26. The Most Influential of the Seven Wise Men
Of the Ancient Greeks’ Seven Wise Men, the most influential was probably Solon, who established the foundations of what eventually grew into Athenian democracy. Nicknamed “The Lawgiver”, he is credited with reforms that ended the aristocracy’s exclusive control of government and replaced a political system dominated by a blood nobility with an oligarchy controlled by the wealthy, regardless of pedigree. The reforms were a necessary response to major transformations in Athens’ economic – and thus political – landscape. For millennia, wealth had been based on land ownership, which ownership was disproportionately concentrated in the hands of a hereditary aristocracy.
As in the rest of Ancient Greece, Athens was dominated by nobles who owned the best land and thus monopolized government. The Athenian region of Attica was made of three parts. There was the Plains region, a prosperous agricultural interior. There was the Coast district, which relied on fishing and trade. Finally, there was the Hills district, an impoverished region that contained a majority of the population, mostly shepherds and small farmers who scratched a meager living from the poor soil. Then things began to change.