I am not ashamed. For I think in this way I will outdo
All other men.
Tyranny, he once remarked, was a delightful place, but there was no way out of it.
So, instead, he recalled his days as a trader and set off on his travels again. He obtained a leave of absence for ten years and advised his fellow-citizens simply to do what he had written and make no changes. He himself had no regrets, confessing contentedly: “I grow old, forever learning many things.”
Apparently he visited Egypt, where he met the pharaoh, Amasis II, a man of lowly origins who seized the throne during an army revolt. He spent time studying with priests. From them he heard the story of the lost island of Atlantis (later taken up by Plato), which offended the gods and was swallowed up by the Atlantic Ocean. Solon is then said to have sailed to Cyprus, an island of numerous small kingdoms, where one of its mini-monarchs was a friend of his and was said to have named a new town in his honor, Soli.
At some point many years later, Solon, who had become an international celebrity as a wise man, went to Lydia, or so legend has it. There, at the capital, Sardis, he met King Croesus, then at the height of his power. Plutarch, who was the lawgiver’s biographer, doubts the tale; the dates are difficult (albeit just about feasible), for Solon’s Archonship was in 594 and Croesus only acceded to his throne in 560. But Plutarch can never resist a good story. He observed: “It so accurately fits Solon’s character that I do not propose to reject it for reasons of chronology.”
Solon was dismayed by the vulgarity of the Lydian court, but tried to keep his feelings to himself. Croesus asked him who he judged to be the happiest of men, confidently expecting the sage to name him. Solon was not prepared to flatter the king and nominated an Athenian who had died gloriously in battle.
Then who was the second most happy man? said the king, crossly. The unforgiving Solon said that Cleobis and Biton were his next choice. These two young men collapsed and died after hauling a wagon with their mother in it for five miles so that she could attend a religious festival. The sage’s point was that life was uncertain and no one should be counted happy till the day of his death.
After Croesus’s defeat by the Persians, the story that Cyrus the Great had intended to burn the Lydian king to death until a timely tempest doused the pyre was further enriched. As the flames licked upwards to him, Croesus groaned the word “Solon” three times. When asked to explain whom he was talking about, he replied: “A man to whom I would pay a fortune if only he could talk to all tyrants.”
He then spoke of his encounter with Solon. Herodotus writes:
Cyrus learned through interpreters what Croesus had said. He reflected that he, too, was human, and changed his mind about committing a living man to the fire, a fellow human being who had been blessed with happiness no less than he. Moreover, he began to fear retribution, and to contemplate the fact that nothing is really secure and certain for human beings.
Cyrus pardoned Croesus for opposing him, spared his life, and appointed him as an adviser on high policy.
The anecdote is an elaborate fiction, but all the same it expresses a profound truth about the Hellenic mind. It embodies Apollo’s maxims at Delphi—“nothing in excess” and “know yourself”—and was a bleak reminder that the fate of human beings lay not in themselves, but (as Homer put it) “on the knees of the gods.” The Lydian king had offended them by his presumption. So he paid the price.
—
Was Solon a success or a failure? He himself knew that what he had achieved was imperfect. Someone once asked him: “Have you enacted the best possible laws for the Athenians?” “The best they would accept,” came his undeceived reply.
His social, legal, and economic reforms brought undoubted benefits. Thanks to him Athens became an increasingly prosperous, progressive, and well-administered state with an emphasis on social justice. But the attempt to lower the political temperature failed. The Eupatridae were furious that they had lost so much wealth, prestige, and power. They were going to fight with all their might for a return to the old world of aristocratic privilege.
Within five years of Solon’s Archonship, law and order broke down. In one year no Archons at all were elected, and in 582 an Eponymous Archon called Damasias tried to make his post permanent and in effect founded a tyranny: he lasted two years before being expelled.
Party strife broke out and three mutually hostile factions emerged. The party of the Coast was led by the Alcmaeonid Megacles (Solon had organized an amnesty for the exiled clan) and promoted moderate policies, while the men of the Plain advocated a return of the dismantled aristocratic system. The men “beyond the Hills” promoted the cause of the unprivileged. For the unpalatable fact remained that, in spite of the “shaking off of burdens” the poor were still poor, and angry. There were many more of them than noblemen. They were led by an ambitious young politician called Pisistratus, who could see an opportunity when it presented itself.
He was eager for power, and was determined to avoid Cylon’s mistakes.
5
Friend of the Poor
The island of Salamis, hilly and dry, lies less than two miles off the coast of Attica. With nine thousand hectares of land, it is a rocky, inlet-rich crescent with few fertile acres. Unproductive though it was, its dark, rugged outline could be seen from the Acropolis and stood as a threat to freedom of passage for the merchant ships of Athens.
The export trade in olive oil, with Solon’s encouragement, was thriving and the city was undoubtedly prospering. But until the Athenians controlled the island they faced the ever-present threat of a blockade. In the sixth century, Salamis was owned by Megara, the small but energetic and not always friendly polis on the mainland just west of the island.
In the days of the tyranny of Theagenes, Cylon’s father-in-law, Megara was too troublesome a problem to solve. The Athenian assembly passed a law forbidding anyone to lay before it a proposal to annex the island by force on pain of death. At some point in the 560s the aged Solon decided to circumvent this prohibition.
He chose a bizarre means of doing so, if we are to believe Plutarch. His family let it be known that he had become demented. In the privacy of his home, he secretly wrote a poem of a hundred lines about Salamis. When he had learned it by heart, he ran out of doors into the marketplace and recited it. He began:
I have come as a herald from lovely Salamis
With a beautifully written song, not a political speech.
Solon’s point, a technical one to put it mildly, was that his verses did not qualify as a formal proposition. But his message could hardly have been plainer.
Let us go to Salamis to fight for a beautiful island
And clear away bitter disgrace.
In what must have been a preplanned move, Solon’s friends, and in particular the leader of the peasant faction, Pisistratus, praised the poem to the skies and advised the people to act on his words. The law was repealed and war was declared against Megara. Solon took command of an expeditionary force and set off with Pisistratus on his staff to conquer the island.
They sailed past a headland on the southern coast of Attica and saw a large number of Athenian women sacrificing to the harvest goddess Demeter. A man who made himself out to be a deserter was dispatched to the Megarians. He told them that if they hurried they would be able to capture the wives and daughters of many leading Athenian families. The Megarians fell into the trap and sent a party of men to kidnap them. Meanwhile the women were sent away and replaced by attractive young men in dresses who did not yet need to shave. They caught the Megarians completely by surprise and killed them all.