Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language
In a work answering Asclepiades on the matter of Solon's axones, Didymus the grammarian quotes one Philocles, who claims Solon's father was Euphorion — a view at odds with what every other writer on Solon has stated. Everyone else, by contrast, holds that his father was Execestides, a citizen of moderate property and standing who nonetheless belonged to a leading family, tracing descent from Codrus.
Heraclides of Pontus records that Solon's mother was a cousin of Pisistratus's mother. And at first there was great friendship between them, both because of their kinship and because of Pisistratus's natural gifts and good looks — indeed some say Solon greeted him with the affection of a lover. Hence later, when they came into conflict over politics, it seems that their enmity produced nothing harsh or savage, but the old feelings of goodwill remained in their hearts, guarding, like a fire of Zeus still smoldering, a living flame — the memory and grace of that love.
That Solon was not proof against handsome men, nor bold enough to stand up against Love "as a boxer stands up to meet his opponent's hands," one can gather from his poems; and he wrote a law forbidding a slave to oil himself in the gymnasium or to love boys, placing the practice among the honorable and dignified pursuits, and in a way inviting the worthy to it while driving away the unworthy.
It is also said that Pisistratus became the lover of Charmus, and dedicated the statue of Eros in the Academy, where those who run the sacred torch-race light their flame.
Solon, then, whose father had reduced the family estate through certain acts of generosity and kindness, as Hermippus says, was not the sort who would have lacked people willing to help him, but he was ashamed to accept from others, coming as he did from a house accustomed to helping others; so, while still young, he set out into trade. Yet some say that Solon traveled more for the sake of broad experience and learning than for profit. Indeed there is no denying that he loved wisdom above all else,
as one who even in old age said, "I grow old always learning many things." Wealth he did not admire; rather he says that a man is equally rich who has much silver and gold, fields of wheat-bearing land, and horses and mules, and one who has only this: comfort for belly and side and feet, and, when the season for it comes, the bloom of a boy or a woman, timed fittingly to his years.
But elsewhere he says: "Wealth I do long to have, but to possess it unjustly I do not wish: justice always comes in the end." Nothing prevents a good and public-spirited man from neither being zealous for superfluous possessions nor despising the use of what is necessary and sufficient. In those days, as Hesiod says, no work was a disgrace, nor did a trade make any difference in status; commerce indeed carried honor, since it brought familiarity with foreign peoples, procured the friendship of kings, and gave experience of many affairs.
Some men actually became founders of great cities, as Protis, beloved by the Celts around the Rhone, founded Massalia. They say that Thales too engaged in trade, and Hippocrates the mathematician, and that Plato financed his travels in Egypt by selling a quantity of oil there.
Solon's readiness to spend and his easy way of living, and his rather coarse than philosophical manner of speaking about pleasures in his poems, have led some to think that these traits were rubbed off on him by his mercantile life: for a man who runs many great risks demands in turn certain comforts and enjoyments.
That he counted himself with the poor, not the wealthy, is plain enough from these verses: "Many bad men are rich, and good men are poor; but we will not exchange our virtue for their wealth, since virtue always remains, while riches now belong to one man, now to another."
In his poetry, at first he seems to have used it for nothing serious, but rather as play and pastime for his leisure hours. Later, however, he wove philosophical maxims into it, and included much political matter as well, not for the sake of record and memory, but to explain and justify what he had done, and in places to exhort, admonish, and rebuke the Athenians.
Some also say that he attempted to set out his laws in verse, and they still remember the opening, which ran thus: "First let us pray to lord Zeus, son of Cronus, that he grant good fortune and glory to these ordinances." Of moral philosophy, he was devoted above all to its political side, as most of the sages were. In natural philosophy he is very simple and old-fashioned, as is clear from these lines:
"From the cloud comes the force of snow and hail; thunder comes from the bright lightning-flash. The sea is stirred up by the winds; but if no one disturbs it, it is the most just of all things." And altogether it seems that only the wisdom of Thales at that time reached, in its speculation, beyond practical need; the rest owed their reputation for wisdom to their political virtue.
They are said to have come together with one another both at Delphi and again at Corinth, when Periander arranged a common gathering and banquet for them. They were brought into still greater repute and fame by the circuit of the tripod, its passing around from one to another and the courteous yielding that took place among them with generous rivalry.
For, as the story goes, some Coan men were dragging in a fishing-net, and Milesian visitors had already purchased the haul sight unseen, when a golden tripod turned up tangled inside it, which they say Helen, sailing from Troy, had thrown in there, remembering some old oracle. When a dispute first arose between the strangers and the fishermen over the tripod, and then the two cities took up the quarrel and it came near to war, the Pythia gave an oracle to both that the tripod should be given to the wisest man.
First, the tripod went to Thales in Miletus — the Coans handing over, without objection, the very object that had nearly brought them to war against the whole Milesian people. But Thales judged Bias the wiser man and passed it on to him, and Bias in turn sent it to another he deemed wiser still. So it traveled the full circuit from hand to hand until it reached Thales once more, and was then taken from Miletus over to Thebes, where it was offered up to Ismenian Apollo.
Theophrastus, however, says that it was sent first to Bias at Priene, and second to Thales at Miletus, Bias having sent it on; and that thus, going all the round again, it came back to Bias, and was finally sent to Delphi. This story is told by many in various forms, except that some say the gift, instead of a tripod, was a bowl sent by Croesus, while others say it was a cup left by Bathycles.
As for their private meetings, writers record a conversation between Anacharsis and Solon, and again one between Anacharsis and Thales, of the following kind. They say Anacharsis came to Athens and knocked at Solon's door, saying that as a stranger he had come to make friendship and hospitality with him. When Solon answered that it is better to make friendships at home, Anacharsis said, "Well then, you are at home — make friendship and hospitality with us."
Solon, admiring the man's quickness of wit, received him kindly and kept him with him for some time, being at that point already engaged in public affairs and drafting his laws. When Anacharsis learned of this, he is said to have laughed at Solon's undertaking, thinking that he could restrain the injustice and greed of the citizens by written statutes, which he said were no different from spiders' webs: as those webs hold fast the weak and small creatures caught in them, but are torn through by the strong and wealthy.
To this Solon is said to have replied that men keep their agreements when it is to neither party's advantage to break them, and that he was shaping his laws to suit the citizens so that all could see acting rightly served them better than breaking the statutes. But things turned out more as Anacharsis had guessed than as Solon had hoped. Anacharsis also said, once he had attended an assembly, that he was amazed that among the Greeks the wise men speak, but the ignorant decide.
