Solon

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.

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).)

Thus he represents the multitude and men of low degree as speaking of him. However, though he rejected the tyranny, he did not administer affairs in the mildest possible manner, nor in the enactment of his laws did he show a feeble spirit, nor make concessions to the powerful, nor consult the pleasure of his electors. Nay, where a condition was as good as it could well be, he applied no remedy, and introduced no innovation, fearing lest, after utterly confusing and confounding the city, he should be too weak to establish it again and recompose it for the best.