s not
supplied with either rivers or lakes, but the people depend chiefly upon
artificial wells, he made a law, that wherever there was a public well
within four furlongs, people should use it, but if it were farther off,
then they must dig a private well for themselves; but if a man dug a
depth of sixty feet on his own estate without finding water, then he was
to have the right of filling a six-gallon pitcher twice a day at his
neighbour's well; for Solon thought it right to help the distressed, and
yet not to encourage laziness. He also made very judicious regulations
about planting trees, ordering that they should not be planted within
five feet of a neighbour's property, except in the case of olives and
fig-trees, which were not to be planted within nine feet; for these
trees spread out their roots farther than others, and spoil the growth
of any others by taking away their nourishment and by giving off hurtful
juices. Trenches and pits he ordered to be dug as far away from another
man's property as they were deep; and no hive of bees was to be placed
within three hundred feet of those already established by another man.

XXIV. Oil was the only product of the country which he allowed to be
exported, everything else being forbidden; and he ordered that if any
one broke this law the archon was to solemnly curse him, unless he paid
a hundred drachmas into the public treasury. This law is written on the
first of his tablets. From this we see that the old story is not
altogether incredible, that the export of figs was forbidden, and that
the men who informed against those who had done so were therefore called
sycophants. He also made laws about damage received from animals, one of
which was that a dog who had bitten a man should be delivered up to him
tied to a stick three cubits long, an ingenious device for safety.

One is astounded at his law of adopting foreigners into the state,
which permits no one to become a full citizen in Athens unless he be
either exiled for life from his native city, or transfers himself with
his whole family to Athens to practise his trade there. It is said that
his object in this was not so much to exclude other classes of people
from the city, as to assure these of a safe refuge there; and these he
thought would be good and faithful citizens, because the former had been
banished from their own country, and the latter had abandoned it of
their own freewill. Another peculiarity of Solon's la