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haps he believed that the description he gave his fellow-sages of the state, in which the injury to one man was felt as much as if it had been done to every man, was fulfilled.

During his absence, Solon came to Sardis, where Croesus was either reigning or about to reign. The prince sent for the lawgiver, to see the man whose fame had reached him from afar; and when they were together, he asked of Solon, as though he were consulting an oracle, who was the happiest man on earth. Solon thus replied:-"Of all whom I have seen, the most fortunate was Tellus the Athenian. He lived in a flourishing republic; he had brave and manly sons; their children grew up beneath his eyes; and after a well-spent life, he died valiantly in battle, and was nobly buried by his countrymen, in the spot where he had fallen. " 153 And as the devotion which Tellus showed his country largely entered into Solon's estimate of his happiness, so any man of virtuous desires in Athens would, at that time, have looked up to the institutions under which he was born as the objects equally of hope and sacrifice.

The boy was educated to become a good citizen; if he were that, he was considered infallibly a good man. The crown of olive which the Athenians gave to him who had done his duty to Athens was nearly sufficient to satisfy the largest aspirations of the largest heart; to a feeble heart, it was all too much to be the end and the recompense of a lifetime. No

153 Herod., I. 30. Plut., Sol., 27.

154

limits were set upon the services the state required; " no punishments of offences against the state could be exaggerated; 155 and it was in consequence of this supremacy of public interests that Athens became "the parent of fruits" 156 after the hand of Solon had scattered in their seeds. Every Athenian, arrived at the age of eighteen, 157 swore in the temple to defend the laws and to labor to make Athens greater and more glorious; 158 and the highest praise which Isocrates, the orator, could give to those of whom he was speaking with warmth and admiration was, that their oath had been fulfilled. 159 Such a spirit needs here its mention, if no more; for nothing else than this, even in its embryo existence, can explain either the readiness with which the legislation of Solon was established, the defects towards the aliens and the slaves by which it was marked, or the confidence with which the legislator himself departed when it was but just confirmed.

154 Hence the various liturgies (λerovpyia) contributed by the wealthy to the support of the fleets Tрinpaрxía), the choruses (xopηyía), the festivals (éσriáveis), the embassies (Oewpiai), and the gymnasia (yvuvaoiapxía). The extra property tax (eiopopá) and the various voluntary contributions (eπdóσels) must be viewed in the same light.

155 The state-debtor, for instance, was unable to hold any office; if he died a debtor, his son was not only ineligible, but was arrested and imprisoned until the father's debt was discharged. Corn. Nepos, Cimon,

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It was said that Solon replied to one who questioned him concerning his laws, as if to learn his real opinion of their value, that they were the best which the Athenians could bear: 160 not, it is to be observed, the best to be conceived, but the best to be obeyed. And here, with this confession from much the wisest and much the humanest lawgiver of heathen nations, it is fitting to pause, if but one moment, to contrast the confidence in the laws established in the later periods of antiquity with their insufficiency and instability. With the Greek or the Roman, the loftiest objects of dependence or of devotion were the institutions of his country; through these alone he learned, and obtained, if at all, the inspiration to fulfil the right, in sight of gods and men. On this very account, the history of liberty, in ancient times, is the history of their highest knowledge and their widest power; of which, however, the imperfection scarcely needs to be explained. No work of man, indeed, has ever been his own alone; never a generation has passed without its help, unseen or seen, from its Creator: but the forms and the ideas by which the ancient nations lived may yet, compared with those to which they have yielded, be defined as mortally fashioned and mortally conceived. One people, like the Athenian, would obtain their Solon; yet, notwithstanding his certain superiority to most of his contemporaries, the laws he gave would contain nothing holier, nothing truer, than some, at least, amongst them were

160 Plut., Sol., 15.

able to propose; though, at the same time, a nearer approach might be made to liberty and to humanity than had been within the aim or the fortune of other codes. The duty of the law, whether of Sparta, Athens, or Rome, was such as could be seen on earth; 161 it did not descend, untouched by human hands or unuttered by human tongues, from Heaven. It failed, therefore, everywhere: the age which followed denied the age which went before, or distrusted that which was advancing with the future. Solon could, indeed, communicate the things he had seen; but his vision might be too confined for posterity; and the altar which Epimenides ordered to be raised in Athens to the unknown God stood, when Solon's laws were almost totally obliterated.162

The restlessness of the Athenians soon proved stronger than their obedience; and while their lawgiver was abroad, the ambition of one class and the misery of another were already threatening the work on which he had spent his wisdom and his energy. The blow was struck, at last, by a kinsman and a friend of Solon. Pisistratus, a man of lofty birth, in the very prime of gracefulness and resolution, placed himself at the head of the lower classes, clamorous for further relief and further power than they had received. By a profusion of promises and liberal

161"Quam angusta innocentia est," exclaims Seneca (De Ira, II. 27)," ad legem bonum esse ! quanto latius officiorum patet quam juris regula!" etc. Yet the wider duties he applauds depended upon the

narrower law alone. See Part II. ch. 7, of Leland's Christ. Revel., with various references to the authority of law, generally considered, in ancient times.

162 Acts, XVII. 23.

ities, 163 he succeeded in making himself the tyrant of Athens,164 against the menaces of his adversaries and the remonstrances of Solon, who had hastened home to meet the danger. The lawgiver urged his countrymen, with characteristic ardor, at first to refuse, and then to overthrow, the power which his friend obtained; and when his efforts were vain and his influence exhausted, he threw his weapons out of his house, declaring he had done his best to save the liberty of the people, for whom he would attempt to do no more.165 Pisistratus was twice expelled by the factions opposing him; but he was twice restored; and became, at length, so firmly seated, that he died in undisturbed possession of authority, and was even able to transmit it to his sons. Hippias and Hipparchus then governed together until Hipparchus was slain by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who have gained a renown for a love of liberty they did not feel; 166 and as the Athenians were still content to obey the surviving brother, Hippias continued in the tyranny, though he made it severer than it had ever been, until he was expelled by the hostile party among the nobility, aided by an armed force from Sparta, after Athens had been subject, with two interruptions, to his family for fifty years.167

163 Herod., I. 59. 164 Plut., Sol., 30. Herod., I. 59. 165 Plut., Sol., 30. Diod. Sic., Reliq., IX. 4. 21. See a letter he may or may not have written to Pisistratus, in Diog. Laert., I. 66, 67. "It was the last time," says

VOL. I.

23

Plutarch, "he had any thing to do
with the commonwealth."
166 Thucyd., VI. 54 – 59.
167 Herod., V. 62 et seq. A. C.
560-510. Pisistratus died 527;
Hipparchus was slain in 514.

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