Solon

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ What do you here?"
"My name is Solon," answered the fearless head of the hunchback, while the frail, cowardly body shivered and trembled inch by inch into a corner.
"So you come to visit my daughter in the night-time, when I am away?" continued the Wondersmith, with a sneering tone that dropped from his snake-wreathed mouth like poison. "You are a brave and gallant lover, are you not? Where did you win that Order of the Curse of God that decorates your shoulders? The women turn their heads and look after you in the street, when you pass, do they not? ”

“ In the evening as the wisest of men and the richest of men were dining together, the king said to his guest, “Tell me now, O Solon, who do you think is the happiest of all men?” He expected that Solon would say “Crœsus.”
The wise man was silent for a minute, and then he said, “I have in mind a poor man who once lived in Athens and whose name was Tellus. He, I doubt not, is the happiest of all men.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Croesus was silent as he thought to himself: "Since this is not enough, I must show him something more, to surprise him."
So he exhibited the whole of his riches before Solon's eyes, as well as boasted of the number of foes he had slain, and the number of territories he had conquered. Then he said to the philosopher:
"You have lived long in the world, and have visited many countries. Tell me whom you consider to be the happiest man living?"
"The happiest man living I consider to be a certain poor man who lives in Athens," replied Solon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The name of this man was Solon, and he was the lawmaker of Athens in Greece. He was noted for his wisdom; and, centuries after his death, the highest praise that could be given to a learned man was to say, “He is as wise as Solon.”
Solon had heard of Crœsus, and so one day he visited him in his beautiful palace. Crœsus was now happier and prouder than ever before, for the wisest man in the world was his guest. He led Solon through his palace and showed him the grand rooms, the fine carpets, the soft couches, the rich furniture, the pictures, the books. ”

“ 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." ”

“ There are periods in all constitutions when, amid the excesses of factions, every one submits willingly to an arbiter. With the genius that might have made him the destroyer of the liberties of his country, Solon had the virtue to constitute himself their saviour. He persuaded the families stigmatized with the crime of sacrilege, and the epithet of “execrable,” to submit to the forms of trial; they were impeached, judged, and condemned to exile; the bodies of those whom death had already summoned to a sterner tribunal were disinterred, and removed beyond the borders of Attica. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And when Solon answered that he had known one Tellus, a fellow-citizen of his own, and told him that this Tellus had been an honest man, had had good children, a competent estate, and died bravely in battle for his country, Croesus took him for an ill-bred fellow and a fool, for not measuring happiness by the abundance of gold and silver, and preferring the life aud death of a private and mean man before so much power and empire. He asked him, however, again, if, besides Tellus, he knew any other man more happy. ”

“ For you seem in my apprehension to call these coverings made of wood and mud houses, as if you should call the shell and not the living creature a snail. Therefore you laughed when Solon told you how, when he viewed Croesus's palace and found it richly and gloriously furnished, he yet could not yield he lived happily until he had tried the inward and invisible state of his mind; for a man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible favors and blessings of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind. ”

“ Assuredly they were not to be caught with any profit—at least not brutally in an eager hand. Brush them ever so lightly and the bloom is off the wings. They are to be watched in their pretty flitting, loved only in their freedom and from afar, with no clumsy reachings. That was a good thing to know in any world.
The Argus announced my home-coming with a fine flourish of my title in Solon's best style. It said that I had come back to take up the practice of the law. Not even Solon knew that I had come back to the memory of her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He then seized the citadel—the antagonist faction of Megacles fled—and Pisistratus was master of Athens. Amid the confusion and tumult of the city, Solon retained his native courage. He appeared in public—harangued the citizens—upbraided their blindness—invoked their courage. In his speeches he bade them remember that if it be the more easy task to prevent tyranny, it is the more glorious achievement to destroy it. In his verses 228 he poured forth the indignant sentiment which a thousand later bards have borrowed and enlarged; “Blame not Heaven for your tyrants, blame yourselves.” ”

“ If I could only sit in the sun and read as you do, how happy I should be! But it's very tiresome to trudge round all day with that nasty organ, and look up at the houses, and know that you are annoying the people inside; and then the boys play such bad tricks on poor Furbelow, throwing him hot pennies to pick up, and burning his poor little hands; and oh! sometimes, Solon, the men in the street make me so afraid,—they speak to me and look at me so oddly!—I'd a great deal rather sit in your book-stall and read."
"I have nothing but odd volumes in my stall," answered the humpback. ”

“ The Athenian legislator—the wise Solon—almost succeeded in throwing discredit on this aliment, so much liked by his fellow-citizens, by a sumptuary law which he thought it necessary to establish.
The inhabitants of Attica were fond of good living; and when one of them took a wife he spared no expense to give splendour to the nuptial banquet—a very excusable pride on such an occasion. Solon was in the habit of interfering rather too much in the affairs of others. Every one has his failing, and this was his: he imagined that his fellow citizens fared too sumptuously on their wedding-day ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, it is these intellectual pursuits that for wise and well-nurtured men grow with years, so that it is to Solon's honor that he says, in the verse which I just now quoted, that as he advanced in age he learned something every day,—a pleasure of the mind than which there can be none greater. ”

“ It is only a legend that Solon went to Egypt, and if he did he could not have conversed with Egyptian priests or have read records in their temples. The truth is that the introduction is a mosaic work of small touches which, partly by their minuteness, and also by their seeming probability, win the confidence of the reader. Who would desire better evidence than that of Critias, who had heard the narrative in youth when the memory is strongest at the age of ten from his grandfather Critias, an old man of ninety, who in turn had heard it from Solon himself? ”

“ But from the undoubtedly genuine portion we gather that Solon, so far from being an impartial mediator, collected a popular following, vehemently attacked the rich, and then “gave to the people so much power as sufficeth, neither diminishing nor increasing their honour.” ”

“ 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. ”