Solon

Croesus was amazed at what he had said and replied sharply, “In what way do you judge Tellus to be the most fortunate?

"You look to the tongue and to the words of a wheedling man;

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:

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;

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.

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

Yet in spite of these great claims to distinction he set his heart upon nothing as much as becoming one of the Seven Sages, believing that philosophy was no reproach but that it brought honor to those who pursued it, having been no less wise in this very judgement than in the others in which he showed himself superior.

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