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Title: The Athenian Constitution
Author: Aristotle
Translator: Frederic G. Kenyon
Release Date: July 21, 2008 [EBook #26095]
Language: English
Produced by Al Haines
THE ATHENIAN CONSTITUTION
by
Aristotle
Translated by Sir Frederic G. Kenyon
Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8Part 9 | Part 10Part 11Part 12Part 13Part 14Part 15Part 16Part 17Part 18Part 19 | Part 20Part 21Part 22Part 23Part 24Part 25Part 26Part 27Part 28Part 29 | Part 30Part 31Part 32Part 33Part 34Part 35Part 36Part 37Part 38Part 39 | Part 40Part 41Part 42Part 43Part 44Part 45Part 46Part 47Part 48Part 49 | Part 50Part 51Part 52Part 53Part 54Part 55Part 56Part 57Part 58Part 59 | Part 60Part 61Part 62Part 63Part 64Part 65Part 66Part 67Part 68Part 69 |
Part 1
...[They were tried] by a court empanelled from among the noble families, and sworn upon the sacrifices. The part of accuser was taken by Myron. They were found guilty of the sacrilege, and their bodies were cast out of their graves and their race banished for evermore. In view of this expiation, Epimenides the Cretan performed a purification of the city.
Part 2
After this event there was contention for a long time between the upper classes and the populace. Not only was the constitution at this time oligarchical in every respect, but the poorer classes, men, women, and children, were the serfs of the rich. They were known as Pelatae and also as Hectemori, because they cultivated the lands of the rich at the rent thus indicated. The whole country was in the hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their rent they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their children with them. All loans secured upon the debtor's person, a custom which prevailed until the time of Solon, who was the first to appear as the champion of the people. But the hardest and bitterest part of the constitution in the eyes of the masses was their state of serfdom. Not but what they were also discontented with every other feature of their lot; for, to speak generally, they had no part nor share in anything.