When Solon came to Thales at Miletus, he expressed surprise that Thales had entirely neglected marriage and the begetting of children. Thales said nothing at the time, but a few days later arranged for a stranger to appear, pretending he had just arrived from Athens ten days before. When Solon asked whether there was any news at Athens, the man, having been coached in what to say, replied, "Nothing else, except that a young man's funeral was held, and the whole city escorted it.
For he was, they said, the son of a man of good repute, foremost among the citizens in virtue; the father was not present, but they said he had already been abroad a long time." "How unfortunate that man is," Solon said. "And what did they call him?" "I heard the name," said the man, "but I don't remember it, except that there was much talk of his wisdom and justice." So with each answer Solon was drawn further into fear, and at last, already thoroughly disturbed, he himself supplied the name to the stranger, asking whether the dead man was called the son of Solon.
When the man said yes, Solon began beating his head and acting and speaking in every way that men overwhelmed by sorrow do; but Thales took hold of him, and laughing, said, "This, Solon, is what keeps me from marriage and children — things that overwhelm even you, the strongest of men. But take heart concerning this story: it is not true." This tale, at any rate, Hermippus says he found recorded by Pataecus, who claimed to possess the soul of Aesop.
It is absurd and ignoble for a man, out of fear of losing something, to forgo acquiring what he ought to have; for by that reasoning one would never welcome wealth, or reputation, or wisdom when it comes, for fear of being deprived of it later. Indeed we see even virtue, than which no possession is greater or sweeter, driven out by diseases and drugs; and for Thales himself, not marrying gained him no more freedom from fear, unless he also avoided acquiring friends, relatives, and a homeland.
But in fact he did have an adopted son, having made his sister's son, Cybisthus, as they say, his own. For since the soul has within itself a capacity for affection, and is so constituted that, just as it perceives and thinks and remembers, so too it loves, something always attaches itself to this and takes root there among external things to which it is not naturally akin; and just as a house or a field left without legitimate heirs is occupied and taken over by strangers and illegitimate children or servants, so affection, once it has taken up residence, brings with it care and fear on their behalf, along with the loving itself.
So it is that you can find men of a fairly harsh temperament holding forth on wedlock and having offspring, and those identical men, when children born to house-slaves or of concubines, wasting away with longing and giving voice to ignoble cries. Some too have been reduced by grief to a shameful and unlivable state at the death of dogs and horses. Yet others, having lost good children, have suffered nothing terrible and done nothing shameful, but have continued to live out the rest of their lives reasonably.
For it is weakness, not affection, that brings endless griefs and fears upon men untrained by reason against fortune, men who get no enjoyment even from the presence of what they desire, since the thought of the future always brings them pangs and trembling and struggles over the possibility of losing it. One ought to be fortified against the loss of money not by poverty, nor against the loss of friends by friendlessness, nor against the death of children by childlessness, but against all these things by reason. But this, for the present, is more than enough.
When the men of the city, worn out by a long and difficult war with the Megarians over the island of Salamis, passed a law that no one should ever again propose or speak in favor of the city's laying claim to Salamis, on pain of death, Solon, bearing the disgrace heavily, and seeing many of the young men eager for a chance to renew the war but not daring to begin because of the law, feigned a derangement of his reasoning,
A rumor spread through the city from his own household that he was behaving strangely. He had secretly composed elegiac verses and rehearsed them so as to recite them from memory, and he suddenly rushed out into the marketplace wearing a felt cap on his head. When a great crowd had gathered around him, he climbed onto the herald's stone and, in a kind of chant, recited the elegy through to the end. Its opening runs: “I myself have come as a herald from lovely Salamis, having composed a song of verses in place of a speech.” (Solon, fr. 1 Bergk)
This poem is entitled Salamis and consists of a hundred lines, composed with great charm. It was sung then, and Solon's friends began to praise it, and above all Pisistratus urged the citizens on and pressed them to be persuaded by the speaker; so they repealed the law and took up the war again, putting Solon in charge.
The popular account of what followed runs as follows: Solon sailed to Colias together with Pisistratus, and finding all the women there performing the ancestral sacrifice to Demeter, he sent a trusted man to Salamis pretending to be a deserter, who urged the Megarians that if they wished to seize the foremost women of the Athenians, they should sail to Colias with him as quickly as possible.
When the Megarians took the bait and sent men across in the ship, and Solon spotted the vessel being rowed toward him from the island, he had the women withdraw where no one could see them, while instructing the beardless young men to put on the women's robes, headbands, and sandals, conceal daggers on themselves, and dance and frolic along the shore until the enemy had come ashore and the ship lay in Athenian hands.
So it was done. The Megarians, deceived by the sight, drew near and leapt out as if going after women, competing eagerly with one another, so that not one of them escaped but all were killed; and the Athenians, sailing at once against the island, took it.
Others say the capture did not happen in this way, but that first the god at Delphi gave Solon this oracle: “Propitiate with sacrifices the heroes who dwell in that land, the founders, whom the Asopian plain enfolds in its bosom, who though dead look out toward the setting sun”; and that Solon, sailing across by night to the island, offered victims to the heroes Periphemus and Cychreus.
Then he took five hundred volunteers from the Athenians, it having been decreed that if they took the island they should hold authority over its governance. He put out to sea with a number of fishing boats accompanied by a thirty-oared vessel, and anchored off Salamis near a certain headland facing toward Euboea. The Megarians on Salamis, hearing some rumor but nothing certain, rushed in confusion to arms and sent out a ship to reconnoiter the enemy.
When this ship drew close, Solon captured it and trapped the Megarians on board. He then had the most capable Athenians board and sail toward the city, staying hidden as best they could, while he took the remaining Athenians and clashed with the Megarian forces on land; and before that battle was decided, the men from the ship arrived ahead of the rest and took the city.
What actually happens seems to bear out this account. For an Attic ship sailed in, silent at first, but then, as they bore down with shouting and battle-cry, a single armed man leapt out and ran with a shout toward the headland of Sciradion, facing those advancing from the land. Nearby stands the shrine of Enyalius, founded by Solon. For he defeated the Megarians, and all who were not killed in the battle he released under truce.
Nevertheless, since the Megarians persisted, doing and suffering many evils in the war, they made the Lacedaemonians arbitrators and judges. Most say that the reputation of Homer aided Solon in this: for he is said to have inserted a line into the Catalogue of Ships and read it out at the trial: “Ajax led twelve ships from Salamis, and brought them to station where the Athenian ranks stood.” (Homer, Iliad 2.557–558)
But the Athenians themselves regard this story as absurd, insisting rather that Solon demonstrated before the arbitrators how Ajax's sons, Philaeus and Eurysaces, became Athenian citizens, handed the island over to Athens, and made their homes — one at Brauron in Attica, the other settling at Melite — and that a deme, the Philaidae, bears Philaeus's name and traces Pisistratus's descent.
