Chapter XI: Solonian Laws and Constitution (4)

[249] Herod, i, 32. Ὦ Κροῖσε, ἐπιστάμενόν με τὸ θεῖον, πᾶν ἐὸν
φθονερόν τε καὶ ταραχώδες, ἐπειρωτᾷς με ἀνθρωπηΐων πρηγμάτων
πέρι. i, 34. Μετὰ δὲ Σόλωνα οἰχόμενον, ἔλαβεν ἐκ θεοῦ νέμεσις
μεγάλη Κροῖσον, ὡς εἰκάσαι ὅτι ἐνόμισε ἑωϋτὸν εἶναι ἀνθρώπων
ἁπάντων ὀλβιώτατον.

The hunting-match, and the terrible wild boar with whom the
Mysians cannot cope, appear to be borrowed from the legend
of Kalydôn. The whole scene of Adrastus, returning after the
accident in a state of desperate remorse, praying for death with
outstretched hands, spared by Crœsus, and then killing himself on
the tomb of the young prince, is deeply tragic (Herod. i, 44-45).

[250] Herodot. i, 85.

[251] Herodot. i, 86, 87: compare Plutarch, Solon, 27-28. See a
similar story about Gygês king of Lydia (Valerius Maxim. vii, 1,
2).

Such is the brief outline of a narrative which Herodotus has given with full development and with impressive effect. It would have served as a show-lecture to the youth of Athens, not less admirably than the well-known fable of the Choice of Hêraklês, which the philosopher Prodikus,[252] a junior contemporary of Herodotus, delivered with so much popularity. It illustrates forcibly the religious and ethical ideas of antiquity; the deep sense of the jealousy of the gods, who would not endure pride in any one except themselves;[253] the impossibility, for any man, of realizing to himself more than a very moderate share of happiness; the danger from reactionary nemesis, if at any time he had overpassed such limit; and the necessity of calculations taking in the whole of life, as a basis for rational comparison of different individuals; and as a practical consequence from these feelings, a constant protest on the part of the moralists against vehement impulses and unrestrained aspirations. The more valuable this narrative appears, in its illustrative character, the less can we presume to treat it as a history.

[252] Xenoph. Memorab. ii, 1, 21. Πρόδικος ὁ σοφὸς ἐν
τῷ συγγράμματι τῷ περὶ Ἡρακλέους, ὅπερ δὴ καὶ πλείστοις
ἐπιδείκνυται, etc.

[253] Herodot. vii, 10. φιλέει γὰρ ὁ θεὸς τὰ ὑπερέχοντα πάντα
κολούειν.... οὐ γὰρ ἐᾷ φρονέειν μέγα ὁ θεὸς ἄλλον ἢ ἑωϋτόν.

It is much to be regretted that we have no information respecting events in Attica immediately after the Solonian laws and constitution, which were promulgated in 594 B. C., so as to understand better the practical effect of these changes. What we next hear respecting Solon in Attica refers to a period immediately preceding the first usurpation of Peisistratus in 560 B. C., and after the return of Solon from his long absence. We are here again introduced to the same oligarchical dissensions as are reported to have prevailed before the Solonian legislation: the pedieis, or opulent proprietors of the plain round Athens, under Lykurgus; the parali of the south of Attica, under Megaklês: and the diakrii, or mountaineers of the eastern cantons, the poorest of the three classes, under Peisistratus, are in a state of violent intestine dispute. The account of Plutarch represents Solon as returning to Athens during the height of this sedition. He was treated with respect by all parties, but his recommendations were no longer obeyed, and he was disqualified by age from acting with effect in public. He employed his best efforts to mitigate party animosities, and applied himself particularly to restrain the ambition of Peisistratus, whose ulterior projects he quickly detected.

The future greatness of Peisistratus is said to have been first portended by a miracle which happened, even before his birth, to his father Hippokratês at the Olympic games. It was realized, partly by his bravery and conduct, which had been displayed in the capture of Nisæa from the Megarians,[254]—partly by his popularity of speech and manners, his championship of the poor,[255] and his ostentatious disavowal of all selfish pretensions,—partly by an artful mixture of stratagem and force. Solon, after having addressed fruitless remonstrances to Peisistratus himself, publicly denounced his designs in verses addressed to the people. The deception, whereby Peisistratus finally accomplished his design, is memorable in Grecian tradition.[256] He appeared one day in the agora of Athens in his chariot with a pair of mules: he had intentionally wounded both his person and the mules, and in this condition he threw himself upon the compassion and defence of the people, pretending that his political enemies had violently attacked him. He implored the people to grant him a guard, and at the moment when their sympathies were freshly aroused both in his favor and against his supposed assassins, Aristo proposed formally to the ekklesia,—the pro-bouleutic senate, being composed of friends of Peisistratus, had previously authorized the proposition,[257]—that a company of fifty club-men should be assigned as a permanent body-guard for the defence of Peisistratus. To this motion Solon opposed a strenuous resistance,[258] but found himself overborne, and even treated as if he had lost his senses. The poor were earnest in favor of it, while the rich were afraid to express their dissent; and he could only comfort himself, after the fatal vote had been passed, by exclaiming that he was wiser than the former and more determined than the latter. Such was one of the first known instances in which this memorable stratagem was played off against the liberty of a Grecian community.

