The Effectiveness of Solon’s Reforms in Athens

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The Effectiveness of Solon’s Reforms
Different scholars have different views regarding the success of Solon's reforms. The life of Solon was the main inspiring factor of the 6th lawmaker before the formation of the constitution of Athenians. The Plutarch's texts contain references form the poems of Solon, highlighting the various problems that he was seeking to resolve in order to lead to a better world as compared to what the anthems were facing. They also highlight the solutions that he implemented and how effective they turned out to be. Some of the scholars argue on the viewpoint that solons reforms were the basis for democracy while others claim that the reforms were short lived. Therefore, this paper will incorporate the historical sources and the various modern analysis of solons work to come up with a text of the extent to which solons reforms were effective as well as the impact that they had on the Greek. In addition, Solon was focused on the creation of reforms to solve the financial, judicial and social issues that were facing the people of Athens.
In regard to the financial issues, Solon aimed at the creation of debt relief. Given the huge differences between the rich and the poor, the population was faced with a lot of obsession for money. Therefore, this led to the rich taking advantage of the less privileged by hiring them as slaves to make extraordinary profits at the expense of the poor. In addition, the less privileged had to become slaves for the rich in order to survive. The rich were living an extravagance life and, this put a lot of pressure on the people for the lower classes thus, resulting in most of them being sold into slavery due to the debt bondage. Solon argued out that it was the foolishness of the people and their love for money that they were ready to destroy what was once a great city. Therefore, this is an indication that the poor were willing to do anything that made their financial ends meet even if it made stealing from the rich. In turn, this could result in a city characterized by fear and theft. As well, the fact that the rich were also out to exploit the poor further illustrates how unjust they were in destroying the city.
Therefore, the above problems led to Solon's aim of the debt relief. Debt bondage was one of the main problems in Attica. The poor had accumulated a lot of debts with the rich and, in order to settle them, they were sold into slavery. As well, the rich creditors used this opportunity to poses the lands of the poor as a way of offsetting the financial obligations that they had defaulted. Before the existence of the Solon law, people used themselves as security to get loans from the rich. Therefore, when they were unable to pay, the creditors were willing to employ any way possible that could result in their payment (Raaflaub 2014). As a result, Solon came up with a law that prohibited people from using themselves as security for securing loans. This means that the measures that were being used to collect back the money in the event whereby the debtor had defaulted would no longer be applicable. He came up with the idea of "shaking off o burdens" whereby, both public and private debts would ca...