Wishing still further to refute the Megarians, he insisted concerning the dead that they were not buried in the manner the Megarians use, but in the manner the Athenians use. The Megarians bury their dead facing east, the Athenians facing west. But Hereas the Megarian, disputing this, says that the Megarians too turn the bodies of their dead to face west; and, more telling still, that each Athenian has his own single grave, while the Megarians place three or four in one grave.
They say too that certain Pythian oracles came to Solon's aid, in which the god addressed Salamis as “Ionian.” This case was judged by five Spartan men: Critolaidas, Amompharetus, Hypsichidas, Anaxilas, and Cleomenes.
By this point Solon was already famous and great on account of these deeds. But he was even more admired and talked about among the Greeks for what he said concerning the temple at Delphi—that they must come to its aid and not overlook the Cirrhaeans as they committed outrage against the oracle, but must defend Delphi on the god's behalf. For persuaded by him, the Amphictyons set out for war, as others attest and as Aristotle, in his record of the victors at the Pythian Games, ascribes the idea to Solon.
Contrary to what Hermippus claims (citing Euanthes of Samos), Solon did not in fact hold the generalship in this war: Aeschines the orator makes no such claim either, and the archives preserved at Delphi list Alcmaeon, not Solon, as the Athenian general.
The taint left by the Cylon affair had long since plunged the city into unrest, ever since Megacles the archon convinced Cylon's fellow-conspirators, who had taken refuge as the goddess's suppliants, to descend and face judgment. They fastened a length of spun thread to the statue and gripped it as they descended; yet on arriving at the sanctuary of the Solemn Goddesses, the thread snapped on its own, whereupon Megacles together with the other archons dashed forward to lay hold of them, taking this as a sign that the goddess had refused their plea. Some were stoned outside the walls; others fled toward the altars and were cut down right there, and only those found safety who threw themselves on the mercy of the archons' wives.
From this the men so involved were called “accursed” and were hated; and those of Cylon's faction who survived grew strong again, and were continually at odds with the descendants of Megacles. At that time the factional strife had reached its height and the people were sharply divided, when Solon, already having a reputation, came forward into their midst together with the best of the Athenians, and by entreaty and instruction persuaded those called accursed to submit to trial and be judged by three hundred men chosen for their excellence.
Myron of Phlya acted as prosecutor, and the men were convicted; those still living were banished, and the bodies of those who had died were dug up and cast out beyond the borders. Amid these troubles, the Megarians attacked as well, and the Athenians lost Nisaea and were again expelled from Salamis. Certain fears arising from superstition, along with apparitions, gripped the city, and the seers proclaimed that pollutions and defilements requiring purification were being revealed through the sacrifices.
So they sent for Epimenides of Phaestus from Crete, whom some who do not admit Periander count as the seventh among the wise men. He was thought to be beloved of the gods and wise in matters divine, possessing an inspired and ritual wisdom, and for this reason the people of that time called him the child of a nymph named Balte, and a new Curetes. Coming to Athens and making friends with Solon, he did much to prepare the ground and pave the way for his legislation.
For he made the sacred rites simple and made the customs surrounding mourning gentler, immediately mixing in certain sacrifices with the funeral rites, and removing the harshness and the barbaric excess that had previously constrained most of the women. And, most important, by certain propitiations, purifications, and foundations he consecrated and hallowed the city, rendering it obedient to justice and more compliant toward concord. It is said that when he saw Munychia and had studied it for a long time, he said to those present that man is blind
to the future: for the Athenians would tear it out with their own teeth, could they foresee the grief that spot would one day cause the city. A similar prediction is attributed to Thales: he arranged to be buried in some humble, disregarded corner of Milesian ground, having predicted that this spot would eventually become a marketplace for the Milesians. Epimenides, for his part, won great admiration, and although the Athenians offered him considerable wealth and high honors, he requested and accepted nothing beyond a cutting from the sacred olive, and then he left.
Now the Athenians, once the disturbance over Cylon had ceased and those under the curse had been banished, as has been said, fell once more into their old factional strife over the constitution, the city being divided into as many parts as the land had differences. For the clan of the Diacrii was the most democratic, that of the Pediei the most oligarchic, while a third group, the Paralii, chose a middle and mixed form of constitution, and stood in the way, preventing either of the other two from prevailing.
At that time, with the gulf between rich and poor having grown, so to speak, as wide as it would ever get, the city stood in a thoroughly unstable state, and it looked as though only the imposition of a tyranny could restore order and put an end to the unrest. For virtually the entire populace of ordinary citizens owed money to the wealthy. They either worked the rich men's fields for a sixth of what they produced, earning the name sixth-parters or hired hands, or they borrowed against their own persons as collateral and thus stood exposed to seizure by their creditors, some ending up enslaved at home, others sold off abroad.
Many were forced to sell even their own children (for no law forbade it) and to flee the city because of the harshness of their creditors. But most of them, and the strongest among them, banded together and urged one another not to overlook this, but to choose one trustworthy man as their champion, free those overdue in their debts, redistribute the land, and change the constitution altogether.
At this point the most prudent of the Athenians, seeing that Solon alone stood clear of the wrongdoing on both sides, sharing neither in the injustice of the rich nor being bound by the necessities of the poor, begged him to come forward into public affairs and put an end to the disputes. And yet Phanias of Lesbos records that Solon himself, using a deception on both sides for the sake of the city's safety, secretly promised the poor a redistribution of land, and the wealthy a confirmation of their contracts.
But Solon himself says that he hesitated at first to lay hold of public affairs, fearing on the one side men's love of money, and on the other their arrogance. He was elected archon after Philombrotus, and at the same time both arbitrator and lawgiver, both sides accepting him readily—the rich because he was a man of means, the poor because he was honest. There is also a saying of his reported from before this time, that he said equality does not make war, meaning that it pleases both the propertied and the propertyless, the one in worth and merit, the other in measure and number,
expecting to have equality. Hence, since both sides had come to have great hopes, their leading men pressed upon Solon, urging him toward tyranny and persuading him to lay hold of the city more boldly once he had gained control of it. And many of the citizens in between, seeing that change brought about by reason and law was laborious and difficult, were not averse to setting up one man, the most just and prudent, in charge of affairs.
