Here are select passages from a new book, Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens (London: Duckworth, 2006). It deals with the poetry of perhaps the earliest political thinker in history, Solon of Athens. Selected as Chief Official in Athens in 594 BC, he is often credited with laying the groundwork for the political constitution of Classical Athens, through a set of written laws that protected the freedom of the Athenians through a rational, even if primitive, legal process. This book considers, on a specialist’s, level, Solon’s poetry as the first extant political thought from ancient
From the Introduction:
“The purpose of this book is to examine the poetic fragments of Solon as early Greek political thought. The focus is on Solon’s preserved poetry, not on laws or institutional reforms attributed to him by later writers, and not on his place in a literary or historical tradition. What rises out of Solon’s verses is an all-embracing way of looking at his world–a way of understanding Athens and the men in it, of grasping the certainty of justice and the arbitrariness of fate, and of judging rulers both bad and good–that is rooted in a new world-view that was sweeping the Aegean world. His preserved verses, even though fragmentary, often cast in epic form, and motivated by an opaque rhetorical purpose, present an enlightened frame of reference, an energetic moral program, and a well-organized set of ideas. His words mark the birth of thought about the polis as a lawful, just community.”
From Chapter One:
