Solon the Lawgiver

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democracy. In the first years of the 6th century BC, the city state of Athens was in crisis. The lower orders of society were ravaged by debt, to the point where some were being forced into slavery. An oppressive law code mandated the death penalty for everything from murder to petty theft. There was a real danger that the city could fall into either tyranny or civil war. Solon instituted a programme of reforms that transformed Athens’ political and legal systems, its society and economy, so that later generations referred to him as Solon the Lawgiver.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Melissa Lane 10 episodes
  Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University
• Hans van Wees No other episodes
  Grote Professor of Ancient History at University College London
• William Allan No other episodes
  Professor of Greek and McConnell Laing Tutorial Fellow in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at University College, University of Oxford

Reading list

• Greek Elegy and Iambus: A Selection
  William Allan (Cambridge University Press, 2019) Google Books →
• Solon of Athens: New Historical and Philological Approaches
  Josine Blok and Andre Lardinois (eds.) (Brill, 2006) Google Books →
• Organised Crime in Antiquity
  Keith Hopwood (ed.) (Classical Press of Wales, 2009) Google Books →
• Solon and Early Greek Poetry: The Politics of Exhortation
  Elizabeth Irwin (Cambridge University Press, 2005) Google Books →
• The Laws of Solon: A New Edition with Introduction, Translation and Commentary
  Delfim Ferreira Leao and Peter J. Rhodes (eds) (I.B. Tauris, 2015)
• Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens
  John Lewis (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008) Google Books →
• Solon the Athenian, The Poetic Fragments
  Maria Noussia-Fantuzzi (Brill, 2010) Google Books →
• Greek Lives
  Plutarch (trans. R. Waterfield) (Oxford University Press, 2008) Google Books →
• A Companion to Greek Lyric
  Laura Swift (ed.) (J. Wiley & Sons, 2022) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m001k7wb

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001k7wb

Auto-category: 938.00 (Ancient Greece)