Solon's Economic Reforms

The culture of the Greek and Anatolian civilizations of a period was shaped by the story of the Trojan War, told in poetic form by Homer . A significant portion of Western civilization was inspired by the Iliad and the Odyssey in the following centuries.

It is estimated that the epics told by the poet Homer were converted into written texts between 750 and 725 BC. Around 700 BC, Hesiod's poems also began to show their influence on Greek civilization.

Claims about the dates of the period described by Homer through poetry vary between 1400-1100 BC. The period that historians mostly agree on is the 12th century BC.

If we were to do a brain exercise on the economy based on the ancient period with the ability to shed light on today, we can see that there were no market balances in the economic relations of the period described by Homer. Instead of the market, there was a distribution of wealth through methods such as gifts, theft, rewards, etc.

In Homer's world, the basic element of the economy is the household. The household operates its land with its family and slaves. There are also craftsmen and merchants in Homer, but the basis of economic existence is the household. Craftsmen and merchants are of secondary importance compared to the household that engages in production activities in its fields. Trade, in particular, is a low-quality and inferior activity. In other words, the main thing is to produce. The value and economic contribution of the activity of buying and selling cannot be the same as producing.

Hesiod's contemporary with Homer is a work related to economics called Works and Days . The work is a poem consisting of 800 lines. The poem evaluates humanity under five ages: gold, silver, bronze, heroism and iron. Works and Days has expressions that value labor and is didactic. It criticizes laziness, uselessness and injustice.

In Works and Days, Hesiod gives moral advice to his brother Perses on agricultural matters. He tells how Perses should live. The famous legend of Pandora's box also finds a place in Works and Days with the stories of Prometheus and Pandora as an example of what is evil.

Scholars who have studied Works and Days have thought that Hesiod was inspired by an agricultural crisis in Greek lands to create the work. The agricultural crisis also points to a period of colonial invasion in which new land searches for agricultural activities began.

Greece experienced a period of significant developments in literature, science and philosophy between the 7th and 4th centuries BC. Names such as Thales, Pytagoras, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and Plato are products of the intellectual development of this period.

According to the Athenian constitution, there was a council of nine people responsible for implementing the city services, military and religious regulations of the city-state of Athens. The members of this council were called "archons". Solon was appointed as a member of this council in 594 BC. It is estimated that Solon lived between 640-560 BC. At the time of Solon's appointment, Greece was in a financial and social crisis.

Solon is one of the seven wise men of the period. The others are Cleobulus, Chilon, Bias, Thales and Pittacus.

In the West, the practices implemented by Solon in Athens played a major role in laying the foundations for constitutional government. With Solon's reforms, the power of the aristocratic class formed by landowners was weakened. The foundations of a democratic order based on elections were laid. Land ownership was reorganized and distributed. Numerous laws were rewritten. A new currency made of silver was put into circulation. Athens' commercial navy was enlarged and strengthened. Thus, Athens strengthened its olive oil exports by using its comparative advantage in olive oil production and imported grain products in return. The old order's economic understanding based on self-sufficiency was broken. There is no doubt that Ricardo, one of the theorists of foreign trade, formed his ideas by examining the trade of the ancient period.

Solon's reforms on democracy reflect the debates between democracy and economics in ancient times. In particular, the system of debt slavery developed by Draco was ended with the rules of "seisachtheia" regarding the debt mechanism.

Source: https://www.loc.gov/item/2007684401/

In Draco's laws, a person who could not pay his debt would give the land he owned to the creditor of the debt and work on the same land as the creditor's slave and give 1/6 of the agricultural product to the creditor. If the amount of the debt exceeded the entire value of the debtor's wealth, the debtor's family was also reduced to the status of the creditor's slave. The debtor's freedom was legally accepted as collateral for the debt.

The laws of Seisachtheia canceled all debts in Athens. All those who had been enslaved by Draco's laws were given back their freedom. All rules that allowed personal freedom to be used as collateral for debts were abolished. Land ownership ceilings were introduced, preventing powerful families from having unjust land ownership rights.

Solon's reforms caused class divisions to deepen and political upheaval to occur. In 480 BC, Athens fell to the Persians. Before this date, many Greek city-states had fought wars with the Persians.

Athens's powerful merchant fleet led other Greek city-states to rally around Athens and form a joint fleet. This fleet was founded in 477 BC and became the Delian League . Sparta was Athens's main rival. In 431 BC, the Peloponnesian War broke out between Athens and Sparta. In 404 BC, Sparta was victorious and the fleet based in Athens was disbanded.

The 40-year period between the Persian War and the Peloponnesian War was a period of peace in Athens. This period was named after Pericles, who ruled Athens from 461 to 430 BC, and was called the Pericilian Period . This period also went down in history as the golden age of Athens.

Pericles ended piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean. Thus, trade rapidly developed. Commercial agriculture and production developed. Concepts such as banking, credit mechanism, money exchange, commodity speculation and monopoly power found a place for themselves.

Some economic historians have argued that the economic relations that became more complex during the Pericles Period had never evolved so intensely and rapidly until almost the post-Renaissance Europe.

The Pericles Period also led to the implementation of major construction projects. The Parthenon in Athens is a work of the Pericles Period. The work became a symbol of Athenian democracy, ancient Greece and western civilization. Its construction began in 447 BC and was completed in 438 BC. Decoration work continued until 432 BC. It should also be noted that after the Ottoman occupation in 1458, the Parthenon was converted into a mosque from 1460 onwards.

The road leading to the Period of Pericles began with Solon. Solon aimed to destroy the Athenian constitution written by Draco in approximately 621 BC. Draco's Athenian constitution was not democratic. It was extremely harsh and merciless. It was even rumored to have been written with blood instead of ink.

Economic and political developments have intertwined and influenced each other throughout history. These developments have sometimes been the causes of wars. What we are experiencing as of 2023 AD is no different. For example, Thucydides also holds a mirror up to today's international relations with an example from Greece. The past is a mirror of the present and the future.