Note 184 — Chapter XI · SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION.

Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. οὐδὲ τῶν χρεῶν τῶν ἰδίων ἀποκοπὰς, οὐδὲ γῆς ἀναδασμὸν τῆς Ἀθηναίων, οὐδ᾽ οἰκιῶν (ψηφιοῦμαι): compare Dio Chrysostom, Orat. xxxi, p. 332, who also dwells upon the anxiety of various Grecian cities to fix a curse upon all propositions for χρεῶν ἀποκοπὴ and γῆς ἀναδασμός. What is not less remarkable is, that Dio seems not to be aware of any one well-authenticated case in Grecian history, in which a redivision of lands had ever actually taken place—ὃ μηδ᾽ ὅλως ἴσμεν εἴ ποτε συνέβη. (l. c.)

For the law of debtor and creditor, as it stood during the times of the Orators at Athens, see Heraldus, Animadv. ad Salmasium, pp. 174-286; Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, b. iii, c. 2, p. 497, seqq. (though I doubt the distinction which they there draw between χρέος and δανεῖον); Platner, Prozess und Klagen, b. ii, absch. 11, pp. 349, 361.

There was one exceptional case, in which the Attic law always continued to the creditor that power over the person of the insolvent debtor which all creditors had possessed originally,—it was when the creditor had lent money for the express purpose of ransoming the debtor from captivity (Dêmosthen. cont. Nikostr. p. 1249),—analogous to the actio depensi in the old Roman law.

Any citizen who owed money to the public treasury, and whose debt became overdue, was deprived for the time of all civil rights until he had cleared it off.

Diodorus (i, 79) gives us an alleged law of the Egyptian king Bocchoris, releasing the persons of debtors and rendering their properties only liable, which is affirmed to have served as an example for Solon to copy. If we can trust this historian, lawgivers in other parts of Greece still retained the old severe law enslaving the debtor’s person: compare a passage in Isokratês (Orat. xiv, Plataicus, p. 305; p. 414, Bek.)