Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Is there, then, something peculiar to this comparison, and not altogether shared with any other of those I have written, namely that the one man became an imitator of the other, and the other a witness to him? For consider the pronouncement Solon made to Croesus about happiness, how it fits Poplicola better than it fits Tellus.
For Tellus, whom he said had been most blessed on account of his good fortune, his virtue, and his fine children, neither he himself was ever mentioned in poetry as a good man, nor did his children, nor did any office of his, rise to fame; whereas Poplicola, while he lived, held the first place in power and reputation among the Romans on account of his virtue, and after his death, down to our own day, families of the greatest distinction and lineage—Poplicolae, Messalae, and Valerii—trace back the glory of their nobility through six hundred years.
And Tellus was killed by the enemy, standing his ground and fighting like a good man; but Poplicola, having slain his enemies—which is a happier fate than falling—and having lived to see his fatherland victorious through his own action as ruler and general, and having been honored and celebrated in triumph, met with that end which Solon envied and pronounced blessed.
Further, consider what he adds in his reply to Mimnermus concerning the span of life: 'let not death come to me unwept, but may I, in dying, cause my friends grief and lamentation'—for Poplicola, in dying, brought tears and longing and dejection over himself not only upon friends and kinsmen but upon the whole city, upon many tens of thousands; for the women of Rome mourned him as though they had each lost a son, a brother, or a common father.
'I long to have wealth,' says Solon, 'but I am unwilling to possess it unjustly,' as though justice were coming after it; but for Poplicola it was given not only not to grow rich wickedly, but also to spend nobly, doing good to those in need, so that if Solon was wisest of all men, Poplicola was happiest of all. For those goods which Solon prayed for as the greatest and finest, these it was given to Poplicola both to acquire and to keep, using them to the very end.
Thus Solon has adorned Poplicola; but Poplicola, in turn, set Solon before himself as the finest of models in statesmanship for a man adorning a democracy. For he took away the harshness of the office and made it gracious and untroublesome to all, and he made use of many of Solon's laws; indeed he made the many masters of the establishment of magistrates, and he granted to defendants the right to appeal to the people, just as Solon gave them the right to appeal to the jurors. And he did not create another council, as Solon did, but increased the existing one, nearly doubling it in number.
The institution of the treasurers over the funds also came from there, so that the ruler, if he is upright, might not have his attention drawn away from greater matters, nor, if he is base, might have all the more occasion for wrongdoing, by being master both of the affairs and of the money. But the hatred of tyranny is fiercer in Poplicola. For if anyone should attempt to make himself tyrant, the one imposes the penalty of law upon him once he is caught, while the other grants that he may be killed even before trial.
And though Solon rightly and justly took pride in the fact that, when circumstances offered him the chance to become tyrant and the citizens were not unwilling to receive him as such, he refused, it is no less admirable in Poplicola that, having received power that was tyrannical, he made it more democratic, and did not even use what he was entitled to use. And this too Solon seems to have perceived earlier, that a people would best follow along with its leaders when neither too much slackened nor oppressed.
Peculiar to Solon is the cancellation of debts, by which above all he secured liberty for the citizens. For there is no benefit in laws providing equality if debts take that equality away from the poor; rather, in the very places where men seem most to enjoy their liberty, there they are most enslaved to the rich, being ordered about and made to serve in judging, ruling, and speaking.
And greater still than this: whereas every cancellation of debts is followed by civil strife, in this one case alone, Solon, using it like a drastic but powerful medicine applied at the right moment, both dissolved the strife that existed and overcame, by his own virtue and reputation, the disrepute and slander of the measure itself. In the beginning of the whole course of his statesmanship Solon is the more brilliant—for he led and did not follow, and acting alone, not with others, accomplished most and the greatest of the public measures—but in the end the other man was fortunate and enviable.
For Solon himself lived to see his own constitution overthrown, whereas Poplicola's arrangement kept the city stable and well-governed all the way up until the civil wars; for the one, as soon as he had laid down his laws in wood and writing, left them undefended and departed from Athens, while the other, remaining and ruling and taking part in politics, established and set the constitution on a secure footing.
Further, it was not given to the one even to prevent the coming of Peisistratus, though he foresaw it—rather he was defeated as the tyranny was being formed—while the other cast out and dissolved a kingship that had already been strong for many years and held sway, displaying an equal virtue and a like resolve, but employing fortune and effective power in the service of his virtue.
As for military matters, Daimachus of Plataea has not testified even to Solon's dealings against the Megarians, as we ourselves have gone through; but Poplicola, both fighting himself and commanding as general, brought the greatest struggles to a successful end. And further, even in his political actions, the one took up a kind of playful pretense of madness, on behalf of
Salamis, and came forward in his passion for it; but the other, from the very start, risked the greatest of dangers openly: he rose up against the Tarquins and detected their treachery, and being most responsible for the punishment of the wicked men and their failure to escape, he not only drove the bodies of the tyrants from the city but cut off their hopes as well. And having thus met, vigorously and unflinchingly, the struggle and passion and opposition that circumstances presented, he made even better use of dealings that called for peaceable intercourse and yielding persuasion, winning over Porsenna, an unconquerable and formidable man, with tact, and turning him into a friend.
And yet someone might say here that Solon recovered Salamis for the Athenians after they had given it up, while Poplicola withdrew from land the Romans already possessed. But one must judge actions in view of the circumstances underlying them. For the statesman, being versatile, will handle each situation in the manner by which it can best be managed, and often preserves the whole by sacrificing a portion of it, gaining the greater prize through conceding the lesser one,
just as that man did then, when, by withdrawing from another's territory, he securely saved the whole of his own; and by things that mattered greatly for preserving the city, he gained in addition the very camp of the besiegers, having entrusted the enemy to be judge, and having prevailed in the judgment, he received as much as it was gratifying to win even by giving concessions: for he both put an end to the war and left them the equipment of war, on account of the trust in virtue and nobility of character which the ruler had instilled in him on behalf of all.