Solon 630 BC – 560 BC

Solon was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet, traditionally counted as one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Appointed archon during a period of severe social and economic crisis, he abolished debt slavery, restructured the Athenian constitution to give a measure of political voice to all classes of citizens, and laid the legal foundations on which classical Athenian democracy would later be built. After completing his reforms he is said to have left Athens for ten years to let his laws take effect. His surviving fragments of elegiac poetry are among the earliest expressions of Greek ethical and political reflection.