Solon of Athens | The Seven Sages of Greece

Solon. Solon, son of Exestides, was a native of Salamis. It was he who first introduced the shaking off of burdens at Athens. This was a ransoming of persons and property. For men used to borrow money by pledging their bodies as security, and many, owing to their poverty, were serfs. He was the first to forgive a debt of seven talents owed to his father, and he encouraged others to do likewise. This law was called a shaking off of burdens for obvious reasons. He then framed the rest of his laws, which would take too long to enumerate, and had them inscribed on revolving wooden tablets. But his greatest accomplishment must be recounted. Athens and Bergara both laid claim to Salamis, his birthplace, and when the Athenians had suffered many defeats, they voted that anyone who again advised them to fight over Salamis, should be condemned to die. Solon, feigning madness and donning a garland, rushed into the Agora. There he had his elegiac poem about Salamis read to the Athenians by a herald, and succeeded in rousing them. They again went to war with the Megarians, and won a victory thanks to Solon. The verses that follow, did most to fan the Athenians' fury. Would that exchanging countries I were from Pholigandros or Cetinos, rather than from Athens. For this rumour will soon reach men's ears. This fellow's from Attica. He's one of those who betrayed Salamis. And, let us to Salamis to fight for a fair isle and shake off wretched shame. He also persuaded them to acquire the Thracian Chersonese. And lest he be thought to have acquired Salamis, merely by force, and not by right. He dug up certain graves, and showed that the corpses were turned eastward, in conformity with burial customs at Athens. The platoons themselves faced eastward, and that their inscriptions bore the names of the deans of the deceased. A practice peculiar to the Athenians. And some say that in Homer's catalogue, after the line, Ajax brought twelve ships from Salamis, Solon inserted the line, and posted them next to the Athenian phalanxes. From then on the people paid heed to him, and would gladly have had him rule them as a tyrant, but he declined. And perceiving beforehand the ambitions of Pisistratus, his kinsman, according to Sisycrates, he did all he could to hinder him. Dashing into the assembly with spear and shield, he warned the people of Pisistratus' imposture, and what's more, he declared in these words, that he was ready to help them. Men of Athens, I am wiser than some of you, and braver than others. Wiser than those who fail to discern Pisistratus' deception, and braver than those who, though aware of it, keep silent out of fear. The council which was composed of Pisistratus' partisans, declared that he was mad, to which he replied. A little time will show the people my madness. It will show it indeed, when the truth comes out. These elegiac verses prove that he foretold the tyranny of Pisistratus. From a cloud issues the force of snow and hail, and thunder follows upon brilliant lightning, and by mighty men a city is destroyed, and a people plunge unknowingly into enslavement by a tyrant. When Pisistratus had seized power, Solon, unable to persuade the people, placed his weapons in front of the general's quarters. Saying, My country, I have aided you by word and deed. He sailed away to Egypt and to Cyprus, and reached the port of Croesus. And when asked by him, Whom do you consider happy? Solon replied. Tell us, of Athens, and Cleobus, and Beton. His remarks on that occasion have been repeated again and again. Some say that Croesus, after arraying himself in all his finery and seating himself on his throne, asked Solon, whether he had ever seen a more beautiful sight. Yes, Solon replied. Roosters and pheasants and peacocks, since they have been adorned with a natural brilliancy, and are ten thousand times more beautiful. After leaving that place, he lived in Cilicia, and founded a city that he named Soli, after himself. In it he settled some few Athenians, who in the course of time were no longer fluent in their native dialect, and were said to solicise. The inhabitants of that town call themselves Solenses. Those from Soli, in Cyprus, Solii. When he learned that Pisistratus was already reigning as tyrant, he wrote as follows to the Athenians. If you have suffered badly through your own baseness, do not attribute your troubles to the gods, as if they were fated. For you yourselves exalted these men and gave them pledges, and that is why you endure evil servitude. Each of you follows in the footsteps of a fox, yet you are all devoid of sense. For you look to the wily words of a man, and pay no regard to the consequences. So spoke Solon. After he had gone into exile, Pisistratus wrote to him as follows. Pisistratus to Solon. I was not the only man to aim at a tyranny in Greece, nor, as a descendant of Codrus, am I unsuited for the office. For I nearly regained the privileges the Athenians swore to confer on Codrus and his family, though they later revoked them. In everything else I do no wrong in the sight of gods or men, and I permit the Athenians to manage public affairs according to the laws you framed for them. And they fare better than they would under a democracy, for I allow no one to run riot. And though I am tyrant, I accord myself no undue rank or honour. But simply the privilege is said to have belonged to the kings in former times. Each Athenian pays one-tenth of his