Stories of Solon .... that Greek lawgiver ... on the wireless

So, sometimes you can be pleasantly surprised when a wireless programme turns out to be far more interesting than you thought.

Solon the law giver,  from a Greek original c. 110 BC

And so it was with Solon the Lawgiver which was this weeks edition of in Our Time.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democracy.

In the first years of the 6th century BC, the city state of Athens was in crisis. The lower orders of society were ravaged by debt, to the point where some were being forced into slavery. An oppressive law code mandated the death penalty for everything from murder to petty theft. There was a real danger that the city could fall into either tyranny or civil war.

Solon instituted a programme of reforms that transformed Athens’ political and legal systems, its society and economy, so that later generations referred to him as Solon the Lawgiver.

With Melissa Lane, class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University, Hans van Wees, Grote Professor of Ancient History at University College London, and William Allan, Professor of Greek and McConnell Laing Tutorial Fellow in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at University College, University of Oxford

Producer Luke Mulhall"

Picture; by Sailko of Solon,copy from a Greek original (c. 110 BC), from the Farnese Collection, now at the National Archaeological Museum, Naples. Licensing I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license: Creative Commons, attribution share alike. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

*Solon the Lawgiver, In Our Time, Radio 4,  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001k7wb