, and the poor still more, because he did not redistribute the land, as they had expected, nor make all men equal and alike in their way of living, as Lycurgus did."

The rich lost their securities for debt. The poor did not get the land. Each party bore a disappointment, and they were different in kind: the first a loss of what they held, the second the failure of what they hoped for. Plutarch explains the limit of the measure by the limit of Solon's power, comparing him with the Spartan lawgiver: "Solon, on the contrary, could not secure this feature in his commonwealth, since he was a man of the people and of modest station; yet he in no wise acted short of his real power, relying as he did only on the wishes of the citizens and their confidence in him."

Then, in Plutarch's account, the city came round. "Soon, however, they perceived the advantages of his measure, ceased from their private fault-finding, and offered a public sacrifice, which they called Seisactheia, or Disburdenment." And a second, wider mandate followed: the Athenians appointed him to reform the constitution and make new laws, "laying no restrictions whatever upon him, but putting everything into his hands, magistracies, assemblies, courts-of-law, and councils."

The order of events matters for the reading of the mandate. The cancellation was made under the first appointment, as mediator and legislator for the crisis. The unrestricted power to remake the constitution came after the cancellation had been accepted. In Plutarch's account, the emergency measure came first and the general authority second, as a consequence of its reception.

5.7The modern record

Skeptron's record of this case, written in 2026, summarises the measures in one sentence and gives the date it adopts:

The order and the scope are Aristotle's: the prohibition first, then the cancellation, of debts public and private. That is consistent with the record's named source, the sixth chapter of the Athenian Constitution as served by the MIT archive. The record says nothing of Plutarch, of Androtion's alternative, or of the change in the coinage. A reader of the record alone would not know that the ancient writers disagreed about whether there was a cancellation.

The record is careful, though, about the date of its source. Its first Answer says:

And it is careful about the boundary of the measures. Its third question asks the strongest reading the poor in Plutarch's chapter 13 might have hoped for:

The answer begins with a single word, "None.", which the record repeats elsewhere and which is set aside here as part of its recurring wording. The sentences that follow are the case's own:

These two sentences do in the modern record what Plutarch's story of the friends does in the ancient one: they keep the cancellation of debts apart from the redistribution of land. The friends profited because they knew the two were separate; the record warns its reader not to merge them. The second sentence states a limit that holds for both cases: a later history of a cancellation is not a ledger of the debts cancelled.

What the record does not keep is every bearer. It does not mention the rich who lost their securities, the poor who did not get land, the lenders to Solon's friends, or Solon's own five talents. The ancient accounts are as explicit about who paid for this relief as any document in the parent study; the modern record leaves the cost unassigned.

The two readings of the ledger agreed throughout on this record: an act of the relief kind; not presented as temporary; no condition of its end named; nothing said of what became of it; no two dated moments; no figure; and no bearer named. Every one of those readings is accurate to the record's words. Several are not accurate to the texts behind it, which give a dated gap ("a short time afterwards"), a figure (five talents or fifteen) and several bearers.

5.8What the case adds

To the clean-slate debate, the Solonian accounts add a cancellation that matches two of the features set out in Section 2.1, restoration and the reach to debts as a class (the latter this article's inference), and departs from a third, periodicity. The measure covers debts as a class, "all debts, public and private" in Aristotle's version; it brings back persons sold abroad and frees those held at home; it removes the markers of debt from the land. But it is described as one act by one man, under a mandate for one crisis, and it is joined to a rule meant to make the cancellation's repetition unnecessary: the permanent prohibition on lending against the person. Hudson's note sets Greece apart from the Near East on the ground that cancellations there were not routine; the Solonian texts describe exactly a cancellation that was not routine. They also preserve, in Androtion's version, an ancient doubt that it was a cancellation at all.

To the debate over rules and discretion, the case adds an ancient account of a discretionary relief that leaked, and of its cost falling on the lenders who did not know. To the parent study's question, it adds an emergency act whose texts name its bearers in detail and say nothing of any term, because one of its measures was complete when made and the other was meant to last.