Meier, De Bonis Damnatorum, p. 2, remarks upon the laxity with which the orators use the name of Solon: “Oratores Solonis nomine sæpe utuntur, ubi omnino legislatorem quemquam significare volunt, etiamsi a Solone ipso lex lata non est.” Herman Schelling, in his Dissertation De Solonis Legibus ap. Oratt. Attic. (Berlin, 1842), has collected and discussed the references to Solon and to his laws in the orators. He controverts the opinion just cited from Meier, but upon arguments no way satisfactory to me (pp. 6-8); the more so, as he himself admits that the dialect in which the Solonian laws appear in the citation of the orators can never have been the original dialect of Solon himself (pp. 3-5), and makes also substantially the same admission at Schömann, in regard to the presence of post-Solonian matters in the supposed Solonian laws (pp. 23-27). [209] See Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, book ii, c. 15. [210] Demosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 26, p. 731: compare Aristophanês Ekklesiazus. 302. [211] Herodot. i, 29; Plutarch, Solon, c. 25. Aulus Gellius affirms that the Athenians swore, under strong religious penalties, to observe them forever (ii, 12). [212] Livy iii, 34. If we examine the facts of the case, we shall see that nothing more than the bare foundation of the democracy of Athens as it stood in the time of Periklês, can reasonably be ascribed to Solon. “I gave to the people,” Solon says, in one of his short remaining fragments,[213] “as much strength as sufficed for their needs, without either enlarging or diminishing their dignity: for those too who possessed power and were noted for wealth, I took care that no unworthy treatment should be reserved. I stood with the strong shield cast over both parties, so as not to allow an unjust triumph to either.” Again, Aristotle tells us that Solon bestowed upon the people no greater measure of power than was barely necessary,[214]—to elect their magistrates and to hold them to accountability: if the people had had less than this, they could not have been expected to remain tranquil,—they would have been in slavery and hostile to the constitution. Not less distinctly does Herodotus speak, when he describes the revolution subsequently operated by Kleisthenês—the latter, he tells us, found “the Athenian people excluded from everything.”[215] These passages seem positively to contradict the supposition, in itself sufficiently improbable, that Solon is the author of the peculiar democratical institutions of Athens, such as the constant and numerous dikasts for judicial trials and revision of laws. The genuine and forward democratical movement of Athens begins only with Kleisthenês, from the moment when that distinguished Alkmæônid, either spontaneously, or from finding himself worsted in his party strife with Isagoras, purchased by large popular concessions the hearty coöperation of the multitude under very dangerous circumstances.