When I first heard of you, I thought you were from Star Trek or Game of Thrones. How wrong I was!
You were one of the seven great sages of ancient Greece. A real human being who lived and breathed – and whose name has endured through the ages. More than 2,500 years on, your leadership legacy is rattling in my modern mind. You sowed the seeds of democracy; of giving power to the people; of equality before the law. You enabled social mobility.
Back in 594 BCE, Athens was a city state on the verge of collapse. Athens was polarised between the wealthy high-born few and the low-born many in their debt. The laws of the infamous Draco prevailed. He who made Draconian laws – capital punishment for pretty much everything from murder to petty theft. The few lived well; the many lived short lives of privation and worse.
Then came Solon The Lawgiver. Called to power for a year – chosen because of your wisdom; your poetic prowess; your noble birth balanced with real-world skills and feeling for your fellow man.
You made laws: dismantling the grim and bloody regime of Draco. You sought to reconcile the elite with the common people. You cancelled all debt. No longer could the impoverished be sold into slavery to extract payment of their dues. You opened the assembly to all – well, all but women and slaves… You took what were radical steps towards making all equal before the law.
Looking back through the ages, from my tiny point in a future that not even your giant mind could imagine, your leadership is inspiring. Your sense of fairness. Your willingness to remake the world around you. To include and empower – or at least to raise up.
Leadership Learnings From Solon
Two things particularly strike me about your leadership, dear Solon.
Firstly, unlike the tyrants before and after you, it was clear that you could sense the corrupting power of… power. You told your city that you would rule for one year and one year only. You would then disappear for 10. Rather than being drawn in by the trappings of power, you removed yourself.
Secondly, you recognised the fundamental inevitability of failure in the situation of your political leadership. You knew that you could not win; but, equally, you knew that you could improve things. Centuries before Enoch Powell’s famous pronouncement about the unavoidable fate of all political careers, you knew that truth. Even in great success, even when you enjoyed apparently universal admiration as a ruler, you knew that you would be criticised. For not doing enough to empower the poor; for doing too much to limit the wealthy. As a reconciler, you would please and disappoint both and all.
So, it is said, that you remarked: “Everyone hates me: I have succeeded!”. As a reconciler, perhaps this was the inevitable truth that only your wisdom could immediately grasp. Until, perhaps, Lydgate’s famous line was fed to Abraham Lincoln. “You can please some of the people, all of the time; you can please all of the people some of the time; but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.“.
You were asked:
“Did you give the people the best laws?”.
You replied:
“I gave the people the best laws they would receive.”
They didn’t hate you, Solon. They admired you. And they needed your skill for reconciliation; your practical wisdom.
What price such wisdom now?
If you’d like to find our more about Solon The Lawgiver, have a listen to this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001k7wb
Leo Winkley: Letters From Shrewsbury 