Debt and its aftermath: The Near Eastern background to Solon's seisachtheia

Abstract

Debts were a structural factor in the lives of small peasants in the entire ancient world. In Archaic Greece, Solon of Athens took the unique measure to cancel all debts, to abolish debt-slavery and to bring back those who had been sold abroad. For this innovation, he drew on the tradition of periodic debt remission and liberation of debt slaves by royal decree in the empires of ancient Mesopotamia, of which he may have heard on his travels in the East. His poems about his legal reforms also display striking similarities with ancient Near Eastern, and specifically Neo-Assyrian official memorials. In contrast to the Near East, at Athens debt-slavery was terminated for ever, but debt remission failed to become entrenched because it contravened the prevailing political values.