all political purposes) the four old tribes, and created ten new comprehensive tribes in place of them. In regard to the regulations of the senate and the assembly of the people, as constituted by Solon, we are altogether without information: nor is it safe to transfer to the Solonian constitution the information, comparatively ample, which we possess respecting these bodies under the later democracy. The laws of Solon were inscribed on wooden rollers and triangular tablets, in the species of writing called boustrophêdon (lines alternating first from left to right, and next from right to left, like the course of the ploughman), and preserved first in the acropolis, subsequently in the prytaneium. On the tablets, called kyrbeis, were chiefly commemorated the laws respecting sacred rites and sacrifices:[222] on the pillars, or rollers, of which there were at least sixteen, were placed the regulations respecting matters profane. So small are the fragments which have come down to us, and so much has been ascribed to Solon by the orators, which belongs really to the subsequent times, that it is hardly possible to form any critical judgment respecting the legislation as a whole, or to discover by what general principles or purposes he was guided. [222] Plutarch, Solon, 23-25. He particularly mentions the sixteenth ἄξων: we learn, also, that the thirteenth ἄξων contained the eighth law (c. 19): the twenty-first law is alluded to in Harpokration, v. Ὅτι οἱ ποιητοί. Some remnants of these wooden rollers existed in the days of Plutarch, in the Athenian prytaneium. See Harpokration and Photius, v. Κύρβεις; Aristot. περὶ Πολιτειῶν, Frag. 35, ed. Neumann; Euphorion ap. Harpokrat. Ὁ κάτωθεν νόμος. Bekker, Anecdota, p. 413. What we read respecting the ἄξονες and the κύρβεις does not convey a clear idea of them. Besides Aristotle, both Seleukus and Didymus are named as having written commentaries expressly about them (Plutarch, Solon, i; Suidas, v. Ὀργεῶνες; compare also Meursius, Solon, c. 24; Vit. Aristotelis ap. Westermann. Vitarum Scriptt. Græc. p. 404), and the collection in Stephan. Thesaur. p. 1095. He left unchanged all the previous laws and practices respecting the crime of homicide, connected as they were intimately with the religious feelings of the people. The laws of Drako on this subject therefore remained, but on other subjects, according to Plutarch, they were altogether abrogated:[223] there is, however, room for supposing, that the repeal cannot have been so sweeping as this biographer represents. [223] Plutarch, Solon, c. 17; Cyrill. cont. Julian, v, p. 169, ed. Spanheim. The enumeration of the different admitted justifications for homicide, which we find in Dêmosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 637, seems rather too copious and systematic for the age of Drako; it may have been amended by Solon, or, perhaps, in an age subsequent to Solon.