Some say that an oracle was also given to Solon at Delphi to this effect: “Sit in the middle of the ship, steering with a straight hand at the helm; many of the Athenians are your helpers.” And his close friends especially reproached him if he shrank from monarchy merely because of the name, as though it would not at once become a true kingship through the virtue of the one who took it—just as had happened before with Tynnondas among the Euboeans, and now with Pittacus, chosen tyrant by the Mytilenaeans.
None of this deflected Solon from his own resolve; instead he said to his friends, as the story goes, that tyranny was a fine piece of ground but had no way down from it, and to Phocus he wrote in his poems: "If I spared my native land, and did not lay hold of tyranny and pitiless force, staining and disgracing my good name, I feel no shame; for in this way I think I shall surpass all men the more." (Solon, fr. 32 Bergk.) From this it is quite clear that even before his lawgiving he had great renown.
What many said mockingly of him after he had fled from tyranny, he has written thus: "Solon was not a deep-thinking man, nor a man of sound counsel; for when god was offering him good things, he himself did not accept them. Having cast his net around the catch, he was too amazed to draw in the great net, failing both in spirit and in mind. Yet had I only gained mastery, taken boundless wealth, and been tyrant of Athens for a single day, I would gladly afterward be flayed as a wineskin and have my line wiped out." (Solon, fr. 33 Bergk.)
These verses have made the many and the base speak of him in this way. Yet though he refused the tyranny, he did not manage affairs in the gentlest manner, nor did he soften or yield to the powerful, nor frame his laws to gratify those who had chosen him; rather, where it was best, he brought in no remedy or innovation, fearing that if he threw the city into utter confusion and turmoil he would be too weak afterward to restore and refit it
to the best condition; but what he hoped he could persuade men to accept, and what he could compel those who would submit to endure, this he did, joining together, as he himself says, force and justice. (Solon, fr. 36.14 Bergk.) Hence, when he was later asked whether he had given the Athenians the best laws, he said, "The best of those they would have accepted." As for what modern writers say — that the Athenians veil the harshness of things with pleasant and kindly names, giving them charming euphemisms —
calling prostitutes "companions," tributes "contributions," garrisons of cities "guard-posts," and the prison a "chamber" — this device, it seems, was first Solon's, who named the cancellation of debts a "shaking-off of burdens." For this was the first measure of state he enacted, writing that existing debts should be released, and that for the future no one should lend on the security of the body.
Yet some have written — among them Androtion — that the poor were relieved and content not through a cancellation of debts but through a moderation of interest, and that this benevolent act was called the "shaking-off of burdens," along with the increase of measures and the raising of the value of coinage that came with it. For he made the mina consist of a hundred drachmas, whereas before it had been seventy-three, so that though debtors paid back the same number, its actual worth was less, and thus those settling their debts gained greatly while those receiving payment suffered no harm at all.
But most writers, taken together, say that the "shaking-off of burdens" consisted in a wholesale abolition of debts, and the poems agree with this view rather more. For Solon takes pride in these lines, that he removed the boundary-markers fixed in many places over the previously mortgaged land: "formerly enslaved, but now free" (Solon, fr. 36.4-5 Bergk); and that of the citizens who had been sold abroad for money, some he brought back from foreign lands, no longer speaking the Attic tongue, as men who had wandered far and wide, while others held here in shameful servitude (fr. 36.9-12 Bergk) he says he made free.
It is said that a most distressing thing happened to him as a result of that action. For when he set his mind on cancelling the debts and was seeking suitable arguments and a fitting way to begin, he shared his intent with those of his friends whom he most trusted and relied upon — Conon, Clinias, and Hipponicus — namely that he did not intend to redistribute the land, but had decided to cancel debts. These men, seizing the opportunity ahead of everyone else, at once borrowed large sums of money from the wealthy and bought up great tracts of land.
Then, when the decree was issued, they enjoyed the produce of the properties while not repaying the money to those who had lent it, and thereby brought great blame and slander upon Solon, as though he were not a fellow victim of the wrong but a partner in it. This charge, however, was soon dispelled thanks to a sum of five talents; it came to light that this was the amount he himself had loaned out, and he was the very first to cancel it under his own law. Some say fifteen talents, among them Polyzelus the Rhodian. His friends, however, continued to be called "debt-dodgers."
He pleased neither side, but distressed the wealthy by annulling their contracts, and distressed the poor even more, because he did not carry out a redistribution of the land as they had hoped, nor did he, like Lycurgus, make everyone entirely equal in their manner of life. But Lycurgus, being eleventh in descent from Heracles and having reigned many years over Lacedaemon, had great prestige, friends, and power to support what he had rightly determined for the constitution, and by using force more than persuasion — so much so that his eye was struck out — he achieved the greatest thing for the safety and harmony of the city: that none of its citizens should be either poor or rich;
Solon, however, did not attain this in his constitution, being a man of the people and of the middle rank, yet he applied no less than the power he actually possessed, setting out solely from the citizens' willingness and trust in him. That he offended most people, who had expected other things, he himself has said of them: "At first they had vain notions, and now, angry with me, they all look at me sidelong, as at an enemy." (Solon, fr. 34 Bergk.) And yet he says that if any other had had the same power, he would not have restrained the people, nor stopped, before he had stirred it up and skimmed off the cream, leaving the milk. (Solon; Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 12.5)
Soon, however, perceiving where their advantage lay, they let go of their private grievances and offered a common sacrifice, naming the sacrifice the "Seisachtheia," and they proclaimed Solon corrector of the constitution and lawgiver, entrusting to him not some things and not others, but all things alike — magistracies, assemblies, courts, councils — and bidding him fix the property qualification, the number, and the term of each of these, dissolving or preserving of the existing and established institutions whatever he thought fit.
First, then, he abolished all of Draco's laws except those concerning murder, because of their harshness and the severity of their penalties. For nearly every offender alike faced the single penalty of death, with the result that men found guilty merely of laziness were executed, and those caught pilfering vegetables or fruit received the same punishment as temple-robbers and killers.
For this reason Demades later won approval by saying that Draco had written his laws in blood, not in ink. Draco himself, they say, when asked why he had set death as the penalty for most offenses, answered that he considered the small ones deserving of it, and for the great ones he had no greater penalty to give.
