Solon

Furthermore, some say that Solon got an oracle at Pytho which ran as follows:—

1. Take thy seat amidships, the pilot’s task is thine;
2. Perform it, many in Athens are thine allies.

And above all, his familial friends chid him for being averse to absolute power because of the name of tyranny, as if the virtues of him who seized it would not at once make it a lawful sovereignty. Euboea (they argued) had formerly found this true of Tynnondas, and so had the Mitylenaeans, now that they had chosen Pittacus to be their tyrant.

None of these things shook Solon from his resolution. To his friends he said, as we are told, that a tyranny was a lovely place, but there was no way down from it. And in his poems he writes to Phocus:—

1. And if, he says, I spared my land,
2. My native land, and unto tyranny and violence implacable
3. Did not set hand, polluting and disgracing my fair fame,
4. I’m not ashamed; in this way rather shall my name be set above
5. That of all other men.

[*](Solon, Frag. 32 (Bergk).) From this it is clear that even before his legislation he was in high repute.

And as for the ridicule which many heaped upon him for refusing the tyranny, he has written as follows;—

1. Solon was a shallow thinker and a man of counsel void;
2. When the gods would give him blessings, of his own will he refused.
3. When his net was full of fish, amazed, he would not pull it in,
4. All for lack of spirit, and because he was bereft of sense.
5. I had certainly been willing, for the power, and boundless wealth,
6. And to be tyrant over Athens no more than a single day,
7. Then to have a pouch flayed from me, and my lineage blotted out.[*](Fragment 33 (Bergk).)

[*](Solon, Frag. 33 (Bergk).)