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Solon the Lawgiver

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the statesman and poet whose political and legal reforms transformed Athens in the 6th century BC.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democracy.

In the first years of the 6th century BC, the city state of Athens was in crisis. The lower orders of society were ravaged by debt, to the point where some were being forced into slavery. An oppressive law code mandated the death penalty for everything from murder to petty theft. There was a real danger that the city could fall into either tyranny or civil war.

Solon instituted a programme of reforms that transformed Athens’ political and legal systems, its society and economy, so that later generations referred to him as Solon the Lawgiver.

With

Melissa Lane
Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University

Hans van Wees
Grote Professor of Ancient History at University College London

and

William Allan
Professor of Greek and McConnell Laing Tutorial Fellow in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at University College, University of Oxford

Producer Luke Mulhall

Available now

51 minutes

Last on

Thu 23 Mar 2023 21:30
±«Óãtv Radio 4

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LINKS AND FURTHER READING

CONTRIBUTORS




READING LIST

William Allan, Greek Elegy and Iambus: A Selection (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

Ìý

Josine Blok and André Lardinois (eds.), Solon of Athens: New Historical and Philological Approaches (Brill, 2006)

Ìý

Keith Hopwood (ed.), Organised Crime in Antiquity (Classical Press of Wales, 2009), especially, ‘The mafia of early Greece. Violent exploitation in the seventh and sixth centuries BC’ by Hans van Wees

Ìý

Elizabeth Irwin, Solon and Early Greek Poetry: The Politics of Exhortation (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Ìý

Delfim Ferreira Leão and Peter J. Rhodes (eds), The Laws of Solon: A New Edition with Introduction, Translation and Commentary (I.B. Tauris, 2015)

Ìý

John Lewis, Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008)

Ìý

Maria Noussia-Fantuzzi, Solon the Athenian, The Poetic Fragments (Brill, 2010)

Ìý

Plutarch (trans. R. Waterfield), Greek Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008), especially ‘Life of Solon’

Ìý

Laura Swift (ed.), A Companion to Greek Lyric (J. Wiley & Sons, 2022)


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Broadcasts

  • Thu 23 Mar 2023 09:00
    ±«Óãtv Radio 4
  • Thu 23 Mar 2023 21:30
    ±«Óãtv Radio 4

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