ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Solon and his reforms have fascinated many generations of scholars, as a puzzle with many critical pieces missing, and we have all been keen to exercise our ingenuity in restoring them. But the picture on it is vitally important, for it flashes by at a crucial moment in Athens’ development, essential to our understanding of her subsequent history, politics and institutions. How we perceive the constitutional, economic and political formation of the Athenian polis depends heavily on how we reconstruct what Solon did, and to or for whom. And how we interpret Solon depends most on what we think the Athenian polis was in the early sixth century.