[254] Herodot. i, 59. I record this allusion to Nisæa and the
Megarian war, because I find it distinctly stated in Herodotus;
and because it _may_ possibly refer to some other _later_
war between Athens and Megara than that which is mentioned
in Plutarch’s Life of Solon as having taken place before the
Solonian legislation (that is, before 594 B. C.), and therefore
nearly forty years before this movement of Peisistratus to
acquire the despotism. Peisistratus must then have been so young
that he could not with any propriety be said to have “captured
Nisæa” (Νισαιάν τε ἑλών): moreover, the public reputation, which
was found useful to the ambition of Peisistratus in 560 B. C.,
must have rested upon something more recent than his bravery
displayed about 597 B. C.; just as the celebrity which enabled
Napoleon to play the game of successful ambition on the 18th
Brumaire (Nov. 1799) was obtained by victories gained within the
preceding five years, and could not have been represented by any
historian as resting upon victories gained in the Seven Years’
war, between 1756-1763.

At the same time, my belief is that the words of Herodotus
respecting Peisistratus do really refer to the Megarian war
mentioned in Plutarch’s Life of Solon, and that Herodotus
supposed that Megarian war to have been much more near to the
despotism of Peisistratus than it really was. In the conception
of Herodotus, and by what (after Niebuhr) I venture to call a
mistake in his chronology, the interval between 600-560 B. C.
shrinks from forty years to little or nothing. Such mistake
appears, not only on the present occasion, but also upon two
others: first, in regard to the alleged dialogue between Solon
and Crœsus, described and commented upon a few pages above; next,
in regard to the poet Alkæus and his inglorious retreat before
the Athenian troops at Sigeium and Achilleium, where he lost
his shield, when the Mityleneans were defeated. The reality of
this incident is indisputable, since it was mentioned by Alkæus
himself in one of his songs; but Herodotus represents it to have
occurred in an Athenian expedition _directed by Peisistratus_.
Now the war in which Alkæus incurred this misfortune, and which
was brought to a close by the mediation of Periander of Corinth,
must have taken place earlier than 584 B. C., and probably took
place before the legislation of Solon; long before the time when
Peisistratus had the direction of Athenian affairs,—though the
latter may have carried on, and probably did carry on, _another
and a later war_ against the Mityleneans in those regions, which
led to the introduction of his illegitimate son, Hegesistratus,
as despot of Sigeium (Herod. v. 94-95).

If we follow the representation given by Herodotus of these
three different strings of events, we shall see that the same
chronological mistake pervades all of them,—he jumps over nearly
ten olympiads, or forty years. Alkæus is the contemporary of
Pittakus and Solon.

I have already remarked, in the previous chapter respecting
the despots of Sikyôn (ch. ix.), another instance of confused
chronology in Herodotus respecting the events of this
period,—respecting Crœsus, Megaklês, Alkmæôn and Kleisthenês of
Sikyôn.

[255] Aristot. Politic. v, 4, 5; Plutarch, Solon, 29.

[256] Plato, Republic, viii, p. 565. τὸ τυραννικὸν αἴτημα τὸ
πολυθρυλλητὸν ... αἰτεῖν τὸν δῆμον φύλακάς τινας τοῦ σώματος, ἵνα
σῶς αὐτοῖς ᾖ ὁ τοῦ δήμου βοηθός.

[257] Diog. Laërt. i, 49. ἡ βουλὴ, Πεισιστατίδαι ὄντες, etc.

[258] Plutarch, Solon, 29-30; Diog. Laërt. i, 50-51.

The unbounded popular favor which had procured the passing of this grant, was still farther manifested by the absence of all precautions to prevent the limits of the grant from being exceeded. The number of the body-guard was not long confined to fifty, and probably their clubs were soon exchanged for sharper weapons. Peisistratus thus found himself strong enough to throw off the mask and seize the acropolis. His leading opponents, Megaklês and the Alkmæônids, immediately fled the city, and it was left to the venerable age and undaunted patriotism of Solon to stand forward almost alone in a vain attempt to resist the usurpation. He publicly presented himself in the market-place, employing encouragement, remonstrance, and reproach, in order to rouse the spirit of the people. To prevent this despotism from coming, he told them would have been easy; to shake it off now was more difficult, yet at the same time more glorious.[259] But he spoke in vain; for all who were not actually favorable to Peisistratus listened only to their fears, and remained passive; nor did any one join Solon, when, as a last appeal, he put on his armor and planted himself in military posture before the door of his house. “I have done my duty, he exclaimed at length; I have sustained to the best of my power my country and the laws:” and he then renounced all farther hope of opposition,—though resisting the instances of his friends that he should flee, and returning for answer, when they asked him on what he relied for protection, “On my old age.” Nor did he even think it necessary to repress the inspirations of his Muse: some verses yet remain, composed seemingly at a moment when the strong hand of the new despot had begun to make itself sorely felt, in which he tells his countrymen: “If ye have endured sorrow from your own baseness of soul, impute not the fault of this to the gods. Ye have yourselves put force and dominion into the hands of these men, and have thus drawn upon yourselves wretched slavery.”

