Πρὸς τοῦ Σόλωνος καὶ Δράκοντος, οἷσι νῦν Φρύγουσιν ἤδη τὰς κάχρυς τοῖς κύρβεσιν.
Isokratês praises the moderate democracy in early Athens, as compared with that under which he lived; but in the Orat. vii (Areopagitic.) he connects the former with the names of Solon and Kleisthenês, while in the Orat. xii (Panathenaic.), he considers the former to have lasted from the days of Theseus to those of Solon and Peisistratus. In this latter oration he describes pretty exactly the power which the people possessed under the Solonian constitution,—τοῦ τὰς ἀρχὰς καταστῆσαι καὶ λαβεῖν δίκην παρὰ τῶν ἐξαμαρτανόντων, which coincides with the phrase of Aristotle—τὰς ἀρχὰς αἱρεῖσθαι καὶ εὐθύνειν,—supposing ἀρχόντων to be understood as the substantive of ἐξαμαρτανόντων.
Compare Isokratês, Or. vii, p. 143 (p. 192 Bek.) and p. 150 (202 Bek.) and Orat. xii, pp. 260-264 (351-356 Bek.).
[220] Cicero, Orat. pro Sext. Roscio, c. 25; Ælian, V. H. viii, 10.
[221] This seems to be the opinion of Dr. Thirlwall, against Wachsmuth though he speaks with doubt. (History of Greece, vol. ii, ch. 11, p. 48, 2d ed.)
It is not easy to make out distinctly what was the political position of the ancient gentes and phratries, as Solon left them. The four tribes consisted altogether of gentes and phratries, insomuch that no one could be included in any one of the tribes who was not also a member of some gens and phratry. Now the new pro-bouleutic or pre-considerate senate consisted of four hundred members,—one hundred from each of the tribes: persons not included in any gens or phratry could therefore have had no access to it. The conditions of eligibility were similar, according to ancient custom, for the nine archons,—of course, also, for the senate of areopagus. So that there remained only the public assembly, in which an Athenian not a member of these tribes could take part: yet he was a citizen, since he could give his vote for archons and senators, and could take part in the annual decision of their accountability, besides being entitled to claim redress for wrong from the archons in his own person,—while the alien could only do so through the intervention of an avouching citizen, or prostatês. It seems, therefore, that all persons not included in the four tribes, whatever their grade of fortune might be, were on the same level in respect to political privilege as the fourth and poorest class of the Solonian census. It has already been remarked that, even before the time of Solon, the number of Athenians not included in the gentes or phratries was probably considerable: it tended to become greater and greater, since these bodies were close and unexpansive, while the policy of the new lawgiver tended to invite industrious settlers from other parts of Greece to Athens. Such great and increasing inequality of political privilege helps to explain the weakness of the government in repelling the aggressions of Peisistratus, and exhibits the importance of the revolution afterwards wrought by Kleisthenês, when he abolished (for all political purposes) the four old tribes, and created ten new comprehensive tribes in place of them.