Second, Solon, wishing to leave all the offices, as they were, in the hands of the wealthy, but to mix in the rest of the constitution, in which the common people had had no share, took the property assessments of the citizens, and those who made five hundred measures, dry and liquid combined, he ranked first and called "men of the five-hundred-measure class"; second, those able to keep a horse or make three hundred measures,
and these were called those "paying the cavalry rate"; those of the third assessment were named "yoke-men," whose measure of both together was two hundred. All the rest were called "laborers," to whom he gave no office to hold, but they took part in the constitution only by joining in the assembly and sitting in judgment. This at first seemed nothing, but later proved to be of the greatest importance; for most disputes came before the jurors. Indeed, whatever cases he assigned to the magistrates to judge, he likewise granted, in those very matters, appeals to the court to anyone who wished.
It is also said that by writing the laws rather obscurely, and giving them many possible interpretations, he increased the power of the courts; for since people could not settle their disputes by the laws themselves, it followed that they always needed judges, and brought every point of contention before them, since these were in a sense masters of the laws.
He himself notes his own estimation of this in these words: "To the people I gave as much power as suffices, neither taking away their honor nor reaching out for more; and for those who had power and were admired for their wealth, I took care that they should suffer nothing unseemly. I stood, holding a mighty shield over both, and allowed neither side to win an unjust victory." (Solon, fr. 5 Bergk; Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 12.1.)
Yet, thinking he must still further support the weakness of the many, he granted to every man the right to seek redress on behalf of one who had been wronged. For if one man was struck, forced, or injured, it was open to anyone able and willing to indict the wrongdoer and prosecute him, the lawgiver rightly accustoming the citizens, as parts of one body, to feel and suffer together with one another. A saying of his that agrees with this law is remembered: when asked, it seems, which city was best governed, he replied, "That one in which those who are not wronged press charges and punish the wrongdoers no less than those who are wronged."
Having established the Council of the Areopagus from those who had held office year by year, of which he himself was also a member by virtue of having held office, and observing further that the people were swelling with pride and growing bold from the release of debts, he set up a second council besides, choosing a hundred men from each of the four tribes, whom he appointed to deliberate in advance for the people and to allow nothing to be brought before the assembly without prior deliberation.
He appointed the upper council to watch over everything and to act as protector of the statutes, believing that the state, held as it were by two anchors in its pair of councils, would be tossed about less and would keep its citizens steadier. Most writers, then, say that Solon established the Council of the Areopagus, as has been said; and it seems to support them strongly that nowhere does Draco speak of or name "Areopagites," but always addresses the "ephetae" concerning cases of murder.
The thirteenth axon of Solon contains the eighth of his laws, written in these very words: "Those who were disenfranchised before Solon's archonship are to be restored to their rights, except those who had been condemned either by the Areopagus, or by the ephetae, or before the kings in the Prytaneum, on a charge of murder or slaughter, or for tyranny, and who were in exile at the time this decree was published."
This again shows that the Council of the Areopagus existed before Solon's archonship and legislation. For who could those men be, condemned in the Areopagus before Solon's time, if it was Solon who first granted that body its judicial authority? Unless, by Zeus, there has been some obscurity or omission in the text, so that those convicted on the charges which the Areopagites, ephetae, and Prytanes now judge, at the time this decree was published, remained disenfranchised, while the others were restored to their rights. This point, then, the reader may examine for himself.
Among his other laws, the most peculiar and paradoxical is the one commanding that whoever, in time of civil strife, took neither side should be disenfranchised. He wishes, it seems, that a man should not remain untouched or unfeeling toward the common good, securing his own affairs and priding himself on not sharing in the suffering or sickness of his country, but should from the outset attach himself to those acting for the better and more just cause, sharing the danger and giving help, rather than waiting in safety to see which side prevails.
Strange and even absurd, too, appears the law concerning the heiress: that if the man who has become her master and guardian according to law is himself unable to have intercourse with her, she is to be mated by the nearest kinsman of the husband. Some say this is rightly aimed at those who, unable to have relations with her, take heiresses for the sake of money and use the law to do violence to nature. For, seeing that the heiress may consort with whomever she wishes, they will either give up the marriage or keep her in disgrace, paying the penalty for their greed and insolence.
It is also well judged that the heiress should be given not to any man at all, but to whichever of her husband's kinsmen she wishes to consort with, so that the child born may be a member of the household and share in the family line. It contributes to this same end that the bride is shut in together with the bridegroom after eating a quince, and that the man who has taken her is required to come to the heiress at least three times each month. For even if no children should result, still this is a mark of honor from a husband toward a virtuous wife, and a token of affection that removes many of the vexations that gather from time to time, and does not allow their differences to turn into complete estrangement.
From other marriages he removed dowries, ordaining that the bride bring only three garments and household furnishings worth little, and nothing beyond that. He did not want marriage to resemble a transaction of hire or sale, but wished the union of husband and wife to arise for begetting children, for mutual affection, and for love. Dionysius, when his mother asked to be given in marriage to one of the citizens, said that his tyranny had let him override the city's statutes, yet he could not compel nature's laws by contriving a marriage that ran against the natural order of age;
and in cities this disorder ought not to be allowed, nor should one countenance untimely and graceless unions that serve no purpose and reach no fitting end of marriage. Rather, to an old man taking a young wife, a sensible magistrate or lawgiver might say what was said to Philoctetes: "Fine indeed is the marriage you are making, poor wretch" (an uncertain author, Philoctetes; Nauck, Trag. Graec. Fr. [2], p. 841) — and finding a young man grown sleek from intercourse in the chamber of a rich old woman, like a partridge, he should transplant him to live with a young bride in need of a husband. So much, then, for these matters.
Solon is also praised for the law forbidding one to speak ill of the dead. Reverence toward those who have passed on is a mark of piety, leaving the absent unassailed is simple justice, and doing away with the endless renewal of grudges is sound policy. He forbade speaking ill of the living at temples, in courts, in public offices, and during the viewing of games, setting a penalty of three drachmas to be paid to the private party and two more to the public treasury. For never to master one's anger is uneducated and unrestrained, and to do so everywhere is difficult, indeed for some impossible; a law must be framed with regard to what is possible, if it means to punish a few usefully rather than many uselessly.
He also won approval for his law on wills. Previously it was not permitted, but the property and estate of the deceased had to remain within his family; but Solon, if a man had no children, allowed him to give his own possessions to whomever he wished, thus honoring friendship above kinship and personal choice above compulsion, and making property truly the possession of its owners.
Yet he did not grant such gifts freely or without qualification, but only if the man were not compelled by illness, drugs, imprisonment, necessity, or the persuasion of a wife—rightly and fittingly holding that being persuaded away from what is best is no different from being compelled by force, and putting deception in the same category as compulsion, and pleasure in the same category as pain, since both are equally capable of driving a man out of his right judgment.
