What advice would the ancient Greeks provide to
help modern Greeks with their current financial worries?
1. Debt, division and revolt. Here's the 6th Century BC news from
Athens.
In the early 6th Century BC, the people of Athens were burdened with debt,
social division and inequality, with poor farmers prepared to sell themselves
into slavery just to feed their families.
Revolution was imminent, but the aristocrat Solon emerged as a just mediator
between the interests of rich and poor. He abolished debt bondage, limited land
ownership, and divided the citizen body into classes with different levels of
wealth and corresponding financial obligations.
His measures, although attacked on all sides, were adopted and paved the way
for the eventual creation of democracy.
