Solon's Seisachtheia

594 BCE — Aegean, Athens

Today: Athens, Greece

By the 590s BCE, so many Athenian farmers had been enslaved over unpaid debts that the city teetered on revolt. The lawmaker Solon wiped the debts clean, banned borrowing against one's own body, and freed those already enslaved — a reset that saved Athens from tearing itself apart. It was Hammurabi's clean slate reborn twelve centuries later, and it would be far from the last time a society had to cancel its debts to survive them.

Worth knowing: Solon made the Athenians swear to keep his laws unchanged for ten years — then left the city on a decade-long voyage, so no one could badger him into amending them.

Pattern: Debt / credit cycle — Credit expands faster than the real capacity to repay; the gap is eventually closed by crisis, default, relief, or reset.

Entry 39 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.