A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

I30
Athens
Justification
of his policy.
lb. 12, quoting
a poem of
Solon.
Abolition of
mortgages
and emancipation
of
debt-slaves.
"In the just fulness of
time the most mighty mother
of the Olympian gods will bear me witness, even black
Earth, most excellent, that I removed the mortgage pillars
which stood in many places,—she was formerly in
slavery but now set free.
To Athens our country divinely
founded, I restored many men who had been sold, some
illegally, others under the law, others whom hard necessity
forced into exile, who in their many wanderings had forgot
the Attic tongue. Others held here in unseemly
slavery and trembling under their masters' caprices I
set free.
These things I did by the power of law, uniting
force with justice, and I fulfilled my promise.
Ordinances,
too, alike for the bad and the good I enacted, adapting
straightforward justice to every case. Had another than
I, some evil-minded, avaricious man, seized the goad,
he would not have restrained the commons; for had I
willed what would then have pleased this opposing party,
or again what their foes devised for them, this state would
now be bereft of many men. Therefore gathering courage
from every source, I stood at bay like a wolf amid a pack
of dogs." ...
IV. The Tyranny
Usurpation
of Peisistratus,
560 B.C.
Arist. Const.
Ath. 14.
Peisistratus appeared to be most devoted to the popular
cause, and had won a brilHant reputation in the war with
Megara. Having wounded himself, he persuaded the
people, on the supposition that his injuries were inflicted
by political enemies, to grant him a guard for his person.
Taking the club-bearers, as they were called, he conspired
with them against the state, and seized the Acropolis
in the archonship of Comeas, in the thirty-second year
after (Solon's legislation). The story is told that when
Peisistratus was asking for a guard, Solon opposed him,