Sologne

“ The Cher itself becomes navigable when it receives the Arnon and Yèvre, and the communications of the department are greatly facilitated by the Canal du Berry, which traverses it from east to west, the lateral canal of the Loire, which follows the left bank of that river, and the canal of the Sauldre. The climate is temperate, and the rainfall moderate. Except in the Sologne, the soil is generally fertile, but varies considerably in different localities. The most productive region is that on the east, which belongs to the valley of the Loire ”

“ Solon could not rise to that in his polity, being but a citizen of the middle classes; yet he acted fully up to the height of his power, having nothing but the good-will and good opinion of his citizens to rely on; and that he offended the most part, who looked for another result, he declares in the words, Formerly they boasted of me vainly; with averted eyes Now they look askance upon me; friends no more, but enemies. And yet had any other man, he says, received the same power, He would not have forborne, nor let alone, But made the fattest of the milk his own. ”

“ Legend tells us that Solon in his old age, when the tyranny had now come, piled his armour in front of his house door—probably near the Market-place of Pisistratus—and turned from politics to a serene enjoyment of the pleasures of ear and eye and intellect to which he had, indeed, never been a stranger. His life had always been consistent with his own epigram:—
“And still as I age, learning many a lesson.” ”

“ Astonished, he glanced round for an instant, and beheld Zonéla, with a world of love burning in her large lambent eyes, wreathing her round white arms about his humped shoulders. Then the poet knew the great sustaining power of love. Solon reared himself boldly.
"Sneer at my poor form," he cried, in strong vibrating tones, flinging out one long arm and one thin finger at the Wondersmith, as if he would have impaled him like a beetle. "Humiliate me, if you can. I care not. You are a wretch, and I am honest and pure. This girl is not your daughter. ”

“ Thou appearest to me very rich, and king over many people; but the question thou askest I cannot resolve till I hear thou hast ended thy days happily: for he that hath much wealth is not happier than he that gets his bread from day to day, unless Providence continue those good things, and that he dieth well. Solon, after his discourse, not flattering Crœsus, was dismissed, and accounted unwise that he neglected the present good out of regard to the future. ”

“ They were both lonely and afflicted, with this difference, that she was beautiful, and he—was a hunchback."
"Why, Solon," cried Zonéla, "that's the very way you and I met!"
"It was then," continued Solon, with a faint smile, "that life seemed to have its music. A great harmony seemed to the poor cripple to fill the world. The carts that took the flour-barrels from the wharves to the store-houses seemed to emit joyous melodies from their wheels. The hum of the great business-streets sounded like grand symphonies of triumph. ”

“ Then they built up a great pile of dry sticks and timber taken from the ruins of his once beautiful palace. When this was finished, they tied the unhappy king in the midst of it, and one ran for a torch to set it on fire.
“Now we shall have a merry blaze,” said the savage fellows. “What good can all his wealth do him now?”
As poor Crœsus, bruised and bleeding, lay upon the pyre without a friend to soothe his misery, he thought of the words which Solon had spoken to him years before: “No man can say whether you are happy or not until you die,” and he moaned, “O Solon! O Solon! Solon!” ”

“ Thereupon, one of the priests, who was of very great age, said, 'O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children, and there is never an old man who is an Hellene.' Solon, hearing this, said, 'What do you mean?' 'I mean to say,' he replied, 'that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. ”

“ That was a fine saying of Solon's," he mused, "an heroic reply to the news of his son's death, 'I knew that I had begotten a mortal being.' Or was it Anaxagoras, as some say, or Xenophon? But that is the pathos of the past; the truth of matters becomes obscured." ”

“ Early in the second a letter from Solon, read at a random camp-fire, told me of my namesake's coming. For the other years I pleased myself prodigiously by remembering that she must speak my name openly to her first-born. And I lusted for battle, then. I was an early Norseman, and I would escape the prosaic bed-death, since, for those dying thus, Held waited in her chill prison-house below, with hunger her dish, starvation her knife, care her bed, and anguish her curtains. To survive for easy death, long deferred, perhaps, I should have my empty dish and bed of care at once. ”

“ Then the wisest of the Athenians, perceiving Solon was of all men the only one not implicated in the troubles, that he had not joined in the exactions of the rich, and was not involved in the necessities of the poor, pressed him to succor the commonwealth and compose the differences. Solon, reluctantly at first, engaged in state affairs, being afraid of the pride of one party and the greediness of the other; he was chosen archon, however, after Philombrotus, and empowered to be an arbitrator and lawgiver; the rich consenting because he was wealthy, the poor because he was honest. ”

“ It was Soliman’s sole desire to follow the King till he should find him, and then to retire to his own dominions. Should the city, however, venture to resist, he would not retreat till he had reduced it, and then he would spare neither old nor young, not the child in the mother’s womb, and would so utterly destroy the city that men should not know where it stood. ”

“ There is a story that Croesus in magnificent array sat himself down on his throne and asked Solon if he had ever seen anything more beautiful. "Yes," was the reply, "cocks and pheasants and peacocks; for they shine in nature's colours, which are ten thousand times more beautiful." After leaving that place he lived in Cilicia and founded a city which he called Soli after his own name. In it he settled some few Athenians, who in process of time corrupted the purity of Attic and were said to "solecize." ”

“ It was not felt at all that Solon's genius for the discretion of public affairs had availed him in this latest crisis. But the benefit was substantial, none the less, and the columns of the Argus were again buoyant as of yore. It was at this time, I remember, that the Argus first spoke of our town as "a gem at beauty's throat," and, touching the rare enterprise of our citizens, declared that, "If you put a Slocum County man astride a streak of lightning, he'd call for a pair of spurs."
For myself, I frankly mourned Potts. ”

