CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS

The fragments of Solon are indeed a unique record of the Archaic Age. They come from the mind of one of the most central persons in the history of Greek political and literary culture and were pro• duced during a formative transitional period in that city which is of such great significance to our own history. Though it would be of inestimable value, a full understanding of Solon's poems is beyond the power of investigation. The fragmentary nature of the text and the lacunae in the tradition make this impossible. Nonetheless, schol• ars have been undeterred and over the years have attempted in numerous ways by numerous methods to recover something of the social and political realities lying behind the words of Solon. Whenever new information came to light or creative approaches to the fragments were conceived, scholars would return again to the important question of Solon. Thus, for example, when the earth yielded the papyri which contained the Athenaion Politeia, scholars of the caliber of Wilamowitz turned anew to Solon. When Jaeger saw connections with Anaximander, he reexamined Solon's understand• ing of dike. The hope was always that new knowledge or new ideas external to the fragments would provide a mechanism for a fuller understanding of Solon's relatively few words. The inherent difficulties of the incomplete text and the various shortcomings of past approaches should not obscure the main point. When a new possibility arises to bring an external measure to the poems of Solon, the importance of the subject demands the attempt. The contention of this inquiry has been that the polis idea, derived from the researches of new classical archaeology, is knowledge of this kind. The practitioners of the new archaeology have attempted to articulate what the polis was in the Archaic Age at a period of time more contemporary with the life and work of Solon than any other evidentiary sources pertinent to his poetry. Moreover, the par• ticular results of Morris's archaeology of burials, namely the rejec• tion of the polis idea in Athens, establishes a direct connection to the work of Solon. The polis idea, therefore, provides a new win• dow through which to peer into the meaning of Solon's political poetry. 238 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS

Jaeger rightly emphasized that one should read Solon's poems as poetry and not as history. However, we have seen the inadequacies of this principle when interpretation is too far divorced from knowl• edge of the actual political work of the poet. The application of the polis idea to a reading of the political poems honors Jaeger's prin• ciple while limiting the distortion of disconnection from Solon's actual efforts in managing Athens' political crisis. The political poems are indeed an expression of Solon's poetic impressions of the realities that drove his own pragmatic work. Thus Solon did not describe in his poetry the particulars of land tenure or the specifics of legisla• tion. Rather, he engaged the power of poetic composition to create images expressive of the affective impact of the profound turmoil of his city. Solon did not wish to compose a poetry of details but a poetry of the universal political causes behind them. This he chose to do in a poetics of dike: the pregnant image of the holy founda• tions of the goddess, the surprising juxtaposition of dike and vio• lence, and the subtle idea of straight dike as the essence of the arbitrator's legislative power. Because the polis idea is also not an account of historical partic• ulars but an articulation of a principle of social and political orga• nization, it operates at the same level of universality as does Solon's poetry of dike. The new classical archaeologists, for example, have not tried to explain the particular legalities of citizenship but have, rather, attempted to explain how certain modes of participation in organized social life based on land, religion, and agriculture were formative of the polis. Thus the polis idea is an external body of knowledge related to the concerns of Solon's political poetry and commensurate with Solon's conception of dike as a political princi• ple. Accordingly, in this inquiry the polis idea became a measuring rod for interpreting Solon's substantive understanding of dike. Morris's archaeology of Athenian burials provided a specific link between the polis idea and the subject matter of Solon's political poetry. Solon came to realize, in terms of his own contemporary conceptions, that the rejection of the polis idea by the Athenian agathoi accounted for the deep political problems of his city. To the extent that this condition was unique to Athens, Solon's awareness of the importance of the polis idea will have been unique in com• parison to the political poetry of his predecessors. Hesiod and Tyrtaeus come to mind. Preliminary impressions suggest that the polis idea did not impact the sensibilities of these poets as it did Solon. Hesiod