ABSTRACT
This chapter shares an optimistic view on the evidence, and authorship, of laws and reforms ascribed to Solon in surviving sources. It examines how and in what ways Solon reorganized the kinship community of Athens. The chapter reviews the traditional vision of his reforms as undermining the status of the kinsmen by advocating the opposite: his reforms and laws were aimed at and served to both homogenize the kinship community and secure its privileged status in Athens by cutting across local, family, and clan divisions. Solon's organization of the Athenian kinship community on the principle of legitimacy did not eradicate all the forms of inequality among the astoi. Modern interpretations of Solon's reforms have presented his laws as purposefully undermining the special place of the kinship community by putting individual interests above those of a clan and giving preference to friendship over kinship.
