 Part 13 of volume 1 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by MB. Volume 1 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Numa Part 3 After Numa had thus established and regulated the priestly orders, he built, near the Temple of Vesta, the so-called Regia or Royal House. Here he passed most of his time performing sacred functions, or teaching the priests, or engaged in the quiet contemplation of divine things. He also had another house on the Quirinal Hill, the site of which is still pointed out. At all public and solemn processions of the priests, heralds were sent on before through the city, bidding the people make holiday, and putting a stop to all labour. For, just as it is said that the Pythagoreans do not allow men to worship and pray to their gods cursorily, and by the way, but would have them go from their homes directly to this office, with their minds prepared for it, so Numa thought that his citizens ought neither to hear nor see any divine service while they were occupied with other matters and therefore unable to pay attention. They should rather be free from all distractions and devote their thoughts to the religious ceremony as a matter of the highest importance. They should also rid their streets of noise and clatter and clamour, and all such accompaniments of menial and manual labour, and clear them for the sacred ceremonies, and the Romans still preserve some traces of this earlier feeling. When a magistrate is busy taking auspices or sacrificing, the people cry, which means, mind this, and helps to make the bystanders attentive and orderly. Many of his other precepts also resembled those of the Pythagoreans. For instance, the Pythagoreans said, Don't use a quartmeasure as a seat. Don't poke the fire with a sword. When you set out for foreign parts, don't turn back. And, to the celestial gods, sacrifice an odd number, but an even number to the terrestrial. And the meaning of all these precepts, they would keep hidden from the vulgar. So in some of Numa's rules, the meaning is hidden, as for instance, don't offer to the gods wine from unpruned vines. Don't make a sacrifice without meal. Turn round as you worship, and sit down after worship. The first two rules would seem to teach that the subjection of the earth is a part of religion, and the worshippers turning round is said to be an imitation of the rotary motion of the universe. But I would rather think that the worshipper who enters a temple, since temples face the east and the sun, has his back towards the sunrise and therefore turns himself half round in that direction. And then wheels fully round to face the god of the temple, thus making a complete circle, and linking the fulfillment of his prayer with both deities. Unless indeed this change of posture, like the Egyptian wheels, darkly hints and teaches that there is no stability in human affairs, but that we must accept contentedly whatever twists and turns our lives may receive from the deity. And as for the sitting down after worship, we are told that it is an augury of the acceptance of the worshipper's prayers and the duration of his blessings. We are also told that, as different acts are separated by an interval of rest, so the worshipper, having completed one act, sits down in the presence of the gods in order that he may begin another with their blessing. But this too can be brought into agreement with what was said above. The law giver is trying to accustom us not to make our petitions to the deity when we are busy with other matters and in a hurry as it were, but when we have time and are at leisure. By such training and schooling in religious matters, the city became so tractable and stood in such awe of Numa's power that they accepted his stories though fabulously strange and thought nothing incredible or impossible which he wished them to believe or do. At any rate the story goes that he once invited a large number of the citizens to his table and said before them mean dishes and a very simple repast. But just as they began to eat, he surprised them by saying that the goddess with whom he consorted was come to visit him and lo, on a sudden, the room was full of costly beakers and the tables were laden with all sorts of meats and abundant furniture. But nothing can be so strange as what is told about his conversation with Jupiter. When the Aventine hill, so runs the tale, was not yet a part of the city, nor even inhabited but abounded in springs and shady dels, two demigods, pikes and faunus, made it their haunt. In other ways these divinities might be likened to satyrs or pans, but they are said to have used powerful drugs and practiced clever incantations and to have traversed Italy playing the same tricks as the so-called Edean dactilly of the Greeks. These demigods, Numa is said to have caught by mixing wine and honey with the water of the spring from which they were want to drink. When captured they dropped their own forms and assumed many different shapes presenting hideous and dreadful appearances. But when they perceived that they were fast caught and could not escape, they foretold to Numa many things that would come to pass and taught him besides the charm against thunder and lightning which is still practiced with onions, hair and sprouts. Some, however, say that it was not the imps themselves who imparted the charm but that they called Jupiter down from the heaven by their magic and that this deity angrily told Numa that he must charm thunder and lightning with heads of onions, asked Numa, filling out the phrase, of men, said Jupiter. Thereupon Numa, trying once more to avert the horror of the prescription, asked, with