Xenophon.

CHAPTER XII

ATHENS

THE ATHENIAN PEOPLE

=Attica.=--The Athenians boasted of having always lived in the same
country; their ancestors, according to their story, originated from
the soil itself. The mountaineers who conquered the south land passed
by the country without invading it; Attica was hardly a temptation to
them.

Attica is composed of a mass of rocks which in the form of a triangle
advances into the sea. These rocks, renowned for their blocks of
marble and for the honey of their bees,[66] are bare and sterile.
Between them and the sea are left three small plains with meagre soil,
meanly watered (the streams are dry in summer) and incapable of
supporting a numerous population.

=Athens.=--In the largest of these plains, a league from the sea,
rises a massive isolated rock: Athens was built at its foot. The old
city, called the Acropolis, occupied the summit of the rock.

The inhabitants of Attica commenced, not by forming a single state,
but by founding scattered villages, each of which had its own king and
its own government. Later all these villages united under one
king,[67] the king of Athens, and established a single city. This
does not mean that all the people came to dwell in one town. They
continued to have their own villages and to cultivate their lands; but
all adored one and the same protecting goddess, Athena, divinity of
Athens, and all obeyed the same king.

=Athenian Revolutions.=--Later still the kings were suppressed. In
their place Athens had nine chiefs (the archons) who changed every
year. This whole history is little known to us for no writing of the
time is preserved. They used to say that for centuries the Athenians
had lived in discord; the nobles (Eupatrids) who were proprietors of
the soil oppressed the peasants on their estates; creditors held their
debtors as slaves. To reestablish order the Athenians commissioned
Solon, a sage, to draft a code of laws for them (594).

Solon made three reforms:

1. He lessened the value of the money, which allowed the debtors
to release themselves more easily.

2. He made the peasants proprietors of the land that they
cultivated. From this time there were in Attica more small
proprietors than in any other part of Greece.

3. He grouped all the citizens into four classes according to
their incomes. Each had to pay taxes and to render military
service according to his wealth, the poor being exempt fro