Solon

Solon was an archaic Athenian statesman, poet, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece who lived roughly between 630 and 560 BC. Facing political, economic, and moral crisis, he passed constitutional reforms that overturned most of Draco's harsh laws and introduced the seisachtheia - a massive debt relief that Athenians celebrated as "shaking off of burdens." Aristotle later called him "the first people's champion"; Demosthenes credited his work with launching a golden age. What survives of Solon comes mostly in fragments, often interpolated by later writers, and ancient sources like Herodotus, Plutarch, and Philo wrote centuries after his death. Fourth-century orators routinely attributed their own laws to him, turning the man into a convenient legend.