Solon

Most nobly the Athenian Solon inveighs and writes:

And in the Timaeus he brings in the most wise Solon learning from the barbarian.

for we have already stated the times of Solon.

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.

And about this same time both Solon was in Corinth, fleeing the tyranny of Peisistratus, but not fleeing that of Periander.

After Solon had seen everything and had thought about it, Croesus found the opportunity to say, “My Athenian guest, we have heard a lot about you because of your wisdom and of your wanderings, how as one who loves learning you have traveled much of the world for the sake of seeing it, so now I desire to ask you who is the most fortunate man you have seen.

Croesus asked this question believing that he was the most fortunate of men, but Solon, offering no flattery but keeping to the truth, said, “O King, it is Tellus the Athenian.

” Solon replied, “Croesus, you ask me about human affairs, and I know that the divine is entirely grudging and troublesome to us.

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.

The strife being violent, and the two parties opposing each other for a long time, they chose by common consent Solon as arbitrator and archon, and entrusted the constitution to him, after he had composed the elegy of which the beginning is:

There seem to be these three most democratic features of Solon's constitution:

It is said that when Pisistratus asked for the guard, Solon spoke against it and said that he was wiser than some and braver than others:

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;

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

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:

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.

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

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;

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 statutes enacted by Solon, a very different legislator from the defendant, provided that if a man is convicted of theft, and not punished with death, he shall suffer imprisonment;

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

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.

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;

First of all was Solon.

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;

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.

—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.

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.

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

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.

The ancient Solon was by nature the commons’ friend.

"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?

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.

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

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.

Moreover you should grasp this fact, that Solon, who framed these and most of our other laws, was a very different kind of legislator from the defendant, and provided not one, but many modes of procedure for those who wish to obtain redress for various wrongs.

Now it is worth your while, men of Athens, to study too the character of Solon, who framed this law, and to observe what care he took of the constitution in all the laws, how much more zealous indeed he was for the constitution than for the matter on which he was legislating.

Disregarding all this, our honorable gentleman here thought fit not only to make speeches and proposals, though not entitled to do so, but even ventured to make illegal ones.