Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​A seal-engraver is not permitted to retain the impression of a ring that has been sold; and if anyone knocks out the eye of a person who has only one eye, he shall have both of his own eyes knocked out in return. What you did not put down, do not take up; and if you do, death is the penalty. For an archon, if he is caught intoxicated, the penalty is death. He also prescribed that the poems of Homer be recited by cue (relay), so that where the first rhapsode left off, from there the next should begin. Thus Solon gave more light to Homer than did Pisistratus, as Dieuchidas says in the fifth book of his Megarian History. The verses in question were especially these: “And they that held Athens...” and the following lines.

​Solon was the first to name the thirtieth day of the month “the old and the new.” He was also the first to establish the assembly of the nine archons so that they might confer together, as Apollodorus says in the second book of his work On Legislators. Moreover, when civil strife arose, he took his stand neither with the party of the city, nor with the men of the plain, nor indeed with the men of the coast. He used to say that speech is an image of deeds; that the king is the one who is mightiest in power; and that the laws are like spiders' webs; for they, if anything light and weak falls into them, hold it fast, but if anything larger falls in, it tears through them and is gone. He also asserted that speech is sealed by silence, and silence by opportune timing.

​He used to say that those who possess influence with tyrants are like the pebbles on calculation boards; for just as each of those pebbles signifies at one time more and at another less, so tyrants regard each of these favorites at one time as great and splendid, and at another as dishonored. When asked why he enacted no law against a parricide, he replied, “Because I despaired of such a crime ever occurring.” And when asked how men might commit the fewest injustices, he said, “If those who are not wronged were equally indignant on behalf of those who are wronged.” And also: “Surfeit is begotten by wealth, and insolence by surfeit.” He required the Athenians to count their days according to the moon. He also forbade Thespis to teach tragedies, regarding such fictitious representation as unprofitable. Therefore, when

​Pisistratus wounded himself, Solon remarked that this trick had grown from that root. He also gave to mankind the following counsel, as Apollodorus says in his work On the Philosophical Sects: “Hold nobility of character more trustworthy than an oath. Do not tell falsehoods. Practice serious pursuits. Do not make friends hastily; but those you have acquired, do not reject. Command only after having first learned to obey. Give advice not of what is most pleasant, but of what is best. Make reason your guide. Do not consort with the wicked. Honor the gods; revere your parents.” And they say that when Mimnermus wrote, “Would that without diseases and grievous cares the fate of death might overtake me at sixty years,”

​Solon, rebuking him, said: “Nay, if even now you will still heed me, strike this out, and do not begrudge that I have devised a better thought than yours; change the poem, son of Ligyastades, and sing thus: ‘May the fate of death overtake me at eighty years.’” Among the songs of his that are recited is the following: “On your guard against every man, watch lest, holding a hidden hatred in his heart, he address you with a cheerful countenance, while his two-forked tongue sounds forth from a dark mind.” He wrote, plainly, his laws, as well as public speeches and counsels to himself, elegiac poems, epic verses amounting to five thousand lines concerning Salamis and the constitution of the Athenians, and iambics and epodes.

​Upon his statue the following epitaph is inscribed: “Having checked the unjust insolence of the Medes, this Salamis gave birth to this Solon, the sacred lawgiver.” He flourished around the forty-sixth Olympiad, in the third year of which he held the archonship at Athens, as Sosicrates says; at which time he also enacted his laws. He died in Cyprus having lived eighty years, having laid this injunction upon his kin: to carry back his bones to Salamis and, having cremated them, to scatter the ashes over the land. Whence Cratinus also says in his Chirones, representing Solon as speaking: “And I dwell on the island, as the report of mortals has it, scattered throughout the whole city of Ajax.”