Laws of Solon

The old law of Solon, to which Demosthenes, in his speech against Timocrates, appeals, agrees with it.

—On the motion of Teisamenus the People decreed that Athens be governed as of old, in accordance with the laws of Solon, his weights and his measures, and in accordance with the statutes of Draco, which we used aforetime.

At first they were moderate toward the citizens and pretended to pursue the ancestral constitution, and they took down from the Areopagus the laws of Ephialtes and Archestratus concerning the Areopagites, and such of Solon's ordinances as gave rise to disputes, and abolished the authority that lay with the jurors, as though correcting and making the constitution beyond dispute—for instance, making …

that the writings of Lycurgus, of Solon, our Twelve Tables are not laws, nor even is it a city or a state unless it be of the wise?

for I am aware, of course, that many men have risen to eminence from humble and obscure estate through the practice of this art, and that Solon, both living and dead, was deemed worthy of the highest renown.

Indeed they say that Solon himself declared that he proposed to the Athenians not the laws that pleased him, but those which he supposed they would use.

Thus, when Athenian citizens were empowered for the first time by the Laws of Solon to execute Testaments, they were forbidden to disinherit their direct male descendants.

while Solon is highly esteemed among you for begetting his laws;

Nevertheless I guide the servants into the path of justice with the aid of maxims drawn from the laws of Draco and Solon.