Solon

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. I. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

No sooner were the laws of Solon put into operation than some would come to him every day with praise or censure of them, or with advice to insert something into the documents, or take something out. Very numerous, too, were those who came to him with inquiries and questions about them, urging him to teach and make clear to them the meaning and purpose of each several item.

He saw that to do this was out of the question, and that not to do it would bring odium upon him, and wishing to be wholly rid of these perplexities and to escape from the captiousness and censoriousness of the citizens (for in great affairs, as he says himself,[*](Fragment 7 (Bergk).) it is difficult to please all), he made his ownership of a vessel an excuse for foreign travel, and set sail, after obtaining from the Athenians leave of absence for ten years. In this time he hoped they would be accustomed to his laws.

In the first place, then, he went to Egypt,[*](Cf. Aristot. Const. Ath. 11.1.) and lived, as he himself says,[*](Fragment 28 (Bergk).)

  1. Where Nile pours Forth his floods, near the Canobic shore.
He also spent some time in studies with Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of Sais, who were very learned priests. From these, as Plato says,[*](Plat. Tim. 22a) he heard the story of the lost Atlantis, and tried to introduce it in a poetical form to the Greeks.[*](Cf. Plut. Sol. 31.3; Plut. Sol. 32.1 f.)