In regard to the whole measure of the Seisachtheia, indeed, though the poems of Solon were open to every one, ancient authors gave different statements both of its purport and of its extent.  Most of them construed it as having cancelled indiscriminately all money contracts; while Androtion and others thought that it did nothing more than lower the rate of interest and depreciate the currency to the extent of 27 per cent., leaving the letter of the contracts unchanged.  How Androtion came to maintain such an opinion we cannot easily understand.  For the fragments now remaining from Solon seem distinctly to refute it, though, on the other hand, they do not go so far as to substantiate the full extent of the opposite view entertained by many writers—­that all money contracts indiscriminately were rescinded—­against which there is also a further reason, that if the fact had been so, Solon could have had no motive to debase the money standard.  Such debasement supposes that there must have been some debtors at least whose contracts remained valid, and whom nevertheless he desired partially to assist.  His poems distinctly mention three things:  1.  The removal of the mortgage-pillars. 2.  The enfranchisement of the land. 3.  The protection, liberation, and restoration of the persons of endangered or enslaved debtors.  All these expressions point distinctly to the Thetes and small proprietors, whose sufferings and peril were the most urgent, and whose case required a remedy immediate as well as complete.  We find that his repudiation of debts was carried far enough to exonerate them, but no farther.

It seems to have been the respect entertained for the character of Solon which partly occasioned these various misconceptions of his ordinances for the relief of debtors.  Androtion in ancient, and some eminent critics in modern times are anxious to make out that he gave relief without loss or injustice to any one.  But this opinion seems inadmissible.  The loss to creditors by the wholesale abrogation of numerous preexisting contracts, and by the partial depreciation of the coin, is a fact not to be disguised.  The Seisachtheia of Solon, unjust so far as it rescinded previous agreements, but highly salutary in its consequences, is to be vindicated by showing that in no other way could the bonds of government have been held together, or the misery of the multitude alleviated.  We are to consider, first, the great personal cruelty of these preexisting contracts, which condemned the body of the free debtor and his family to slavery; next, the profound detestation created by such a system in the large mass of the poor, against both the judges and the creditors by whom it had been enforced, which rendered their feelings unmanageable so soon as they came together under the sentiment of a common danger and with the determination to insure to each other mutual protection.  Moreover, the law which vests a creditor with power over the person of his debtor