Solon is thought to have given everyone the right to vote. But if you think back to, for example, assembly scenes in the Iliad or Odyssey, it's not obvious that this is a limited body. The idea that the whole community is at some level involved in public decision-making might be already there. And so whether Solon is actually giving people the vote as such, or rather formalizing the idea that, you know, the community should be involved and then allow them specifically? That would be a major transfer of power to the assembly.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democracy.
In the first years of the 6th century BC, the city state of Athens was in crisis. The lower orders of society were ravaged by debt, to the point where some were being forced into slavery. An oppressive law code mandated the death penalty for everything from murder to petty theft. There was a real danger that the city could fall into either tyranny or civil war.
Solon instituted a programme of reforms that transformed Athens’ political and legal systems, its society and economy, so that later generations referred to him as Solon the Lawgiver.
With
Melissa Lane
Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University
Hans van Wees
Grote Professor of Ancient History at University College London
and
William Allan
Professor of Greek and McConnell Laing Tutorial Fellow in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at University College, University of Oxford
Producer Luke Mulhall