The political model of Solon: the exercise of Dike and the demos' participation in the politeia

The meaning and the purposes of Solon's reforms have been broadly disputed by contemporary authors, mainly regarding to his conception and application of justice. In this article we analyse the coincidence between which is known about his reforms in later sources and his direct testimony in his poems. The political and judicial reforms of Solon (both, politics and justice, are strongly associated at that time), reveal two main innovations which contribute to open the path towards the democracy of the Vth Century B.C. One of these innovations is the integration of the demos without land (the thetes) in the citizenship (with political and, over all, judicial active rights); the other measure is the possibility for the demos, as a mechanism of judicial and political control of the aristocratic activity, to participate actively in the political and judicial decision making (in a restricted way), which increase the auto conscience and autonomy of this demos through the VIth Century