Solon the Lawgiver: Inequality of Resources and Equality before the Law (original) (raw)

The focus of this paper is on Solon's attitude towards wealth as can be extracted by his legislation and poems. The argument is that part of the rationale of Solon's legislation aimed at the regulation and check of the influence of wealth in the Athenian administration of justice and the emerging legal system of the polis. In this era of spreading monetisation, there was a conscious effort on the part of the Athenian lawgiver to place limits on the use of wealth and to make economic resources a positive feature, at the service of law and community, rather than the opposite. In the Solonian reforms we find traces of subsequent dominant characteristics of the Athenian legal system (such as amateurism and egalitarianism) which might offer new insights on the modern manifestations of inequality before the law.