hair? Nay, answered Jupiter. With living, Sprats added Numa as he had been taught by Agiria to say, then the God returned to heaven in a gracious mood. Hilios, as the Greeks say, and the place was called Elysium from this circumstance and that is the way the charm was perfected. These stories, fabulous and ridiculous as they are, show us the attitude which the men of that time from force of custom took towards the gods and Numa himself, as they say, had such implicit confidence in the gods that once when a message was brought to him that enemies were coming up against the city, he smiled and said, but I am sacrificing. He was also the first, they say, to build temples to faith and terminus and he taught the Romans their most solemn oath by faith which they still continue to use. Terminus signifies boundary and to this god they made public and private sacrifices where their fields are set off by boundaries of living victims nowadays, but anciently the sacrifice was a bloodless one since Numa reasoned that the god of boundaries was a guardian of peace and a witness of just dealing and should therefore be clear from slaughter. And it is quite apparent that it was this king who set bounds to the territory of the city for Romulus was unwilling to acknowledge by measuring off his own how much he had taken away from others. He knew that a boundary, if observed, fetters lawless power and if not observed, convicts of injustice and indeed the city's territory was not extensive at first but Romulus acquired most of it later with the spear. All this was distributed by Numa among the indigent citizens. He wished to remove the destitution which drives men to wrongdoing and to turn the people to agriculture that they might be subdued and softened along with the soil they tilled. For there is no occupation which produces so keen and quick a relish for peace as that of a farmer's life where so much of the warriors daring as prompts a man to fight for his own is always preserved while the warriors licensed to indulge in rapacity and injustice is extirpated. Numa, therefore, administering agriculture to his citizens as a sort of peace potion and well pleased with the art as fostering character rather than wealth divided the city's territory into districts to which he gave the name of Paghi and in each of them he set overseers and patrols but sometimes he would inspect them in person and judging of the characters of the citizens from the condition of their farms would advance some to positions of honour and trust while others who were indolent and careless he would chide and reproach and so try to make them sensible. But of all his measures the one most admired was his distribution of the people into groups according to their trades or arts for the city was supposed to consist of two tribes as has been said although it had no consistency but was rather divided into two tribes and utterly refused to become united or to blot out its diversities and differences. On the contrary it was filled with ceaseless collisions and contentions between its component parts. Numa, therefore, aware that hard substances which will not readily mingle may be crushed and pulverized and then more easily mix and then, owing to the smallness of their particles, determined to divide the entire body of the people into a greater number of divisions and so by merging it in other distinctions to obliterate the original and great distinction which would be lost among the lesser ones. He distributed them accordingly by arts and trades into musicians, goldsmiths, carpenters, dyers, leather workers, couriers, braziers, and potters. The remaining trades he grouped together and made one body out of all who belonged to them. He also appointed social gatherings and public assemblies and rites of worship befitting each body and thus at last he banished from the city the practice of speaking and thinking of some citizens as Sabines and of others as Romans or of some as subjects of Tatyus and others of Romulus so that his division resulted in a harmonious blending of them all together. Praise is also given to that measure of his whereby the law permitting fathers to sell their sons was amended. He made an exception of married sons provided they had married with the consent and approval of their fathers for he thought it a hard thing that a woman who had married a man whom she thought free should find herself living with a slave. He applied himself also to the adjustment of the calendar not with exactness and yet not altogether without careful observation for during the reign of Romulus they had been irrational and irregular in their fixing of the months reckoning some at less than 20 days some at 35 and some at more and they had no idea of the inequality in the annual motions of the sun and moon but held to this principle only that the year should consist of 360 days but Numa estimating the extent of the inequality at 11 days since the lunar year had 354 days but the solar year 365 doubled these 11 days and every other year inserted after the month of February the intercalary month called independence by the Romans which consisted of 22 days this correction of the inequality which he made was destined to require other and greater corrections in the future he also changed the order of the months March which had been first he made the third month and January which had been the 11th under Romulus he made the first month February February the 12th and last thus became the second month as now but there are many who say that these months of January and February were added to the calendar by Numa and that at the outset the Romans had only ten months in their