He also imposed a law on women's excursions, mournings, and festivals, checking disorder and excess: a woman going out was to wear no more than three garments, carry no more than an obol's worth of food or drink, nor a basket larger than a cubit, and was not to travel by night except in a wagon with a lamp burning before it. He abolished the lacerating of mourners, the ritualized dirge, and the wailing of one person over another's funeral.
He did not allow the sacrifice of an ox at the tomb, nor the burial of more than three garments with the dead, nor visiting the tombs of others except at the funeral itself. Most of these practices are likewise forbidden by our own laws; but ours add that those who do such things are to be punished by the women-overseers, on the grounds that they are caught up in unmanly and womanish passions and errors regarding mourning.
Seeing that the city was constantly filling up with people streaming in from everywhere to Attica in safety, while most of the land was poor and worthless, and that those who used the sea were not accustomed to bring anything in return to those who had nothing to give, he turned the citizens toward the crafts, and wrote a law that a son should not be compelled to support a father who had not taught him a trade.
For Lycurgus, ruling a city free of foreign crowds and possessing a country large enough for far more people than it had—twice as many again, according to Euripides—and above all a mass of helots, which it was better not to leave idle but always to wear down and keep humbled by toil, surrounding Lacedaemon as it did, it was well for him to free the citizens from burdensome and menial occupations and keep them under arms, learning and practicing this one skill alone.
But Solon, fitting his laws to the actual circumstances rather than forcing circumstances to fit his laws, and seeing that the nature of the land could barely support those who farmed it, and could not sustain an idle, leisured crowd, gave standing to the crafts, and appointed the Council of the Areopagus to oversee where each man got his livelihood, and to punish the idle.
This next measure was even more severe: that fathers should not be compelled to support children born of a courtesan, as Heraclides of Pontus records. For a man who disregards what is honorable in marriage clearly does not marry for the sake of children but is led by pleasure alone to take a wife, and he has already received his payment, and he leaves himself no right to reproach the children so born, since he has made the very fact of their birth a disgrace to them.
In general, Solon's laws concerning women seem to contain the greatest inconsistency. He granted the right to kill an adulterer caught in the act; but if a man abducts and rapes a free woman, he set the penalty at a hundred drachmas; and if he acts as a procurer, twenty drachmas—except in the case of those women who sell themselves openly, meaning the courtesans, for these openly go to those who pay them.
Moreover, he does not permit a man to sell his daughters or sisters, except if he catches a virgin who has had relations with a man. Yet it is inconsistent to punish the same act harshly and without mercy in one case, and lightly and almost playfully in another, fixing a trivial fine; unless it was that, since currency was then scarce in the city, the difficulty of procuring it made the monetary penalties heavy.
In the valuations set for sacrifices, a sheep and a drachma are reckoned equal to a medimnus; the victor at the Isthmian games was to be given a hundred drachmas, the victor at the Olympic games five hundred; whoever killed a wolf received five drachmas as reward, and one drachma for a wolf cub—sums which Demetrius of Phalerum explains corresponded, respectively, to what an ox and what a sheep then cost. For the prices which he fixes in the sixteenth of his tablets for choice sacrificial animals are likely to be many times higher, though even those, by our present standards, are cheap.
It was an old Athenian custom to make war on wolves, since the land was better suited to pasture than to farming. And there are some who say that the tribes were named not after the sons of Ion, but after the occupations into which the population was first divided—the fighting class called Hoplitai, the working class Ergadeis; and of the remaining two, Geleontes the farmers, and Aigikoreis those occupied with pasture and flocks.
Since the country was not well supplied with water, having neither ever-flowing rivers nor lakes nor abundant springs, but most people used dug wells, he wrote a law requiring anyone living within a hippikon of a public well—the hippikon measuring four stades—to draw from it, while those farther off were to seek their own supply; but if a man dug down ten fathoms on his own ground and struck no water there, he was permitted to fetch six choes daily from a neighbor's well. For he thought it right to help against real need, not to supply resources for idleness. He also set the measurements for plantings with great expertise,
ordering that those planting anything else in a field should keep five feet from a neighbor's land, but those planting a fig tree or an olive, nine feet. For these reach further with their roots, and are not harmless neighbors to all plants, but draw away nourishment and give off an emanation harmful to some. He allowed anyone who wished to dig pits and trenches, keeping back from his neighbor's land a distance equal to the depth dug; and anyone setting up beehives was to keep three hundred feet from hives already established by another.
Of the produce of the land he permitted only olive oil to be exported to foreigners, and forbade the export of anything else; and he ordered the archon to pronounce curses against those who exported other goods, or else himself pay a hundred drachmas to the public treasury. This is the first tablet that contains this law. One need not think it altogether implausible, then, when some say that the export of figs was also once forbidden, and that those who informed against exporters, by pointing them out, were called sycophants ('fig-showers'). He also wrote a law on damage done by four-footed animals, in which he orders that a dog that has bitten someone be handed over bound with a collar three cubits long—a clever precaution for safety.
The law concerning naturalized citizens also presents difficulty, in that it does not grant citizenship except to those who are permanently exiled from their own homeland, or to whole families who move to Athens to practice a trade. They say he did this not so much to drive away others as to invite these people to Athens with the assurance of a firm share in citizenship, and at the same time because he considered trustworthy those who had lost their own country through necessity, and those who had left it by deliberate choice.
Peculiar to Solon too is his provision on public maintenance at the state's expense, which he himself called 'dining alongside.' For he does not allow the same man to be fed at public expense often, but if one to whom it is due is unwilling, he punishes him—regarding the one case as greed, the other as contempt for the common good.
He decreed that all his laws should remain binding for a century; they were inscribed on wooden tablets mounted in rotating frames, small remnants of which were still preserved in my own time in the Prytaneum; and they were called, as Aristotle says, kyrbeis. And Cratinus the comic poet says somewhere: 'By Solon and Draco, whose tablets men now use to roast their barley.'
Some say that specifically those tablets containing sacred matters and sacrifices were called kyrbeis, and the rest axones. The council swore a common oath to uphold Solon's laws, and each of the thesmothetai swore individually at the stone in the marketplace, declaring that if he transgressed any of the ordinances, he would dedicate a gold statue of his own weight at Delphi.
Noticing how uneven the month was, and that the moon's course did not line up exactly either with the sun's setting or its rising, but often on the same day both overtook and passed the sun, he ordered that this day itself be called 'old and new,' considering the portion before the conjunction to belong to the ending month, and the remainder already to the beginning one—being, it seems, the first to understand correctly Homer's words, 'of the month waning' and 'of the month rising'; and he called the following day the new moon. And the days after the twentieth he numbered not by adding but by subtracting and counting down, just as he observed the light of the moon, down to the thirtieth.
