The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
aware of it, but out of fear hold their peace.” But the council, being in
the interest of Pisistratus, said that he was mad, on which he spoke as
follows:—
A short time will to all my madness prove,
When stern reality presents itself.
And these elegiac verses were written by him about the tyranny of
Pisistratus, which he foretold,
Fierce snow and hail are from the clouds borne down,
And thunder after brilliant lightning roars;
And by its own great men a city falls,
The ignorant mob becoming slaves to kings.
IV. And when Pisistratus had obtained the supreme power, he, as he would
not influence him, laid down his arms before the chief council-house,
and said, “O my country, I have stood by you in word and deed.” And then
he sailed away to Egypt, and Cyprus, and came to Crœsus. And while at
his court being asked by him, “Who appears to you to be happy?”[13] He
replied, “Tellus the Athenian, and Cleobis and Biton,” and enumerated
other commonly spoken of instances. But some people say, that once Crœsus
adorned himself in every possible manner, and took his seat upon his
throne, and then asked Solon whether he had ever seen a more beautiful
sight. But he said, “Yes, I have seen cocks and pheasants, and peacocks;
for they are adorned with natural colours, and such as are ten thousand
times more beautiful.” Afterwards leaving Sardis he went to Cilicia, and
there he founded a city which he called Soli after his own name; and he
placed in it a few Athenians as colonists, who in time departed from the
strict use of their native language, and were said to speak _Solecisms_;
and the inhabitants of that city are called Solensians; but those of Soli
in Cyprus are called Solians.
V. And when he learnt that Pisistratus continued to rule in Athens as a
tyrant, he wrote these verses on the Athenians:—
If through your vices you afflicted are,
Lay not the blame of your distress on God;
You made your rulers mighty, gave them guards,
So now you groan ’neath slavery’s heavy rod—
Each one of you now treads in foxes’ steps,
Bearing a weak, inconstant, faithless mind,
Trusting the tongue and slippery speech of man;
Though in his acts alone you truth can find.
This, then, he said to them.
VI. But Pisistratus, when he was leaving Athens, wrote him a letter in
the following terms:—
PISISTRATUS TO SOLON.
I am not the only one of the Greeks who has seized the sovereignty of
his country, nor am I one who had no right whatever to do so, since I
am of the race of Codrus; for I have only recovered what the Athenians
swore that they would give to Codrus and all his family, and what they
afterwards deprived them of. And in all other respects I sin neither
against men nor against gods, but I allow the Athenians to live under the
laws which you established amongst them, and they are now living in a
better manner than they would if they were under a democracy; for I allow
no one to behave with violence: and I, though I am the tyrant, derive no
other advantage beyond my superiority in rank and honour, being content
with the fixed honours which belonged to the former kings. And every one
of the Athenians brings the tithe of his possessions, not to me, but to
the proper place in order that it may be devoted to the public sacrifices
of the city; and for any other public purposes, or for any emergencies of
war which may arise.
But I do not blame you for laying open my plans, for I know that you
did so out of regard for the city rather than out of dislike to me; and
also because you did not know what sort of government I was about to
establish; since, if you had been acquainted with it, you would have been
content to live under it and would not have fled. Now, therefore, return
home again; believing me even without my swearing to you that Solon shall
never receive any harm at the hands of Pisistratus; know also that none
of my enemies have suffered any evil from me; and if you will consent to
be one of my friends, you shall be among the first; for I know that there
is no treachery or faithlessness in you. Or if you wish to live at Athens
in any other manner, you shall be allowed to do so; only do not deprive
yourself of your country because of my actions.
Thus wrote Pisistratus.
VII. Solon also said, that the limit of human life was seventy years,
and he appears to have been a most excellent lawgiver, for he enjoined,
“that if any one did not support his parents he should be accounted
infamous; and that the man who squandered his patrimony should be equally
so, and the inactive man was liable to prosecution by any one who choose
to impeach him.” But Lysias, in his speech against Nicias, says that
Draco first proposed this law, but that it was Solon who enacted it. He
also prohibited all who lived in debauchery from ascending the tribunal;
and he diminished the honours paid to Athletes who were victorious in
the games, fixing the prize for a victor at Olympia at five hundred
drachmæ,[14] and for one who conquered at the Isthmian games at one
hundred; and in the same proportion did he fix the prizes for the other
games, for he said, that it was absurd to give such great honours to
those men as ought to be reserved for those only who died in the wars;
and their sons he ordered to be educated and bred up at the public
expense. And owing to this encouragement, the Athenians behave themselves
nobly and valiantly in war; as for instance, Polyzelus, and Cynægirus,
and Callimachus, and all the soldiers who fought at Marathon, and
Harmodius, and Aristogiton, and Miltiades, and numberless other heroes.
But as for the Athletes, their training is very expensive, and their
victories injurious, and they are crowned rather as conquerors of their
country than of their antagonists, and when they become old, as Euripides
says:—
They’re like old cloaks worn to the very woof.
