Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

“If you have suffered dreadfully through your own cowardice, do not attribute any share of this to the gods; for you yourselves aggrandized these men by giving them sureties, and on this account you hold vile slavery. Each one of you indeed walks in the steps of a fox, but in all of you together there is an empty mind; for you look to the tongue and the words of a wily man, but you look not at all upon any deed that is being done.” These were the lines of Solon. And Pisistratus, when Solon was in exile, wrote to him in this manner:

​Pisistratus to Solon “I am neither the only one among the Greeks to have seized a tyranny, nor was it unfitting for me, being of the race of the Codridae. For I took back what the Athenians, having sworn to grant to Codrus and his race, had taken away. In other respects, I commit no offense either against the gods or against men; but just as you laid down the ordinances for the Athenians, so I allow them to govern themselves. And they govern themselves even better than under a democracy; for I permit no one to act insolently; and I, the tyrant, receive nothing more in dignity and honor than what were the specified privileges even for the former kings. Each Athenian pays a tithe of his own land, not to me, but from where funds may be spent for public sacrifices and if there be any other common needs, or should war overtake us.

“I do not blame you at all for revealing my intention. For you revealed it through goodwill toward the city rather than from hatred toward me, and furthermore through ignorance of my rule, what sort of rule I was going to establish; since, had you understood, you might perhaps have tolerated it when it was being established, and would not have fled. Return home therefore, trusting me even without an oath that Solon will suffer nothing disagreeable from Pisistratus. For know that none other of my enemies has suffered so either. And if you deem it worthy to be one of my friends, you will be among the first; for I perceive nothing deceitful or untrustworthy in you; or if you simply wish to reside at Athens, it will be permitted. Do not, on my account, remain deprived of your fatherland.”

​These were the words of Pisistratus. Solon says that the boundary of human life is seventy years. He is also considered to have legislated most admirably: if anyone does not support his parents, let him be disenfranchised (atimos); and likewise he who has squandered his paternal estate. And let the idle man be accountable to anyone who wishes to indict him. Lysias, however, in his speech Against Nicias, says that Draco drafted this law, and that Solon excluded from the speaker's platform anyone who had prostituted himself. He also reduced the honors of athletes in the games, fixing five hundred drachmas for an Olympic victor, one hundred for an Isthmian victor, and proportionally for the others; for he deemed it vulgar to exalt their honors, but proper to exalt those of the men who died in war alone, whose sons should also be reared and educated at the public expense.

​Whence also many strove to become noble and good men in war: such as Polyzelus, Cynegirus, Callimachus, and all the Marathon-fighters; and further Harmodius and Aristogiton, Miltiades, and countless others. Athletes, on the other hand, are costly even while training, and when they win they are detrimental and are crowned against their fatherland rather than against their opponents; and when they become old, in the words of Euripides, “Like worn-out cloaks that have shed their nap, they are gone.” Perceiving this, Solon received them with moderation. The following law is also most excellent: that a guardian shall not cohabit with the mother of the orphans, nor shall anyone be a guardian to whom the estate comes upon the death of the orphans. And this one too: