Solon

Solon was born about 638 BC into an aristocratic Athenian family. One of the Seven Sages of Greece, he was the first great lawgiver of Athens and a poet. In 594 BC, when the conflict between rich and poor had brought the city close to civil war, he was chosen archon. He cancelled debts secured on the person, freed citizens enslaved for debt, divided the citizens into classes by property and created the people's court, laying the foundations of Athenian democracy. His reforms done, he left Athens for ten years of travel so as not to be pressed to change his laws. He defended his work in poems, the earliest political poetry in Greek.