year as some barbarians have three and as among the Greeks the Arcadians have four and the Acarnanians six the Egyptian year had at first only a single month in it afterwards four although they inhabit a very recent country they have the credit of being a very ancient people and load their genealogies with a prodigious number of years since they really count their months as so many years that the Romans had at first only ten months in their year and not twelve is proved by the name of their last month for they still call it December or the tenth month and that March used to be their first month is proved by the sequence after it for the fifth month after it used to be called quintilus the sixth sextilus and so on with the rest therefore when they placed January and February before March they were guilty of naming the above mentioned month quintilus or fifth but counting it seventh and besides it was reasonable that March which is consecrate to Mars should be put in the first place by Romulus since this month is named after Aphrodite in it they sacrificed to the goddess and on its first day the women bathed with myrtle garlands on their heads some however say that April with its smooth pea cannot be derived from Aphrodite with its rough pH but that this month of high springtime is called April because it opens and discloses the buds in vegetation this being the meaning of the word Aperio the next month in order is called May from Maya the mother of Mercury to whom it is sacred and June is so named from Juno there are some however who say that these months get their name from an age older and younger for Majores is their name for the elder Juniores for the younger men in this erythmetical position in the list the fifth Quintillus the sixth Sextillus and so on September October November and December afterwards the fifth month was named Julius from Julius Caesar the conqueror of Pompey and the sixth month Augustus from the second Caesar who is given that title the seventh and eighth months bore for a short time which the emperor Domitian gave them but when he was slain they resumed their old titles of September and October only the last two months November and December preserved the names derived from their position in the list just as they were at the outset of the months which were added or transposed by Numa February must have something to do with purification of the word and in this month they make offerings to the dead and celebrate the festival of the Lupercalia which in most of its features resembles a purification the first month January is so named from Janus and I think that March which is named from Mars was moved by Numa from its place at the head of the months because he wished in every case that martial influences should yield precedence to civil and political for this Janus in remote antiquity whether he was a demigod or a king was a patron of civil and social order and is said to have lifted human life out of its bestial and savage state for this reason he is represented with two faces implying that he brought men's lives out of one sort and condition into another which they call the gates of war for the temple always stands open in time of war but is closed when peace has come the latter was a difficult matter and it rarely happened since the realm was always engaged in some war as its increasing size brought it into collision with the barbarous nations which encompassed it round about but in the time of Augustus Caesar it was closed after he had overthrown Anton when Marcus Antilius and Titus Manlius were consuls it was closed a short time then war broke out again at once and it was opened during the reign of Numa however it was not seen open for a single day but remained shut for the space of 43 years together so complete and universal was the cessation of war for not only was the Roman people softened and charmed by the righteousness and mildness of their king but also the cities round about as if some cooling breeze or salubrious wind were wafted upon them from Rome began to experience a change of temper and all of them were filled with longing desire to have good government to be at peace to till the earth to rear their children in quiet and to worship the gods festivals and feasts hospitalities and friendly converse indiscuously and without fear these prevailed throughout Italy while honor and justice flowed into all hearts from the wisdom of Numa as from a fountain and the calm serenity of his spirit diffused itself abroad thus even the hyperboles of the poets fall short of picturing the state of man in those days and on the iron bound shield handles lie the tawny spiders webs and rust now subdues the sharp pointed spears and two edged swords no longer is the blast of brazen trumpets heard nor are the eyelids robbed of delicious sleep for there is no record either of war or faction or political revolution while Numa was king no more no hatred or jealousy was felt towards his person nor did ambition lead men against his throne on the contrary either fear of the gods who seemed to have him in their special care or reverence for his virtue or a marvelous felicity which in his days kept life free from the taint of every vice and pure made him a manifest illustration in confirmation of the saying which Plato many generations later ventured to utter regarding government namely to cease and disappear when by some divine felicity the power of a king should be united in one person with the insight of a philosopher thereby establishing virtue in control and mastery over vice blessed indeed is such a wise man in himself and blessed too are those who hear the words of wisdom issuing