“ I believe that it will be my chiefest fame. From which it is manifest that he was a man of great reputation before he gave his laws. The several mocks that were put upon him for refusing the power, he records in these words,— Solon surely was a dreamer, and a man of simple mind; When the gods would give him fortune, he of his own will declined; When the net was full of fishes, over-heavy thinking it, He declined to haul it up, through want of heart and want of wit. Had but I that chance of riches and of kingship, for one day, I would give my skin for flaying, and my house to die away. ”

“ But the people of Athens regarded this deed as a most wicked murder, and later on, when Solon was made chief ruler and lawgiver of the city, all the persons who took part in this action were sent into exile.
Many of the citizens wished Solon to take the crown. They thought he was a wise and just man, and would act as a wise and just king. Solon, however, had no mind for kingship; he was pleased to do his best to govern Athens, but had no wish for the glory of a crown or the splendor of a palace. ”

“ Solon's laws went further than we have said. He divided the people into four ranks or divisions, according to their wealth in land. The richer men were, the more power they were given in the state. But at the same time they had to pay heavier taxes, so that their greater authority was not an unmixed [Pg 73] blessing. The lowest class, composed of the poorest citizens, had no taxes at all to pay, and no power in the state, other than the right to vote in the assembly. When called out as soldiers arms were furnished them, while the other classes had to buy their own arms. ”

“ The legislation of Solon was not followed by the total extinction of party-spirit, and, while he was absent from Athens on a visit to Egypt and other Eastern countries, the three prominent factions in the state renewed their ancient feuds. Pisistratus, a wealthy kinsman of Solon, who had supported the measures of the latter by his eloquence and military talents, had the art to gain the favor of the mass of the people and constitute himself their leader. ”

“ Ability to furnish a man's own arms, and later on inclusion in the first assessment of Solon, took the place of birth, and later still it was thrown open to all citizens alike. Military commanders were from the first elected, and not chosen by lot. No doubt there were always some means of assembling and consulting the citizens, but we know nothing of the working of an assembly before the time of Solon, or of the internal state of the city. ”

“ Peisistratus thus found himself strong enough to throw off the mask and seize the acropolis. His leading opponents, Megaklês and the Alkmæônids, immediately fled the city, and it was left to the venerable age and undaunted patriotism of Solon to stand forward almost alone in a vain attempt to resist the usurpation. He publicly presented himself in the market-place, employing encouragement, remonstrance, and reproach, in order to rouse the spirit of the people. ”

“ The guise of Solon's subtlety, the touch of his iron hand in a glove of softest velvet, had been in this wise: he had pointed out to the Colonel that there were richer fields of endeavor to the west of us; newer, larger towns, fitter abodes for a man of his parts; communities which had honors and emoluments to lavish upon the worthy,—prizes which it would doubtless never be in our poor power to bestow.
Potts was stirred by all this, but he was not blinded to certain disadvantages,—"a stranger in a strange land," etc., while in Little Arcady he had already "made himself known." ”

“ When that was done, and the city in an uproar, Megacles, with all his family, at once fled; but Solon, though he was now very old, and had none to back him, yet came into the market-place and made a speech to the citizens, partly blaming their inadvertency and meanness of spirit, and in part urging and exhorting them not thus tamely to lose their liberty; and likewise then spoke that memorable saying, that, before, it was an easier task to stop the rising tyranny, but now the greater and more glorious action to destroy it, when it was begun already, and had gathered strength. ”

“ Such were the divisions in the political scale established by Solon, called by Aristotle a timocracy, in which the rights, honors, functions, and liabilities of the citizens were measured out according to the assessed property of each. The highest honors of the state—that is, the places of the nine archons annually chosen, as well as those in the senate of Areopagus, into which the past archons always entered (perhaps also the posts of Prytanes of the Naukrari) were reserved for the first class: the poor Eupatrids became ineligible, while rich men, not Eupatrids, were admitted. ”

“ But Solon had not the power to change the whole life of his countrymen by his laws, but rather was forced to suit his laws to existing circumstances, and, as he saw that the soil was so poor that it could only suffice for the farmers, and was unable to feed a mass of idle people as well, he gave great honour to trade, and gave powers to the senate of the Areopagus to inquire what each man's source of income might be, and to punish the idle. A harsher measure was that of which we are told by Herakleides of Pontus, his making it unnecessary for illegitimate children to maintain their father. ”

“ Fortunately a man appeared who was eminently fitted to do the work of a reformer. Although belonging to an illustrious house, Solon was at the same time possessed of broad sympathies and democratic views, which he is supposed to have derived from his experience as a traveller and his interest in commercial pursuits. ”

“ If he plays the coward, shame covers him, and life is a misery : he must wander forth a beggar with wife and child, loathed and contemned by all.”
The poems of Solon (c. B.C. 620–560) are more peaceful and political, though the earliest is an exhortation to the Athenians to secure by arms the island of Salamis. In the later ones, however, his chief themes are the beauty and advantage of good order and government, and the problem of reconciling them with freedom, the danger of wealth and corruption, the superiority of virtue to vice, of moderation to pride and presumption. ”

“ SOLON FREES THE SLAVES Solon, the wise lawgiver of Athens, was a descendant of King Codrus. His father had given away most of his wealth to help his city or his countrymen, so Solon became a merchant, as the sons of noblemen often did in these days of long ago. To increase his business, Solon journeyed through many of the states of Greece as well as to Asia. Wherever he went he studied the laws and manners of the people, just as Lycurgus the lawgiver of Sparta had done. ”