Crisi economica e valorizzazione delle risorse: una lettura del nomos arghias

At the beginning of VI century B.C. Athens was affected by a political, social and economic crisis, caused by a partisan management of the power and by radicalization of social struggles. As a concrete answer to the crisis, Athenians entrusted Solon – a wise man – with the difficult task of giving new life to the polis and putting an end to the endemic crisis which held it. In order to solve the crisis, Solon used the laws he had written, laws that he claimed were equal both for the noble and the poorest man. Between the laws that literary tradition credited him with, I will analyse the nomos arghias, idleness law. Two aspects will be considered: first of all law’s authorship and secondly the meaning of this law. If on one hand we have to deal with a complex and stratified tradition which points to Drakon, Solon and Peisistratus as potential authors of the law, I will propose that Solon is the one that introduced it. This is possible by analysing “the spirit of the law”, in my opinion Solonic, and studying the procedures that ancient sources attest. I will also review the meaning of the nomos arghias, by clarifying above all Athenian attitude about work and inactivity. I will refer this law to economic politics of Solon which aimed to boast economic activities, value the commerce and craftsmanship, redefining the concept of citizenship, unbound from this moment on from nobility of birth and extended beyond polis borders. This law seems to bring the new citizenship concept that Solon introduced, a citizenship which valued the individual contribution to the common good. Facing this crisis, VI century Athens didn’t withdraw into itself, but reacted by giving value to the human resources that were available within and without the ethnic group.