from his lips for possibly there is no need of any compulsion or menace in dealing with the multitude but when they see with their own eyes a conspicuous and shining example of virtue in the life of their ruler they will of their own accord walk in wisdom's ways and unite with him in conforming themselves to a blameless and blessed life of friendship and mutual concord attended by righteousness and temperance such a life is the noblest end of all government and he is most the king who can inculcate such a life and such a disposition in his subjects this then as it appears Numa was preeminent in discerning as regards his marriages and offspring histories are at variance some say that he had no other wife than Tatia and no other child than one daughter Pompilia others ascribe to him four sons besides Calpus and Memercus each one of whom was the founder of an honorable family from Pompon the Pomponii are descended from Pinus the Pinariii from Calpus the Calpurnii and from Memercus the Memercii who for this reason also had the surname of Regis or Kings but there is a third class of writers who accuse the former of paying court to these great families who have named them Lines of Descent from Numa and they say that Pompilia was not the daughter of Tatia but of Lucretia another wife whom Numa married after he became king however all are agreed that Pompilia was married to Marcius now this Marcius was a son of the Marcius who induced Numa to accept the throne that Marcius accompanied Numa to Rome and there was honored after Numa's death he competed for the throne with Hostilius and being defeated starved himself to death but his son Marcius the husband of Pompilia remained at Rome and begat Ancus Marcius who succeeded Tullus Hostilius in the kingdom this Ancus Marcius is said to have been only five years old when Numa died not a speedy nor a sudden death at a young age and a mild disorder as Piso writes he was something over 80 years old when he died his obsequies were as much to be envied as his life the peoples which were in alliance and friendship with Rome assembled at the rights with public offerings and crowns the senators carried his beer the priests of the gods served as its escort and the rest of the people with groans and lamentations not as though they were attending the funeral of an aged king but as though each one of them was burying some dearest relation taken away in the flower of life they did not burn his body because as it is said he forbade it but they made two stone coffins and buried them under the geniculum one of these held his body and the other the sacred books in his own hand as the Greek law givers their tablets but since while he was still living he had taught the priests the written contents of the books and had inculcated in their hearts the scope and meaning of them all he commanded that they should be buried with his body convinced that such mysteries ought not to be entrusted to the care of lifeless documents this is the reason we are told why the Pythagoreans also do not entrust their precepts to writing but implant the memory and practice of them in living disciples worthy to receive them and when their treatment of the abstruse and mysterious processes of geometry have been devolved to a certain unworthy person they said the gods threatened to punish such lawlessness and impiety with some signal and widespread calamity therefore we may well be indulgent on the basis of so many resemblances between them that Numa was acquainted with Pythagoras Anteus however writes that it was twelve pontifical books and twelve others of Greek philosophy which were placed in the coffin and about four hundred years afterwards when Publius Cornelius and Marcus Bibius were consuls heavy rains fell and the torrent of water tore away the earth and dislodged the coffins when their lids had fallen off one coffin was seen to be entirely empty without any trace whatever of the body but in the other the writings were found these Petilius who was then Praetor is said to have read and then brought to the senate declaring that in his opinion it was not lawful or proper that the writings should be published abroad but the books were therefore carried to the Commitium and burned it is true indeed of all Justin Goodman that they are praised more after they have left the world than before since Envy does not long survive them and some even see it die before them but in Numa's case the misfortunes of all the kings who followed him made his fame shine all the brighter for of the five who came after him the last was dethroned in exile and of the other four not one died a natural death three of them were conspired against and slain and Tullus Hustilius who reigned next after Numa and who mocked and derided most of his virtues and above all his devotion to religion declaring that it made men idle and effeminate turned the minds of the citizens to war he himself however did not abide by his presumptuous folly but was converted by a grievous and complicated disease and gave himself over to a superstition which was far removed from the piety of Numa his subjects too were even more affected with superstition as we are told when he died by a stroke of lightning end of Numa part three part 14 of volume one of Plutarch's Parallel Lives this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org volume one of Plutarch's Parallel Lives of the noble Greeks and Romans translated by Bernadotte Perrin one now that we have recounted the lives of Numa and Lycurgus and both lie clearly before us we must attempt even though the task be difficult to assemble and put together their points of difference for their