Solon

Solon (c. 630–c. 560 BCE) was an Athenian statesman, constitutional lawgiver, and lyric poet celebrated as one of the legendary Seven Sages of Greece. Confronting severe economic crisis and impending civil war between indebted peasants and aristocratic landowners, the Athenians appointed Solon sole archon and supreme arbitrator with extraordinary powers to reform the state around 594 BCE.

Solon instituted the Seisachtheia ('shaking off of burdens'), immediately canceling all land debts, liberating citizens enslaved for insolvency, and permanently banning using human bodies as debt collateral. He replaced Draco's bloodthirsty laws, instituted a four-tier census based on agricultural yield rather than noble birth, created the Council of Four Hundred (Boule), and opened jury courts (Heliaia) to all citizens. Bound by oath not to alter his laws, he voluntarily went into a ten-year self-exile to allow the system to operate independently.