When the laws had been introduced, some people came to Solon every day, praising or blaming them or advising him to insert or remove something from what was written; and very many questioned him closely, asking him to explain and clarify the meaning and intent of each provision,
seeing that to act on these requests would be strange, and not to act would give offense, and wishing altogether to escape these difficulties and evade the citizens' fault-finding and captiousness (for in great undertakings, as he himself said, it is hard to please everyone), he made a pretext of trading by sea and sailed away, having asked the Athenians for ten years' leave of absence. For he hoped that in that time they would grow accustomed to his laws.
He first arrived in Egypt and stayed there, as he himself says, 'near the outpourings of the Nile at the Canobic shore.' For some time he pursued philosophical study alongside two of the most learned priests, Psenophis from Heliopolis and Sonchis from Sais; and from them, hearing the account of Atlantis, as Plato says, he attempted to bring it to the Greeks in the form of a poem.
Then, sailing to Cyprus, he was received with special affection by a certain Philocyprus, one of the kings there, who held a small city founded by Demophon son of Theseus, near the river Clarius, situated in a place that was strong but otherwise difficult and poor. Solon then persuaded him, since there was a fine plain lying below, to move the city and build it more pleasant and larger.
And being present himself, he took charge of the resettlement, and helped organize it both for the best manner of living and for security, so that many settlers came together to join Philocyprus, and the other kings envied him; and so, in return for the honor to Solon, he renamed the city, formerly called Aepeia, Soloi after him.
And Solon himself recalls this resettlement; for addressing Philocyprus in his elegies, he says: 'Now may you long rule here over the people of Soloi, and dwell in this city with your line; but as for me, may violet-crowned Cypris send me safe in my swift ship from your famous island, and grant favor and good renown to this settlement, and a safe return to my own homeland.'
Some think they can refute, on chronological grounds, his supposed meeting with Croesus, as if it were an invention. But for my part, a story so famous, resting on so many witnesses, and, what is more important, so fitting to Solon's character and worthy of his greatness of mind and wisdom, I do not think I should abandon merely on account of certain so-called chronological canons, which countless scholars, correcting them down to this day, have never managed to bring into agreement with one another.
Now they say that when Solon came to Sardis at Croesus's invitation, he experienced something like what happens to a man from inland coming down to the sea for the first time. That man, seeing river after river, supposes each one to be the sea; and so it was with Solon: making his way through the palace courtyard, he beheld many of the king's men decked out lavishly, and moving about amid a crowd of escorts and spearmen — each one seemed to him to be Croesus, until he was brought before the man himself, who had arrayed about his person every kind of splendor in gems, in dyed robes, in wrought gold that seemed striking or extravagant or enviable, so that he might be seen as the most solemn and gorgeous of spectacles.
But when Solon, standing directly before him, showed no reaction and said nothing of what Croesus expected at the sight, but was plainly, to men of good sense, contemptuous of such tastelessness and pettiness, Croesus ordered his treasure-chambers opened for him, and had him led about and shown the rest of his furnishings and extravagance, though Solon wanted none of it — for Solon by himself sufficed to make his character understood. When Solon had gone round and seen everything, Croesus asked him whether he knew of any man more blessed than himself.
Solon declared that he knew Tellus, a fellow citizen of his, and explained that Tellus, having been a good man, and having left behind well-regarded children, and a life lacking none of life's necessities, had died gloriously, having fought bravely for his country. By now Croesus thought him a strange and boorish fellow, since he did not measure happiness by great silver and gold, but preferred the life and death of a common, private man to so great a power and kingship.
Even so, he asked him again whether, after Tellus, he knew of any other man more fortunate. And again Solon said that he knew Cleobis and Biton, men remarkably devoted to their sister and their mother, who, when the oxen were slow in coming, yoked themselves to their mother's cart and drew her to the temple of Hera, while she was blessed and rejoiced in the sight of the citizens; then, after sacrificing and drinking, they did not rise again the next day, but were found dead, having met a painless and griefless death amid so great a glory,
"But us," said Croesus, now growing angry, "do you not count among any number of the fortunate?" And Solon, wishing neither to flatter him nor to provoke him further, said, "To the Greeks, O king of the Lydians, the god has given a moderate share in other things, and a certain wisdom that is cautious and of the common sort, not royal or splendid; this, by virtue of its moderation, watching life as it is always subject to fortunes of every kind, does not allow us to be puffed up over present goods, nor to marvel at a man's good fortune while that fortune still has time to turn.
"For to each man the future comes on in varied and unforeseen ways; but the one to whom heaven has granted good fortune all the way to the end, this man we consider blessed. To call a man blessed while he still lives and is at risk in life is like proclaiming and crowning a contestant while the contest is still underway — it is uncertain and has no authority." Having said this, Solon took his leave, having pained Croesus, but not having taught him anything.
Now the storyteller Aesop, who happened to have been summoned to Sardis by Croesus and was held in honor there, was troubled that Solon met with no kindness; and urging him, he said, "Solon, one ought to converse with kings as little as possible, or as pleasantly as possible." And Solon replied, "No, by Zeus, but as little as possible, or as well as possible."
So it was that Croesus at that time held Solon in contempt. But when he had joined battle with Cyrus and been defeated, and had lost his city, and, having been taken alive, was about to be burned, and when the pyre had been built he was led up onto it bound, with all the Persians looking on and Cyrus himself present, as far as he could reach and was able with his voice, he cried out three times, "O Solon." Cyrus, astonished, sent men to ask who among men or gods this Solon was, whom he alone called upon in his hopeless circumstances.
And Croesus, hiding nothing, said, "This was one of the wise men among the Greeks, whom I sent for, not wishing to hear or learn anything I lacked, but so that he might become a spectator and witness of that happiness of mine, the loss of which turns out to be a greater evil than the gaining of it was a good. For while it was present it was only talk and reputation, but its reversal has ended, in fact, in terrible sufferings and irreparable disasters.
"And that man, judging present things from the past, told me to look to the end of life, and not to grow bold and insolent on the strength of unstable expectations." When this was reported to Cyrus, being a wiser man than Croesus and seeing Solon's point borne out by what now lay plainly before him, he freed Croesus outright and went on honoring him for the rest of his life. And Solon gained the reputation, by a single utterance, of having both saved one king and instructed another.
