a great loser, having lent money to the extent of five talents. We should have been glad to learn what authority Plutarch had for this anecdote, which could hardly have been recorded in Solon’s own poems.[181] [177] Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. οὐδὲ μαλακῶς, οὐδ᾽ ὑπείκων τοῖς δυναμένοις, οὐδὲ πρὸς ἡδονὴν τῶν ἑλομένων, ἔθετο τοὺς νόμους, etc. [178] Plutarch, Solon, c. 16. [179] See above, vol. ii, part ii, ch. vi. [180] Plutarch, _l. c._ ἔθυσάν τε κοινῇ, Σεισάχθειαν τὴν θυσίαν ὀνομάζοντες, etc. [181] The anecdote is again noticed, but without specification of the names of the friends, in Plutarch, Reipub. Gerend. Præcep. p. 807. In regard to the whole measure of the seisachtheia, indeed, though the poems of Solon were open to every one, ancient authors gave different statements, both of its purport and of its extent. Most of them construed it as having cancelled indiscriminately all money contracts; while Androtion, and others, thought that it did nothing more than lower the rate of interest and depreciate the currency to the extent of twenty-seven per cent., leaving the letter of the contracts unchanged. How Androtion came to maintain such an opinion we cannot easily understand, for the fragments now remaining from Solon seem distinctly to refute it, though, on the other hand, they do not go so far as to substantiate the full extent of the opposite view entertained by many writers,—that all money contracts indiscriminately were rescinded:[182] against which there is also a farther reason, that, if the fact had been so, Solon could have had no motive to debase the money standard. Such debasement supposes that there must have been _some_ debtors, at least, whose contracts remained valid, and whom, nevertheless, he desired partially to assist. His poems distinctly mention three things: 1. The removal of the mortgage pillars. 2. The enfranchisement of the land. 3. The protection, liberation, and restoration of the persons of endangered or enslaved debtors. All these expressions point distinctly to the thêtes and small proprietors, whose sufferings and peril were the most urgent, and whose case required a remedy immediate as well as complete: we find that his repudiation of debts was carried far enough to exonerate them, but no farther. [182] Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. The statement of Dionysius of Hal., in regard to the bearing of the seisachtheia, is in the main accurate,—χρεῶν ἄφεσιν ψηφισαμένην τοῖς ~ἀπόροις~ (v, 65),—to the debtors who were liable on the security of their bodies and their lands, and who were chiefly poor,—not to _all_ debtors. Herakleidês Pontic. (Πολιτ. c. 1) and Dio Chrysostom (Or. xxxi, p. 331) express themselves loosely.