points of likeness are obvious from their careers their wise moderation their piety their talent for governing and educating and they are both deriving their laws from a divine source but each also performed noble deeds peculiar to himself to begin with Numa accepted but Lycurgus resigned without asking for it the other had it and gave it up one was made by others their sovereign though a private person and a stranger the other made himself a private person though he was a king it was a noble thing of course to win a kingdom by righteousness but it was also a noble thing to set righteousness above a kingdom for it was virtue which rendered the one so famous as to be judged worthy of a kingdom and virtue too which made the other so great in the second place then it is granted that just as musicians tune their liars so Lycurgus tightened the strings at Sparta which he found relaxed with luxury and Numa loosened the strings at Rome where the tones were sharp and high but the task was more difficult in the case of Lycurgus for his efforts were to persuade the citizens not to take off their breast plates and lay aside their swords but to cast away gold and silver and abandon costly couches and tables not to cease from wars and hold festivals and sacrifices but to give up feasting and drinking and practice laboriously as soldiers and athletes where for the one accomplished all his ends by persuasion through the goodwill and honor in which his people held him but the other had to risk his life and suffer wounds and scarcely then prevailed Numa's muse however was gentle and humane and he converted his people to peace as often their violent and fiery tempers and if we must describe to the administrations of Lycurgus the treatment of the helits a most savage and lawless practice we shall own that Numa was far more Hellenic as a law giver since he gave acknowledged slaves a taste of the dignity of freedom by making it the custom for them to feast in the company of their masters during the Saturnalia for this too was one of the institutions of Numa as we are told by admitted to the enjoyment of the yearly fruits of the earth those who had helped to produce them some however fancy that this custom was a reminder of the equality which characterized the famous Saturnian age when there was neither slave nor master but all were regarded as kinsmen and equals too in general both like manifestly strove to lead their peoples to independence and sobriety as regards the other virtues the one set his affections more on bravery the other on righteousness unless indeed the different natures or usages on which the government of each was based required different provisions for it was not out of cowardice that Numa put a stop to the wage of war but to prevent the commission of injustice neither was it to promote the commission of injustice that Lycurgus made his people war like but that they might not suffer injustice accordingly in removing the excesses and supplying the deficiencies of their citizens both were forced to make great innovations and surely as regards the arrangement and classification of citizens under their respective governments Numa's was strongly popular and inclined to favor the masses resulting in a promiscuous and variegated commonality of goldsmiths musicians and leather workers but that of Lycurgus was very democratic relegating the mechanical arts into the hands of slaves and aliens but confining the citizens themselves to the use of the shield and the spear so that they were artificers of war and servants of Aries but knew and cared for nothing else than to obey their commanders and master their enemies for free men were not even permitted to transact business that they might be entirely and forever free but the whole apparatus of business was turned over to slaves and helots to collect the preparation and serving of their meals Numa, on the contrary made no such distinctions but while he put a stop to military repacity he permitted no other gainful occupation nor did he reduce the great inequalities resulting therefrom but left the acquisition of wealth wholly unrestricted and paid no attention to the great increase of poverty and its gradual influx into the city and yet it was his duty at the very outset as well as yet there was no general or great disparity of means but people still lived on much the same plane to make a stand against rapacity as Lycurgus did and take measurements of precautions against its mischiefs for these were not trifling but furnished the seed and source of the most and greatest evils of after times but as regards the redistribution of the land Lycurgus in my opinion is not to be centred for making it nor Numa for not making it the resulting equality was the foundation and base for his polity but in the other since the allotment of lands was recent there was no urgent reason for introducing another division or for disturbing the first assignment which probably was still in force three with regard to the community and marriage and parentage though both by a sound policy inculcated in husbands of freedom from selfish jealousy their methods were not entirely alike the Roman husband if he had a sufficient number of children to rear and another who lacked children could persuade him to the step relinquished his wife to him having the power of surrendering her entirely or only for a season but the Spartan while his wife remained in his house and the marriage retained its original rights and obligations might allow anyone who gained his consent to share his wife and many husbands as we have said would actually invite into their homes men whom they thought most likely to