Episode Details

Solon was elected archon of Athens at a moment of crisis, given extraordinary powers to reform the city's laws, and used them to cancel debts, free enslaved citizens, and lay the foundations of Athenian democracy. Then he left the country for ten years so no one could pressure him to change what he had done.

This episode tells the story of a politician who chose exile over power and whose reforms made Athens possible.

• The seisachtheia: how he canceled debts and freed debt-slaves
• His property-based class system and why it was a democratic breakthrough
• The voluntary exile and the tyrant Peisistratos who followed
• Why the Athenians revered him as the wisest of the Seven Sages