Solon or Solonas: Athenian legislator, merchant, poet 29cm Full length alabaster statue

Solon (639-559 BC) was an

Athenian statesman, lawmaker and poet. He is remembered for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic Athens. His reforms failed in the short term, yet he is often credited with having laid the foundations for Athenian democracy. He wrote poetry for pleasure, as patriotic propaganda, and in defense of his constitutional reform. Modern knowledge of Solon is limited by the fact that his works only survive in fragments and appear to feature interpolations by later authors and by the general paucity of documentary and archaeological evidence covering Athens in the early 6th century BC. Ancient authors such as Philo of Alexandria, Herodotus and Plutarch are the main sources, but wrote about Solon long after his death. 4th century BC orators, tended to attribute to Solon all the laws of their own, much later times. Solon was born in Athens and his family was distinguished in Attica as they belonged to Eupatrid clan. In 594 BC, according to Diogenes Laertius, Solon was chosen archon (chief magistrate). Pausanias listed Solon among the Seven Sages, whose aphorisms adorned Apollos temple in Delphi. He regulated public, private and criminal law on a new basis and rightly considered the father of civil law.

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