income, not to me, but to a fund for defraying the costs of public sacrifices, or any other charges the city incurs, or in the event we are faced with a war. I do not blame you for revealing my intention. For you did so out of goodwill to the city, rather than through enmity to me. And in ignorance too of the kind of rule I was going to establish. For had you known, you might perhaps have tolerated it, and not gone into exile. Return home then, trusting my word, though it is not given under oath, that Solon will suffer no harm from Pisistratus. Be aware that no other enemy of mine has suffered any harm. If you think fit to be one of my friends, you will be among the foremost. For I see in you nothing deceitful or untrustworthy. And if you wish to live in Athens on other terms, you will have my permission. But do not, on my account, deprive yourself of your country." So wrote Pisistratus. Solon says that seventy years is the limit of man's life. He is thought to have framed excellent laws. If a man does not support his parents, let him be disenfranchised, and likewise the man who consumes his patrimony. Let the idle man be held accountable to anyone who wishes to indict him. Nicias however in his speech against Nicidas, says that Draco wrote this law. To Solon he attributes the law that bars courtesans from the tribune. Solon also curtailed the honours of athletes who competed in the Games, setting the allowance of an Olympic victor, at 500 drachmas. of an Isthmian victor, at 100, and proportionally for the others. For he thought it vulgar to increase the rewards of those men. Such increases should instead be awarded only to those who had died in battle, whose sons moreover, should be maintained and educated at public expense. As a result, many citizens drove to prove themselves valiant in battle, like Polyxelos, Sinigaros, Callimachus, and all who fought at Marathon, or again Nicomodius and Aristoieton. Notiades and thousands more. Athletes on the other hand, incur great expense while training, and as victors cause trouble. They are crowned for being victorious over their country rather than over their adversaries, and when they have grown old, according to the passage of Euripides, they go about like cloaks that have grown threadbare. Perceiving this, Solon received them without undue favour. Excellent also is the following law. The guardian of orphans may not marry their mother, and the man who comes into the estate on the death of the orphans, may not be their guardian. And this one as well. An engraver of seals is not permitted to retain the imprint of a seal ring he has fashioned. And, if someone knocks out the eye of a man who only has one, he should have both his eyes knocked out. That which you did not deposit, do not remove, on pain of death. A magistrate found intoxicated, should be punished with death. He decreed that at public readings of Homer, the works should be recited in their proper order, so that wherever the first reader left off, there the second should begin. Solon therefore did more than his estratus to shed light on Homer. As Dukidas says in the fifth book of his Negarian history, this rule mainly concerned the passage that begins, those who dwelled in Athens. Solon was the first to name the thirtieth day of the month the old and new day. He was the first to institute a meeting of the nine archons so that they might confer among themselves, as Apollodorus says in the second book of his work, on legislators. When civil strife broke out, he sided not with those in the city, or with those of the plain, or with those of the coast. He used to say that speech is a reflection of action, and that the man whose power is strongest is king, and that laws are like spider webs, for if something light and weak falls on them, they bear up against it, but under the weight of something larger, they break up, and are gone. He used to say that silence is the seal of speech, the opportune moment the seal of silence. He used to say that those who had influence with tyrants were like the pebbles used for calculations. For just as each pebble at times represents a larger number, at other times a smaller. So the tyrant treats each of his advisers at times as great and illustrious, at other times as worthless. When asked why he had not framed a law against Parasite, he said, in the hope that it will not happen. Asked how the number of crimes men commit could be kept to a minimum, he said, if the uninjured were as incensed by wrongdoing as the injured. He also said, wealth breeds satiety. Satiety, insolence. He required the Athenians to adopt a lunar calendar. He prohibited thespies from producing tragedies, arguing that falsehood was pernicious. Thus when Peisistratus wounded himself, Solon said that this was what came of tragic drama. He gave men the following advice, as Apollodorus says in his work on the philosophical schools. Trust good character more than an oath. Do not lie. Pursue worthy goals. Be in no hurry to make friends, but once they are made, do not discard them. Command only when you have learned to be ruled. Give the best advice, not the most pleasant. Make reason your guide. Have no dealings with base men. Honor the gods. Respect your parents. They say that when Minermus had written, May I, free of disease and sorrows, meet death in my sixtieth year. Solon reproached him in the following verses. May you take my advice and erase those verses, and bear me no grudge that I propose something