procure them handsome and noble children what then is the difference between the two customs we may say perhaps that the Spartan implies a complete indifference to the wife and to the jealous emotions which confound and consume the hearts of most men while the Roman as if with shame faced modesty makes a veil of the new betrothal that community of wives is really insupportable still further Numa's watchful care of young maidens was more conducive to feminine decorum but the treatment of them by Lycurgus being entirely unconfined and unfeminine has given occasion to the poets they call them phanomerides berthide so ibecus and revile them as mad after men thus Euripides says they leave their homes to mingle with the youths their eyes are naked flying free their robes for in fact the flaps of the tunic worn by their maidens were not sewn together below the waist but would fly back and lay bare the whole thigh as they walked Sophocles pictures the thing very clearly in these words and that young maid whose tunic still unsone lays bare her gleaming thigh between its folds her mayony and so their women it is said to begin with since they ruled their houses absolutely and besides on public occasions taking part in debate and the freest speech on the most important subjects but Numa while carefully preserving to the matrons that dignified an honorable relation to their husbands which was bestowed on them by Romulus when he tried by kindly usage to efface the memory of the violence stunned them nevertheless enjoined great modesty upon them forbade them all busy intermeddling taught them sobriety and accustomed them to be silent whine they were to refrain from entirely and were not to speak even on the most necessary topics unless their husbands were with them at any rate it is said that when a woman once pleaded her own cause in a forum the senate sent to inquire from an oracle what the event might pretend for the city and for their usual gentleness and readiness to obey there is strong evidence in the specific mention made of those who are less amiable for just as our greek historians record the names of those who first slew kinfolk or made war on their brothers or were parasites or matricides so the romans make record of the fact that Spurius Carvelius was the first to divorce his wife 230 years after the founding of Rome there being no precedent for it also that the wife of Pinarius Thelaea by name was the first woman to quarrel with her own mother-in-law Pagania in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus in such fitting and proper manner were marriages regulated by their law giver 4 further the practice of the two peoples in the matter of giving their young maids in marriage conforms to their education of them in general Lycurgus made them brides only when they were fully ripe and eager for it in order that intercourse with a husband coming at a time when nature craved it might produce a kindly love instead of the timorous hate that follows unnatural compulsion also that their bodies might be vigorous enough to endure the strain of conception and childbirth convinced as he was that marriage had no other end than the production of children the romans on the other hand gave their maidens in marriage when they were 12 years old or even younger and this way more than any other it was thought both their bodies and their dispositions would be pure and undefiled when their husbands took control of them they were therefore that one practice regarded nature more with children in view and the other regarded more the formation of character with married life in view but surely by his careful attention to boys by their collection into companies their discipline and constant association and by his painstaking arrangements for their meals and bodily exercise and sports Lycurgus proves that Numa was no more than an ordinary law giver for Numa left the bringing up of the use or necessities of their fathers a father might, if he wished make his son a tiller of the soil or a shipwright or might teach him to be a smith or a flute player as if it were not important that all of them should be trained with one and the same end in view from the outset and have their dispositions formed alike but rather as if they were like passengers on a ship each coming with a different object and purpose and each therefore uniting with the rest through fear of private loss but otherwise consulting only his own interests now it is not worthwhile to center the common run of legislatures who fail through ignorance or weakness but when a wise man has consented to be king over a people newly constituted implying to his every wish what should have been his first care unless it was the rearing of boys and the training of use so that there might be no confusing differences in their characters but that they might be molded as to walk harmoniously together in the same path of virtue this indeed was what helped Lycurgus to secure among other things the stability and permanence of his laws the Spartans took oaths to maintain these laws it is true but this would have availed little had he not by means of his training and education of the boys infused his laws as it were into their characters and made the emulous love of his government an integral part of their rearing the result was that for more than 500 years the sovereign and fundamental features of his legislation remained in force like a strong and penetrating die but that which was the end and aim of Numa's government namely the continuance of peace and friendship between Rome and other nations straight away vanished from the earth with him after his death the double doors of