Solon

In view of this, many warned him that the tyrant would put him to death, and asked him on what he relied that he was so lost to all sense, to which he answered, My old age. However, when Peisistratus had become master of the situation, he paid such court to Solon by honoring him, showing him kindness, and inviting him to his palace, that Solon actually became his counsellor and approved of many of his acts. For he retained most of Solon’s laws, observing them first himself, and compelling his friends to do so.

For instance, he was summoned before the Areiopagus on a charge of murder, when he was already tyrant, and presented himself there to make his defence in due form, but his accuser did not put in an appearance. He also made other laws himself, one of which provides that those who are maimed in war shall be maintained at the public charge. But Heracleides says that even before that Solon had caused a decree to be passed to this effect in the case of Thersippus, who had been so maimed, and that Peisistratus was following his example. Moreover, Theophrastus writes that the law against idleness, in consequence of which the country became more productive and the city more tranquil, was not made by Solon, but by Peisistratus.

Now Solon, after beginning his great work on the story or fable of the lost Atlantis, which, as he had heard from the learned men of Sais,[*](Cf. Plut. Sol. 26.1. There is no trace of any such work of Solon’s, and the attribution of it to him is probably a play of Plato’s fancy.) particularly concerned the Athenians, abandoned it, not for lack of leisure, as Plato says, but rather because of his old age, fearing the magnitude of the task. For that he had abundant leisure, such verses as these testify

1. But I grow old ever learning many things;

1. But now the works of the Cyprus-born goddess are dear to my soul,
2. Of Dionysus, too, and the Muses, which impart delights to men.

Plato, ambitious to elaborate and adorn the subject of the lost Atlantis, as if it were the soil of a fair estate unoccupied, but appropriately his by virtue of some kinship with Solon,[*](Plato mentions the relationship of Critias, his maternal uncle, with Solon (Plat. Charm. 155a).) began the work by laying out great porches, enclosures, and courtyards, such as no story, tale, or poesy ever had before.

But he was late in beginning, and ended his life before his work.[*](Plato’s Critias is a splendid fragment.) Therefore the greater our delight in what he actually wrote, the greater is our distress in view of what he left undone. For as the Olympieium in the city of Athens, so the tale of the lost Atlantis in the wisdom of Plato is the only one among many beautiful works to remain unfinished.

Well, then, Solon lived on after Peisistratus had made himself tyrant, as Hercleides Ponticus states, a long time; but as Phanias of Eresos says, less than two years. For it was in the archonship of Comeas[*](561-60 B.C.) that Peisistratus began his tyranny, and Phanias says that Solon died in the archonship of Hegestratus, the successor of Comeas.