in any gens or phratry could therefore have had no access to it.  The conditions of eligibility were similar, according to ancient custom, for the nine archons—­of course, also, for the senate of Areopagus.  So that there remained only the public assembly, in which an Athenian not a member of these tribes could take part:  yet he was a citizen, since he could give his vote for archons and senators, and could take part in the annual decision of their accountability, besides being entitled to claim redress for wrong from the archons in his own person—­while the alien could only do so through the intervention of an avouching citizen or Prostates.  It seems, therefore, that all persons not included in the four tribes, whatever their grade of fortune might be, were on the same level in respect to political privilege as the fourth and poorest class of the Solonian census.  It has already been remarked, that even before the time of Solon the number of Athenians not included in the gentes or phratries was probably considerable:  it tended to become greater and greater, since these bodies were close and unexpansive, while the policy of the new lawgiver tended to invite industrious settlers from other parts of Greece and Athens.  Such great and increasing inequality of political privilege helps to explain the weakness of the government in repelling the aggressions of Pisistratus, and exhibits the importance of the revolution afterward wrought by Clisthenes, when he abolished (for all political purposes) the four old tribes, and created ten new comprehensive tribes in place of them.

In regard to the regulations of the senate and the assembly of the people, as constituted by Solon, we are altogether without information:  nor is it safe to transfer to the Solonian constitution the information, comparatively ample, which we possess respecting these bodies under the later democracy.

The laws of Solon were inscribed on wooden rollers and triangular tablets, in the species of writing called Boustrophedon (lines alternating first from left to right, and next from right to left, like the course of the ploughman)—­and preserved first in the Acropolis, subsequently in the Prytaneum.  On the tablets, called Cyrbis, were chiefly commemorated the laws respecting sacred rites and sacrifices; on the pillars or rollers, of which there were at least sixteen, were placed the regulations respecting matters profane.  So small are the fragments which have come down to us, and so much has been ascribed to Solon by the orators which belongs really to the subsequent times, that it is hardly possible to form any critical judgment respecting the legislation as a whole, or to discover by what general principles or purposes he was guided.

He left unchanged all the previous laws and practices respecting the crime of homicide, connected as they were intimately with the religious feelings of the people.  The laws of Draco on this subject, therefore, remained, but on other subjects, according to Plutarch, they were altogether abrogated:  there is, however, room for supposing that the repeal cannot have been so sweeping as this biographer represents.