The first pillar of his laws contained a regulation respecting exportable produce. He forbade the exportation of all produce of the Attic soil, except olive-oil alone, and the sanction employed to enforce observance of this law deserves notice, as an illustration of the ideas of the time;—the archon was bound, on pain of forfeiting one hundred drachms, to pronounce solemn curses against every offender.[225] We are probably to take this prohibition in conjunction with other objects said to have been contemplated by Solon, especially the encouragement of artisans and manufacturers at Athens. Observing, we are told, that many new emigrants were just then flocking into Attica to seek an establishment, in consequence of its greater security, he was anxious to turn them rather to manufacturing industry than to the cultivation of a soil naturally poor.[226] He forbade the granting of citizenship to any emigrants, except such as had quitted irrevocably their former abodes, and come to Athens for the purpose of carrying on some industrious profession; and in order to prevent idleness, he directed the senate of areopagus to keep watch over the lives of the citizens generally, and punish every one who had no course of regular labor to support him. If a father had not taught his son some art or profession, Solon relieved the son from all obligation to maintain him in his old age. And it was to encourage the multiplication of these artisans, that he insured, or sought to insure, to the residents in Attica a monopoly of all its landed produce except olive-oil, which was raised in abundance more than sufficient for their wants. It was his wish that the trade with foreigners should be carried on by exporting the produce of artisan labor, instead of the produce of land.[227] [225] Plutarch, Solon, 24. The _first law_, however, is said to have related to the insuring of a maintenance to wives and orphans (Harpokration, v. Σῖτος). By a law of Athens (which marks itself out as belonging to the century after Solon, by the fulness of its provisions, and by the number of steps and official persons named in it), the rooting up of an olive-tree in Attica was forbidden, under a penalty of two hundred drachms for each tree so destroyed,—except for sacred purposes, or to the extent of two trees per annum for the convenience of the proprietor (Dêmosthen. cont. Makartat c. 16, p. 1074). [226] Plutarch, Solon, 22. ταῖς τέχναις ἀξίωμα περιέθηκε. [227] Plutarch, Solon, 22-24. According to Herodotus, Solon had enacted that the authorities should punish every man with death who could not show a regular mode of industrious life (Herod. ii, 177; Diodor. i, 77). So severe a punishment is not credible; nor is it likely that Solon borrowed his idea from Egypt.