IX. So Solon, appreciating these facts, treated them with moderation.
This also was an admirable regulation of his, that a guardian of orphans
should not live with their mother, and that no one should be appointed a
guardian, to whom the orphans’ property would come if they died. Another
excellent law was, that a seal engraver might not keep an impression of
any ring which had been sold by him, and that if a person struck out the
eye of a man who had but one, he should lose both his own, and that no
one should claim what he had not deposited, otherwise death should be his
punishment. If an archon was detected being drunk, that too was a capital
crime. And he compiled the poems of Homer, so that they might be recited
by different bards, taking the cue from one another, so that where one
had left off the next one might take him up, so that it was Solon rather
than Pisistratus who brought Homer to light, as Dieuchidas says, in the
fifth book of his History of Megara, and the most celebrated of his
verses were:—
Full fifty more from Athens stem the main.
And the rest of that passage—“And Solon was the first person who called
the thirtieth day of the month ἔνη καὶ νέα.”[15] He was the first person
also who assembled the nine archons together to deliver their opinions,
as Apollodorus tells us in the second book of his Treatise on Lawgivers.
And once, when there was a sedition in the city, he took part neither
with the citizens, nor with the inhabitants of the plain, nor with the
men of the sea-coast.
X. He used to say, too, that speech was the image of actions, and that
the king was the mightiest man as to his power; but that laws were like
cobwebs—for that if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them,
they held it fast; but if a thing of any size fell into them, it broke
the meshes and escaped. He used also to say that discourse ought to be
sealed by silence, and silence by opportunity. It was also a saying of
his, that those who had influence with tyrants, were like the pebbles
which are used in making calculations; for that every one of those
pebbles were sometimes worth more, and sometimes less, and so that the
tyrants sometimes made each of these men of consequence, and sometimes
neglected them. Being asked why he had made no law concerning parricides,
he made answer, that he did not expect that any such person would exist.
When he was asked how men could be most effectually deterred from
committing injustice, he said, “If those who are not injured feel as
much indignation as those who are.” Another apophthegm of his was, that
satiety was generated by wealth, and insolence by satiety.
XI. He it was who taught the Athenians to regulate their days by the
course of the moon; and he also forbade Thespis to perform and represent
his tragedies, on the ground of falsehood being unprofitable; and when
Pisistratus wounded himself, he said it all came of Thespis’s tragedies.
XII. He gave the following advice, as is recorded by Apollodorus in
his Treatise on the Sects of Philosophers:—“Consider your honour, as
a gentleman, of more weight than an oath.—Never speak falsely.—Pay
attention to matters of importance.—Be not hasty in making friends; and
do not cast off those whom you have made.—Rule, after you have first
learnt to submit to rule.—Advise not what is most agreeable, but what is
best.—Make reason your guide.—Do not associate with the wicked.—Honour
the gods; respect your parents.”
XIII. They say also that when Mimnermus had written:—
Happy’s the man who ’scapes disease and care,
And dies contented in his sixtieth year
Solon rebuked him, and said:—
Be guided now by me, erase this verse,
Nor envy me if I’m more wise than you.
If you write thus, your wish would not be worse,
May I be eighty ere death lays me low.
The following are some lines out of his poems:—
Watch well each separate citizen,
Lest having in his heart of hearts
A secret spear, one still may come
Saluting you with cheerful face,
And utter with a double tongue
The feigned good wishes of his wary mind.
As for his having made laws, that is notorious; he also composed speeches
to the people, and a book of suggestions to himself, and some elegiac
poems, and five thousand verses about Salamis and the constitution of the
Athenians; and some iambics and epodes.
XV. And on his statue is the following inscription—
Salamis that checked the Persian insolence,
Brought forth this holy lawgiver, wise Solon.
He flourished about the forty-sixth Olympiad, in the third year of which
he was archon at Athens, as Sosicrates records; and it was in this year
that he enacted his laws; and he died in Cyprus, after he had lived
eighty years, having given charge to his relations to carry his bones to
Salamis, and there to burn them to ashes, and to scatter the ashes on the
ground. In reference to which Cratinus in his Chiron represents him as
speaking thus:—
And as men say, I still this isle inhabit,
Sown o’er the whole of Ajax’ famous city.
There is also an epigram in the before mentioned collection of poems, in
various metres, in which I have made a collection of notices of all the
illustrious men that have ever died, in every kind of metre and rhythm,
in epigrams and odes. And it runs thus:—
The Cyprian flame devour’d great Solon’s corpse
Far in a foreign land; but Salamis
Retains his bones, whose dust is turned to corn.
The tablets of his laws do bear aloft
His mind to heaven. Such a burden light
Are these immortal rules to th’ happy wood.
XVI. He also, as some say, was the author of the apophthegm—“Seek
excess in nothing.” And Dioscorides, in his Commentaries, says, that,
when he was lamenting his son, who was dead (with whose name I am not