the temple had kept continuously closed as if he really had war caged and confined there were thrown wide open and Italy was filled with the blood of the slain thus not even for a little time did the beautiful edifice of justice which he had reared remained standing because it lacked the cement of education what then someone will say was not Rome advanced and bettered by her wars that is a question which will need a long answer if I am to satisfy men who hold that betterment consists in wealth luxury and empire rather than in safety, gentleness and that independence which is attended by righteousness however it will be thought I suppose to favor the superior claims of Lycurgus that whereas the Romans increased in power as they did after abandoning the institutions of Numa's time the Lassidimonians on the other hand just as soon as they forsook the ships of Lycurgus sank from the highest to the lowest place lost their supremacy over the Greeks and were in danger of utter destruction nevertheless this remains a great feature in Numa's career and one really divine that he was a stranger and yet was summoned to the throne where he changed the whole nature of the state by force of persuasion alone and mastered a city which was not yet in sympathy with his views and that he accompanied this without appeal unlike Lycurgus who led the nobles in arms against the commons but by his wisdom and justice won the hearts of all citizens and brought them into harmony end of part 14 of volume 1 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives part 15 of volume 1 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Graham Redman volume 1 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives of the noble Greeks and Romans translated by Bernadotte Perrin Solon part 1 Didymus the Grammarian in his reply to a Sclepiodes on Solon's tables of law mentions a remark of one Philocles in which it is stated that Solon's father was Euphorion contrary to the opinion of all others who have written about Solon for they all unite in saying that he was a son of excess estates a man of moderate wealth and influence in the city but a member of its foremost family being descended from Chaudras Solon's mother, according to Heraclides Ponticus was a cousin of the mother of Pisistratus and the two men were at first great friends largely because of their kinship and largely because of the youthful beauty of Pisistratus with whom, as some say, Solon was passionately in love and this may be the reason why in later years when they were at variance about matters of state their enmity did not bring with it any harsh or savage feelings but their former amenities lingered in their spirits and preserved their smoldering with a lingering flame of Zeus sent fire the grateful memory of their love and that Solon was not proof against beauty in the youth and may not so bold with love as to confront him like a boxer hand to hand may be inferred from his poems he also wrote a law forbidding a slave to practice gymnastics or have a boy lover thus putting the matter in the category of honourable and dignified practices and in a way inciting the worthy to that which he forbade the unworthy and it is said that Pisistratus also had a boy lover, Karmus and that he dedicated the statue of love in the academy where the runners in the sacred torch race light their torches Solon then after his father had impaired his estate in sundry benevolent charities as Hermipus tells us might have found friends enough who were willing to aid him but he was ashamed to take from others since he belonged to a family which had always helped others and therefore while still a young man embarked in commerce and yet some say that he travelled to get experience and learning rather than to make money for he was admittedly a lover of wisdom since even when he was well on in years he would say that he grew old ever learning many things and he was not an admirer of wealth but actually says that two men are alike wealthy of whom won much silver hath and gold and wide domains of wheat-bearing soil horses and mules while to the other only enough belongs to give him comfort of food and clothes and shoes enjoyment of child and blooming wife when these two come and only years commensurate therewith are his however in another place he says wealth I desire to have but wrongfully to get it I do not wish justice even if slow is sure and there is no reason why a good statesman should either set his heart too much on the acquisition of superfluous wealth or despise unduly the use of what is necessary and convenient in those earlier times to use the words of Heesiod work was no disgrace nor did a trade bring with its social inferiority and the calling of a merchant was actually held in honour since it gave him familiarity with foreign parts friendship with foreign kings and a large experience in affairs some merchants were actually founders of great cities as Protis who was beloved by the Gauls along the Rhone was of Marseilles Thales is said to have engaged in trade as well as Hippocrates the mathematician and Plato defrayed the expenses of his surgeon in Egypt by the sale of oil accordingly if Solon's way of living was expensive and profuse and if in his poems he speaks of pleasure with more freedom than becomes a philosopher this is thought to be due to his mercantile life he encountered many and great dangers and sought his reward therefore in sundry luxuries and enjoyments but that he classed himself among the poor rather than the rich is clear from these verses for often evil men are rich and good men poor but we will not exchange with them our virtue for their wealth since