Vitae philosophorum

He used to say that those who had influence with tyrants were like the pebbles employed in calculations; for, as each of the pebbles represented now a large and now a small number, so the tyrants would treat each one of those about them at one time as great and famous, at another as of no account. On being asked why he had not framed any law against parricide,

he replied that he hoped it was unnecessary. Asked how crime could most effectually be diminished, he replied, If it caused as much resentment in those who are not its victims as in those who are, adding, Wealth breeds satiety, satiety outrage. He required the Athenians to adopt a lunar month. He prohibited Thespis from performing tragedies on the ground that fiction was pernicious.

When therefore Pisistratus appeared with self-inflicted wounds, Solon said, This comes from acting tragedies. His counsel to men in general is stated by Apollodorus in his work on the Philosophic Sects as follows: Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath. Never tell a lie. Pursue worthy aims. Do not be rash to make friends and, when once they are made, do not drop them. Learn to obey before you command. In giving advice seek to help, not to please, your friend. Be led by reason. Shun evil company. Honour the gods, reverence parents. He is also said to have criticized the couplet of Mimnermus:>

Would that by no disease, no cares opprest,
1. I in my sixtieth year were laid to rest;

and to have replied thus[*](Fr. 20 Bergk.):

Oh take a friend’s suggestion, blot the line,
1. Grudge not if my invention better thine;
2. Surely a wiser wish were thus expressed,
3. At eighty years let me be laid to rest.

Of the songs sung this is attributed to Solon[*](Fr. 42 Bergk.):

Watch every man and see whether, hiding hatred in his

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heart, he speaks with friendly countenance, and his tongue rings with double speech from a dark soul.

He is undoubtedly the author of the laws which bear his name; of speeches, and of poems in elegiac metre, namely, counsels addressed to himself, on Salamis and on the Athenian constitution, five thousand lines in all, not to mention poems in iambic metre and epodes.