Such was the condition of things when the great lawmaker, Solon, appeared on the stage, five hundred and ninety-four years before Christ. The laws which he framed and gave the Athenians were not, as he said himself, "the best possible, but the best which the Athenians were capable of receiving." To the rich he gave offices and dignities; to the poor he gave the right of suffrage, whereby in the framing of laws, the election of magistrates, the making of war or peace, the forming of treaties and alliances, and in all that regarded either religious or civil policy, they should have an equal voice with the rich, and, being much the greater in number, their class could overbalance the other three, though out of their class could no nomination be made to any office of honor or profit. A senate of four hundred members held an intermediate place between office-holders and the people, and served as a restraint upon both. The arbitrary power of the judges, as established by Draco, Solon restrained, and made the court of Areopagus the chief judicial tribunal, and gave it also a tutorial power over all the youth of the republic. Instead of having an egotistical, half-educated state school superintendent to do such duty (as sometimes found in this country), this court appointed masters and governors for the youth, and superintended their education. The Areopagus also inquired into the life and morals of all who held offices in the state, and such as could not stand the scrutiny were not only incapacitated for employ, but declared infamous. His laws also prohibited all imprisonment for debt, and contained many other provisions in which legislators have made no improvement during the nearly two thousand five hundred years that have passed since then. Notwithstanding the good laws of Solon, then, as now, there were found men to take advantage of their provisions to gratify their own private hates. Thus, Solon's laws allowed popular action for most offences--regarding all offences as against the "peace and dignity of the state"--as we do now; but in many cases advantage was taken of this by bad men to make the most calumnious accusations against men whose character until then had stood even above suspicion. So advantage was frequently taken of the law of ostracism (which was only meant for good), whereby some of their very best men were banished from the state. Thus, when an ignorant citizen was about to cast his vote for the ostracism of Aristides, he was asked by Aristides himself, who chanced to be passing by at the moment, and who was unknown t<\ him: "Why, what harm, my friend, has Aristides done to you?" "None in the world," replied he; "but I hate to hear everybody call him the 'Just.'"