Draco and Solon
Athens writes down its laws, then cancels the debts that were enslaving its citizens.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 27 years
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
Draco's code of 621 BCE is the first written Athenian law — harsh enough that draconian became a word — but its significance is that it exists in public rather than in aristocratic memory. Solon, appointed in 594 BCE amid crisis, cancels debts, abolishes debt slavery, forbids securing loans on the person, and grades political rights by wealth rather than birth. He then leaves Athens for ten years so he cannot be asked to amend it.