The early 6th century BC was a troubled time for the Ancient Athenians in many ways. Society was dominated by an aristocracy of birth, the eupatridae, who owned the best land, monopolized the government, and were themselves split into rival factions. The poorer farmers were easily driven into debt by them and when unable to pay were reduced to the condition of serfs on their own land and, in extreme cases, sold into slavery. The intermediate classes of middling farmers, craftsmen, and merchants resented their exclusion from the government. These social, economic, and political evils might well have culminated in a revolution and subsequent tyranny (dictatorship), as they had in other Greek states, had it not been for Solon, to whom Athenians of all classes turned in the hope of a generally satisfactory solution of their problems. Because he believed in moderation and in an ordered society in which each class had its proper place and function, his solution was not revolution but reform. He redeemed all the forfeited land and freed all the enslaved citizens, probably by fiat. This measure, was known popularly as the “shaking off of burdens”, in greek Sisahthia. He also prohibited for the future all loans secured on the borrower’s person.