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Entry 39 of 240Reform

Solon's Seisachtheia

594 BCE/Aegean/Athens
Today Athens, GreeceSpan Archaic Athens · 7th–6th c. BCE

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 knowingSolon 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.
◆ The mechanismDebt / credit cycle

Credit expands faster than the real capacity to repay; the gap is eventually closed by crisis, default, relief, or reset.

Also: Wealth concentration & leveling · Revolution from hardship

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