Solon

Most nobly the Athenian Solon inveighs and writes:

for we have already stated the times of Solon.

but as others would have it, it takes its movement from the devil.

Or do you think yourself more prudent than Croesus, a man so wealthy and ruling over so many men and a companion of Solon and of very many other sages?

And yet the matter of debts one might find at another time too, and Solon is said once to have done it among the Athenians.

Periander was wise with the few, but tyrant with the many;

So, Croesus, man is entirely chance.

So for that reason, and to see the world, Solon went to visit Amasis in

Both had won prizes in the athletic contests, and this story is told about them:

I could wish, indeed, fellow citizens, that the Senate of Five Hundred and the assemblies of the people were properly conducted by those who preside over them, and the laws enforced which Solon enacted to secure orderly conduct on the part of public speakers;

For Solon, the ancient lawgiver, thought it necessary to apply the same penalties to the coward as to the man who failed to take the field or the man who deserted his post.

Therefore the man who fails to take the field, and the coward, and the man who has deserted his post are excluded by the lawgiver from the purified precincts of the Agora, and may not be crowned, nor take part in the sacred rites of the people.

he was the first to become champion of the people.

Solon, then, legislated thus concerning the nine archons.

And again, reproaching the later complaints of both parties:

Must we obey Solon’s warning, and look to the end?

While if on the other hand we refuse to speak of a dead man as happy, and Solon’s words do not mean this, but that only when a man is dead can one safely call him blessed as being now beyond the reach of evil and misfortune, this also admits of some dispute;

Solon also doubtless gave a good description of happiness, when he said that in his opinion those men were happy who, being moderately equipped with external goods, had performed noble exploits and had lived temperately;

Grote, speaking of the Elegiacs of Solon, and of the natural priority of verse to prose, says (History of Greece, iii.

It is impossible to determine how much new law there was in the Laws of Solon, or in the Twelve Tables of Rome, or in the Laws of Alfred and Canute, or in the Salic Law which is the oldest of the so-called Leges Barbarorum, but in all probability the quantity was extremely small.

Solon, dealing with a state of society in which coined money had probably not long taken the place of something like the ‘seds’ of the Brehon law, had no expedient open to him but the debasement of the currency and the cancellation of debts;

The old law of Solon, to which Demosthenes, in his speech against Timocrates, appeals, agrees with it.

Solon limits the depth to forty cubits;

In an ancient law of Solon’s mention is made of companies formed for robbery:

See now, fellow citizens, how unlike to Timarchus were Solon and those men of old whom I mentioned a moment ago.

Consider, fellow citizens, how much attention that ancient lawgiver, Solon, gave to morality, as did Draco and the other lawgivers of those days.

You can therefore yourselves bear witness that in the statue that is set up in the Salaminian market-place Solon stands with his arm inside his cloak.

because in those others there had generally been single men, each of whom had established his own commonwealth by his laws and institutions—as Minos among the Cretans, Lycurgus among the Lacedaemonians, and among the Athenians, whose constitution had very often been changed, now Theseus, now Draco, now Solon, now Cleisthenes, now many others;

There had perhaps been some reason for our ancestors of remedying that debt—a reason which neither had escaped Solon the Athenian not long before, nor, somewhat later, our senate, when, on account of the lust of one man, all the bonds of the citizens were freed and the binding of debtors thereafter ceased;

against the prophetic Apollo, Cyrus and Solon.

Let the Athenian, then, follow the laws of Solon, and the Argive those of Phoroneus, and the Spartan those of Lycurgus;

Much alike these two legislators, Solon and Timocrates,—are they not, men of Athens?

Solon’s view was that the doer of infamous deeds ought not to get off with mere repayment of the money stolen;

They arbitrarily repeal those well-tried laws of Solon, enacted by their forefathers, and expect you to obey laws of their own, proposed to the detriment of the community.

The fragments of the Attic Code of Solon show, however, that it had but little order, and probably the laws of Draco had even less.

Thus, when Athenian citizens were empowered for the first time by the Laws of Solon to execute Testaments, they were forbidden to disinherit their direct male descendants.

First of all was Solon.

nay, so much more did they apply their minds to eloquence than to other things, that Solon was named one of the seven sophists and was given the title which is now dishonored and on trial here;

You will find the strongest proof of this in the fact that they saw fit to put Solon, who was the first of the Athenians to receive the title of sophist, at, the head of the state, while they applied to the sycophants more stringent laws than to other criminals;

Well then, when an orator or a king is able to rival the greatness of Lycurgus or Solon or Darius and attain immortality as a writer in the state, does he not while living think himself equal to the gods, and has not posterity the same opinion of him, when they see his writings?

Go and tell Lysias that you and I came down to the fountain and sacred place of the nymphs, and heard words which they told us to repeat to Lysias and anyone else who composed speeches, and to Homer or any other who has composed poetry with or without musical accompaniment, and third to Solon and whoever has written political compositions which he calls laws:

For we must not take Solon’s word for it that growing old a man is able to learn many things.

But what city credits you with having been a good legislator and having benefited them?

during the interval the code of Solon and the statutes of Draco were to be in force.

Thus as far as Solon’s law is concerned, Epichares, it is clear that anyone can kill you here and now without defiling his hands.

—On the motion of Teisamenus the People decreed that Athens be governed as of old, in accordance with the laws of Solon, his weights and his measures, and in accordance with the statutes of Draco, which we used aforetime.

A bastard shall not inherit, if there are legitimate children;

The ancient Solon was by nature the commons’ friend.

In order, my good sir, that the defendants, being present a day before, might compromise the matter of their own accord;

He therefore made the summons for two days, for the Old and New, that the deposits might be made on the first of the month.

"But we will not exchange with them our virtue for their wealth, since the one abides forever, while men's riches now one man, now another holds.

but the more they heap around themselves, the more they need, equal or greater, for the satisfying of their desire—according to Solon the son of Execestides, who says:

For either you will be of some use to the common cause, or you will at least have done what Solon did, who, when he could not defend the citizens who were left behind, the acropolis being already held, put on his arms and sat before his doors, plain by his very posture as not consenting to what was happening.

that the writings of Lycurgus, of Solon, our Twelve Tables are not laws, nor even is it a city or a state unless it be of the wise?

I never heard, in the school of Epicurus, Lycurgus, Solon, Miltiades, Themistocles, Epaminondas named — who are on the lips of all the other philosophers.

For when once the happy life has been taken up, it remains as long as wisdom herself, the producer of the happy life, and does not await the last span of life — that which Herodotus writes was the precept given by Solon to Croesus.

And if this should be so, the saying of Ennius is better than that of Solon.

I cannot say, however this is to be taken, that Lycurgus and Solon lack glory for their laws and public discipline, or Themistocles and Epaminondas for their warlike valour.