Meanwhile, back home, the citizens had once more split into rival factions during Solon's time away. Lycurgus stood at the head of the men of the Plain, Megacles son of Alcmaeon at the head of the men of the Coast, and Pisistratus at the head of the men of the Hills, among whom was the laboring crowd, who were especially resentful of the rich. As a result, though the city still made use of the laws, everyone already expected and longed for a different arrangement of affairs, not hoping for equality, but for gaining more in the change and utterly prevailing over their rivals.
Such being the state of affairs, Solon, on returning to Athens, was held in reverence and honor by all, but was no longer able or willing, given his advanced age, to speak and act publicly the way he once had. Instead, meeting privately with the leading men of the factions, he tried to reconcile and bring them together, with Pisistratus seeming to pay him the most attention. For Pisistratus had a certain persuasive and winning manner in conversation, was helpful to the poor, and was fair and moderate in his enmities.
And even the qualities he did not naturally possess, he imitated, and was trusted for them even more than those who actually had them — as a cautious and orderly man, and one especially devoted to equality, and displeased if anyone should disturb the present order or reach for revolution. By these means he deceived the majority. But Solon soon saw through him, being the very first to grasp what he was up to; yet he did not hate him, but tried to soften and admonish him, saying to him and to others that if someone could remove the love of being first from his soul and cure his desire for tyranny, there would be no man more naturally suited to virtue, nor a better citizen.
When Thespis and his followers were just beginning to set tragedy in motion, and the novelty of the thing was drawing the crowds, though it had not yet been brought into competitive contest, Solon, who was by nature fond of listening and learning, and even more so in old age, as he passed his time in leisure and amusement and, by Zeus, in drinking and music, went to watch Thespis himself acting, as was the custom of the old poets.
After the performance, he addressed him and asked whether he was not ashamed to tell such great lies in front of so many people. When Thespis replied that there was nothing terrible in saying and doing such things in play, Solon struck the ground hard with his staff and said, "Soon enough, though, if we praise and honor this kind of play, we shall find it in our contracts."
When Pisistratus, having wounded himself, came into the marketplace riding in a chariot, and provoked the people, claiming that he had been plotted against by his enemies on account of his political stance, and had many people indignant and shouting in his support, Solon came up close and, standing beside him, said, "This is not a fine performance, son of Hippocrates, of Homer's Odysseus; for you are doing to deceive your fellow citizens what that man did to deceive his enemies, by disfiguring himself."
After this the majority of the people were ready to fight on Pisistratus's behalf, and the people assembled in the assembly. When Ariston proposed that fifty club-bearers be granted to Pisistratus as a bodyguard, Solon rose in opposition and said many things similar to what he had written in his poems: "Look to the tongue and to the words of a smooth-talking man. Each one of you walks in the footsteps of a fox, but all of you together have an empty mind."
Seeing the poor eager to gratify Pisistratus and clamoring for it, and the rich fleeing and shrinking back in cowardice, he left, remarking that in wisdom he surpassed one group and in courage the other: the first simply failed to grasp what was happening, while the second grasped it but were too fearful to resist the tyranny. Having ratified the decree, the people no longer quibbled at all over the number of club-bearers, but openly allowed Pisistratus to maintain and gather as many as he wished, until he seized the Acropolis.
When this had happened and the city was thrown into confusion, Megacles at once fled along with the rest of the Alcmaeonids. Solon, though by now a very old man and without supporters, nevertheless came forward into the marketplace and spoke to the citizens, partly reproaching their lack of resolve and their softness, and partly urging and calling on them still not to give up their freedom;
and it was then that he spoke the memorable words, that stopping the tyranny before it ever arose would once have cost them far less effort, yet now, with it already formed and grown, uprooting and destroying it was the nobler, weightier task. But since no one heeded him out of fear, he went off to his own house, and taking up his weapons and setting them out before his doors in the narrow street, he said, "For my part, I have given my country and its laws all the help I could."
And for the rest he kept quiet, and though his friends urged him to flee, he paid no heed, but composed poems in which he reproached the Athenians: "If you have suffered grievous things through your own wickedness, do not lay the blame for this upon the gods. For you yourselves built up these men by giving them power, and because of this you have fallen into wretched slavery."
At this, many cautioned him that the tyrant would have him killed, and asked what gave him the confidence to act so recklessly. "On my old age," he said. Yet Pisistratus, once he had gained control of affairs, so thoroughly courted Solon, honoring him and treating him kindly and sending for him, that Solon even became his adviser and approved of many of his actions. Indeed, Pisistratus preserved most of Solon's laws, being the first to abide by them himself and compelling his friends to do the same.
Indeed, when he was summoned on a charge of murder before the Areopagus, though he was already tyrant, he came in orderly fashion to defend himself, but his accuser did not show up. He himself wrote other laws, among them the one requiring that men maimed in war be maintained at public expense. Heraclides claims that Solon had already legislated this earlier on behalf of Thersippus, a man disabled in war, and that Pisistratus was merely following his precedent. But as Theophrastus has recorded, the law concerning idleness was established not by Solon but by Pisistratus, by which he made the countryside more productive and the city more peaceful.
Solon, having taken up a great undertaking concerning an account, whether history or myth, about Atlantis, which he had learned from the priests at Sais as pertaining to the Athenians, gave it up — not, as Plato claims, for want of free time, but rather owing to his advanced years, daunted by how vast the undertaking was. That he in fact had leisure enough to spare is shown by lines of his such as, "Even in old age I keep on learning many things," and, "Now dear to me are the works of the Cyprus-born goddess and of Dionysus and of the Muses, which bring men joys."
But as Plato, eager to work up and adorn the ground of a fair country left empty, yet somehow belonging to him by kinship, set about the subject of Atlantis, he furnished its opening with great gateways and enclosures and courtyards such as no other account, myth, or poem ever had,
but having begun late, he left his work unfinished at his death, and the more delight what he wrote affords, the more grief it causes for what was left undone. For just as the city of the Athenians has its unfinished Olympieion, so the wisdom of Plato, among many fine works, has this one unfinished work, the Atlantic tale.
Solon lived on after Pisistratus began his tyranny — according to Heraclides of Pontus, for a considerable time, but according to Phanias of Eresus, for less than two years. For Pisistratus began his tyranny in the archonship of Comias, and according to Phanias, Solon's death fell in the year Hegestratus held the archonship, the successor to Comias.
As for the story that his ashes, after his cremation, were scattered around the island of Salamis, this is altogether implausible and fabulous because of its strangeness, yet it has been recorded both by other notable men and by the philosopher Aristotle.