Solomon's Seal

a plant of the lily family common in hardwood copses. The over-ground portion has a slender, tough stem carrying broad, sessile, lanceolate, parallelveined leaves. The latter are arranged closely in two ranks, one on either side of the stem. Stem and leaves bend in graceful, plume-like fashion. Pairs of small, greenish, bell-like flowers hang from the axes of the leaves. They are succeeded in late summer by dark blue spherical berries covered with a bloom like a blueberry. The annual portion of the plants springs up from a white root-stock. Each autumn the stem of the year falls off, leaving a circular scar on the root-stock, whence the name Solomon's seal. False Solomon's seal is a more common plant belonging to the same family. It is more slender, with narrower and smaller leaves. Its starry white flowers are clustered in panicles at the ends of drooping stems. The berries are red. The root-stock is without the characteristic scar.

Solon (about 640-559 B. C.), an Athenian lawgiver. He was of noble ancestry. When a young man he engaged in trading and traveled extensively. As compared with the Babylonians and Egyptians, the Greeks were then considered a western, rude nation. In Egypt a priest is said to have addressed him: "O Solon, Solon! you Greeks are mere children; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any signs hoary with age." Solon collected a fund of information about other countries, customs, and government. He was reckoned one of the seven wise men of Greece. He also acquired note as a poet and a soldier. About 594 B. C., during a period of severe strife, he was elected archon and was intrusted with the revision of the severe laws of Draco. He instituted a series of reforms, the chief of which may be mentioned. He made the farmers owners of the soil, and freed them from heavy rates paid previously to aristocratic landlords. Certain classes of debts were canceled. All Athenians in slavery were set free, and laws were enacted forbidding the further enslavement of Athenian citizens. The quantity of land that might be held by a single owner was limited. For many years these reforms were celebrated by an early "Festival of the Shaking-off of Burdens." Solon also introduced changes in the government that resulted in making Athens a democracy. By taking away the lands of aristocratic owners, he reduced their powers and gave the industrious merchant an increased opportunity for influence. He established a senate of four hundred, thus practically supplanting the Areopagus. The common people of the Attic tribes (not helots or outlanders) were admitted to a vote in the assembly. He caused his laws to be inscribed on wooden cylinders and tablets and set up in public. Solon's reforms are to be regarded as one of the great steps in the conversion of the Athenian aristocracy into a democratic form of government. Solon's own judgment on his work was that his laws were not the best conceivable, but that they were the best that the people could be induced at that time to accept. His predecessor in law-making was Draco; his successor was Clisthenes. See Croesus