The rapid spread of the new coinage and of Athenian products, particularly olive oil and pottery, throughout the commercial world of the times, attested by archaeology, shows that Solon's measures are effective.

Poverty, though not eliminated, will never again in Attica be the evil that it had been before Solon's reforms.

Solon's new political constitution abolishes the monopoly of the eupatridae and substitutes for it government by the wealthy citizens.

He institutes a census of annual income, reckoned primarily in measures of grain, oil, and wine, the principal products of the soil, and divides the citizens into four income groups, accordingly. (He must rate those whose income is in other forms, including money, on a system of equivalents.)

Henceforth, political privilege will be allotted based on these divisions, without regard to birth.

All citizens are entitled to attend the general Assembly (Ecclesia), which becomes, at least potentially, the sovereign body, entitled to pass laws and decrees, elect officials, and hear appeals from the most important decisions of the courts.

All but those in the poorest group might serve, a year at a time, on a new Council of Four Hundred, which is to prepare business for the Assembly.

The higher governmental posts are reserved for citizens of the top two income groups.

Thus, the foundations of the future democracy are laid, but a strong conservative element remains in the ancient Council of the Hill of Ares (Areopagus), and the people themselves will for a long time prefer to entrust the most important positions to members of the old aristocratic families.

Solon's third great contribution to the future good of Athens is his new code of laws.

He revises every statute except that on homicide and makes Athenian law altogether more humane. (His code, though supplemented and modified, will remain the foundation of Athenian statute law until the end of the fifth century, and parts of it will be embodied in the new codification made at that time.)

When Solon has completed his task, complaints come in from all sides, but the Athenians, though discontented, stand by their promise to accept Solon's dispositions; they are given validity for one hundred years and posted for all to see on revolving wooden tablets.

To avoid having to defend and explain them further, Solon sets off on a series of travels, undertaking not to return for ten years. (He certainly visits Egypt and Cyprus, and reportedly visits the court of Croesus, King of Lydia, but chronological grounds cast doubt on this account).

Solon's reforms prove only temporarily successful, and civil strife soon breaks out again.

Although Solon has improved the economic position of the Athenian lower classes, his reorganization of the constitution has not eliminated bitter aristocratic contentions for control of the archonship, the chief executive post.

Athenian potters, who have experimented with different techniques, such as silhouette, outline drawing, and the use of white in their vase paintings, gradually concentrate on black figure, borrowing the technique from the Corinthian animal style.

Practitioners of the black-figure style paint figures in silhouette on a light ground and then incise details in the black with a fine instrument, decorating vases with scenes from mythology as well as from daily life.

The black-figure style, particularly suited to a decorative medium such as pottery, is used by a number of excellent artists, some of whom, like Cleitias, the painter of the “Francois Vase,” sign their work.