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 ... (full story)