better. Revise them, digiaster these, and chant as follows. May I meet death in my eightieth year. Among the songs attributed to him is the following. Watch every man and observe whether, harboring in his heart a hidden spear, he greets you with beaming countenance, and whether his speech, double-dealing, issues from a dark spirit. He clearly wrote his laws, public speeches and words of advice addressed to himself, elegiac verses numbering five thousand, including his poem about Salamis and the Athenian constitution, poems in iambic meter and epodes. His statue bears the following inscription. Salamis, which brought the wicked insolence of the Medes to an end, begets Solon, the venerable legislator who stands before you. He flourished in the 46th Olympiad, in the third year of which he served as archon in Athens, as Sosikrates says. It was then that he framed his laws. He died in Cyprus at the age of eighty, after instructing his kinsmen to convey his bones to Salamis, and when they had been reduced to ashes, scatter them over the land. Hence Crutinos in his play, Churons, makes him say. I inhabit an island, as men report, for I was scattered throughout the city of Aegeas. There is also my own epigram in the above-mentioned Pummetros, where I discourse about all the illustrious dead in all meters and rhythms, in the form of epigrams and lyrics. It runs as follows. Distant Cyprian fire consumed the body of Solon. Salamis harbors his bones, their dust has nourished grain. Revolving wooden tablets brought his soul to the heavens, for the laws he framed, sit lightly on his fellow-citizens. He is said to have been the author of Nothing in Excess. And Dioscurides in his memoirs says that when Solon wept for his dead son, of whom I have learned nothing, and someone said to him, but it will do no good, he replied, that's why I weep, because it does no good. The following letters are attributed to him. Solon to Periander. You tell me that many are plotting against you. If you intend to get rid of them all, you should lose no time. Someone could scheme, even among those you might not suspect. One man because he fears for his own safety, another because he has observed that you take pride in everything. And he might earn the city's gratitude if he found a way for you not to suspect him. Thus your best course would be to resign, and so be rid of the blame. But if you must at all costs remain tyrant, give thought to how you may acquire a mercenary force superior to the forces of the city. Then you will have no one to fear, and need not banish anyone. Solon to Epimenides. It turns out that my laws were not destined to confer much benefit on the Athenians, any more than you did by purifying the city. For religion and legislators are unable, by themselves, to benefit cities. It can only be done by those who lead the multitude, in whatever direction their judgment dictates. Thus religion and laws, when things are going well, are beneficial. Under adverse conditions they are of no help. Nor are my laws nor all my statutes any better. But those who sat back did the commonwealth harm. Namely those who did not prevent Pisistratus from aiming at a tyranny. Nor was I, when I warned them, considered trustworthy. He who flattered the Athenians was trusted more than I who told them the truth. For my part, after placing my weapons in front of the general's quarters, I declared that I was wiser than those who did not perceive that Pisistratus was aiming at a tyranny, and braver than those who hesitated to resist him. They, however, denounced the madness of Solon, and finally I bore witness, saying, My country, I, Solon, am ready to defend you by word and deed. But to some of my countrymen, I appear mad. I will therefore abandon public life as the only enemy of Pisistratus. Let others, if they like, attend him as a bodyguard. For understand, my friend, that the man was utterly intent on becoming tyrant. He began by being a demigod. Later, after wounding himself, he appeared before the court of the Heliae, and cried out that his wounds had been inflicted by his enemies, and he asked the people to provide him with a guard of four hundred young men. The people, unwilling to listen to me, gave him the men. These were his club bearers, and after that, he dissolved the popular assembly. It was in vain that I strove to free the poor from serfdom, since now they are in servitude to one master, Pisistratus. Solon to Pisistratus, I believe that I will suffer no harm at your hands. For before you became tyrant, I was your friend, and now I have no quarrel with you, other than that of any other Athenian who dislikes tyranny. Whether it is better for them to be ruled by one man or to live under a democracy, let each man decide for himself, relying on his own judgment. And I declare that of all tyrants, you are the best. But I see that it is not honorable for me to return to Athens, lest someone reproach me on the grounds that, though I granted the Athenians equality of civic rights, and decided not to be a tyrant myself, when I had the opportunity, I now return and approve of what you are doing. Solon to Croesus, I admire you for your kindness to me. And, by Athena, if I did not wish beyond anything to live in a democracy, I would rather reside in your palace than at Athens, where Pisistratus is ruling by force. But I prefer to live where all have fair and equal rights. I will pay you a visit, however, as I am eager to become your guest friend.