On some linguistic features of Solon’s Laws

Abstract

Plutarch, in his Life of Solon, gives us an interesting testimony of the importance assigned by the Athenian statesman to the role of language in his political strategy. Most of the features observed by Plutarch are euphemisms, introduction of new technical terms, change of meaning of old words, and preference for the Attic vocabulary. Starting from these Plutarchean comments, the author analyses the lexical particularities and innovations of the Solonian laws and concludes that, with a clever combination of tradition (including the use of Atticisms), creativity, specialisation and precision at the lexical level, Solon made a great effort of adaptation to the new historical, social, and political circumstances, and tried to facilitate the assimilation by the citizens of the new legal framework. Moreover, this trait of the laws coincides with some linguistic particularities formerly detected by the author in the poetic work of Solon. This study corroborates the validity of the remarks made by Plutarch and tries to put forward an explanation of these traits.