[259] Plutarch, Solon, 30; Diogen. Laërt. i, 49; Diodor.
Excerpta., lib. vii-x, ed. Maii. Fr. xix-xxiv.

It is gratifying to learn that Peisistratus, whose conduct throughout his despotism was comparatively mild, left Solon untouched. How long this distinguished man survived the practical subversion of his own constitution, we cannot certainly determine; but according to the most probable statement he died the very next year, at the advanced age of eighty.

We have only to regret that we are deprived of the means of following more in detail his noble and exemplary character. He represents the best tendencies of his age, combined with much that is personally excellent; the improved ethical sensibility; the thirst for enlarged knowledge and observation, not less potent in old age than in youth; the conception of regularized popular institutions, departing sensibly from the type and spirit of the governments around him, and calculated to found a new character in the Athenian people; a genuine and reflecting sympathy with the mass of the poor, anxious not merely to rescue them from the oppressions of the rich, but also to create in them habits of self-relying industry; lastly, during his temporary possession of a power altogether arbitrary, not merely an absence of all selfish ambition, but a rare discretion in seizing the mean between conflicting exigencies. In reading his poems we must always recollect that what now appears common-place was once new, so that to his comparatively unlettered age, the social pictures which he draws were still fresh, and his exhortations calculated to live in the memory. The poems composed on moral subjects, generally inculcate a spirit of gentleness towards others and moderation in personal objects; they represent the gods as irresistible, retributive, favoring the good and punishing the bad, though sometimes very tardily. But his compositions on special and present occasions are usually conceived in a more vigorous spirit; denouncing the oppressions of the rich at one time, and the timid submission to Peisistratus at another,—and expressing, in emphatic language, his own proud consciousness of having stood forward as champion of the mass of the people. Of his early poems hardly anything is preserved; the few lines which remain seem to manifest a jovial temperament, which we may well conceive to have been overlaid by the political difficulties against which he had to contend,—difficulties arising successively out of the Megarian war, the Kylonian sacrilege, the public despondency healed by Epimenidês, and the task of arbiter between a rapacious oligarchy and a suffering people. In one of his elegies, addressed to Mimnermus, he marked out the sixtieth year as the longest desirable period of life, in preference to the eightieth year, which that poet had expressed a wish to attain;[260] but his own life, as far as we can judge, seems to have reached the longer of the two periods, and not the least honorable part of it—the resistance to Peisistratus—occurs immediately before his death.

[260] Solon, Fragment 22, ed. Bergk. Isokratês affirms that Solon
was the first person to whom the appellation Sophist—in later
times carrying with it so much obloquy—was applied, (Isokratês,
Or. xv, De Permutatione, p. 344; p. 496, Bek.)

There prevailed a story, that his ashes were collected and scattered around the island of Salamis, which Plutarch treats as absurd,—though he tells us at the same time that it was believed both by Aristotle, and by many other considerable men: it is at least as ancient as the poet Kratinus, who alluded to it in one of his comedies, and I do not feel inclined to reject it.[261] The inscription on the statue of Solon at Athens described him as a Salaminian: he had been the great means of acquiring the island for his country,—and it seems highly probable that among the new Athenian citizens who went to settle there, he may have received a lot of land and become enrolled among the Salaminian demots. The dispersion of his ashes in various parts of the island connects him with it as in some sort the œkist; and we may construe that incident, if not as the expression of a public vote, at least as a piece of affectionate vanity on the part of his surviving friends.[262]

[261] Plutarch, Solon, 32; Kratinus ap. Diogen. Laërt. i, 62.

[262] Aristidês, in noticing this story of the spreading of
the ashes of Solon in Salamis, treats him as Ἀρχηγέτης of the
island (Orat. xlvi, Ὑπὲρ τῶν τεττάρων, p. 172; p. 230, Dindorf).
The inscription on his statue, which describes him as born in
Salamis, can hardly have been literally true: for when he was
born, Salamis was not incorporated in Attica; but it may have
been true by a sort of adoption (see Diogen. Laërt. i, 62). The
statue seems to have been erected by the Salaminians themselves,
a long time after Solon: see Menage ad Diogen. Laërt. _l. c._

We have now reached the period of the usurpation of Peisistratus (B. C. 560), whose dynasty governed Athens—with two temporary interruptions during the life of Peisistratus himself—for fifty years. The history of this despotism, milder than Grecian despotism generally, and productive of important consequences to Athens, will be reserved for a succeeding chapter.