one abides all way while riches change their owners every day and he seems to have composed his poetry at first with no serious end in view but as amusement and diversion in his hours of leisure then later he put philosophic maxims into verse and into wove many political teachings in his poems not simply to record and transmit them but because they contained justifications of his acts and sometimes exhortations, admonitions and rebukes for the Athenians some say too that he attempted to reduce his laws to heroic verse before he published them and they give us this introduction to them first let us offer prayers to Zeus the royal son of Cronus that he may give these laws of ours success and fame in philosophy he cultivated chiefly the domain of political ethics like most of the wise men of the time and in physics he is very simple and antiquated as is clear from the following verses from clouds come sweeping snow and hail and thunder follows on the lightning splash by winds the sea is lashed to storm but if it be unvext it is of all things most amenable and in general it would seem that Thales was the only wise man of the time who carried his speculations beyond the realm of the practical the rest got the name of wisdom from their excellence as statesman the names usually given in the list of the seven wise men are Bias of Prayini Kyloon of Sparta Cleoboolus of Lindus Periander of Corinth Pitticus of Metellini Solon of Athens and Thales of Miletus they are all said to have met together at Delphi and again in Corinth where Periander arranged something like a joint conference for them and a banquet but what contributed still more to their honour and fame was the circuit which the tripod made among them its passing round through all their hands and their mutual declination of it with generous expressions of goodwill some Coans as the story goes were dragging in a net and some strangers from Miletus bought the catch as yet unseen it proved to contain a golden tripod which Helen on her voyage from Troy is said to have thrown in there when she called to mind a certain ancient oracle first the strangers had a dispute with the fisherman about the tripod and then their cities took up the quarrel and went at last to war where upon the Pythian priestess of Apollo told both parties in an oracle that the tripod must be given to the wisest man so in the first place it was sent to Thales at Miletus the Coans willingly bestowing upon him alone that for which they had waged war against all the Miletians together but Thales declared that Bias was a wiser man than he and the tripod was sent to Bias from Bias in his turn it was dispatched to another as wiser than he so it went the rounds and was sent away by each in turn until at last it came to Thales for the second time finally it was carried from Miletus to Thebes and dedicated to Ismenean Apollo Theophrastus however says that the tripod was sent in the first place to Bias at Prayini and in the second place to Thales at Miletus at the instance of Bias and so passed through the hands of all the wise men until it came round again to Bias and finally was sent to Delphi these then are the more common versions of the tale but some say that the gift thus passed from hand to hand was not the tripod now seen at Delphi but a bowl sent there by Cresus and others that it was a beaker left there by Bathikles in particular we are told of private intercourse between Solon and Anacasis and between Solon and Thales of which the following accounts are given Anacasis came to Athens knocked at Solon's door and said that he was a stranger who had come to make ties of friendship and hospitality with him on Solon's replying that it was better to make one's friendships at home well then said Anacasis do thou who art at home make me thy friend and guest so Solon admiring the man's ready wit received him graciously and kept him with him some time this was when he was already engaged in public affairs and compiling his laws Anacasis accordingly on learning what Solon was about laughed at him for thinking that he could check the injustice and rapacity of the citizens by written laws which were just like spiders webs they would hold the weak and delicate who might be caught in their meshes but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful to this Solon is said to have answered that men keep their agreements with each other when neither party profits by the breaking of them and he was adapting his laws to the citizens in such a manner as to make it clear to all that the practice of justice was more advantageous than the transgression of the laws but the results justified the conjecture of Anacasis rather than the hopes of Solon it was Anacasis too who said after attending a session of the assembly that he was amazed to find that among the Greeks the wise men pleaded causes but the fools decided them on his visit to Thales at Miletus Solon is said to have expressed astonishment that his host was wholly indifferent to marriage and the getting of children at the time Thales made no answer but a few days afterwards he contrived to have a stranger say that he was just arrived after a ten days journey from Athens when Solon asked what news there was at Athens the man who was under instructions what to say answered none other than the funeral of a young man who was followed to the grave by the whole city for he was the son as I was told of an honoured citizen who excelled all others in virtue he was not at the funeral of his son they told me that he had been travelling abroad for a long time oh the miserable man said Solon pray what was his name I heard the name the man said but I cannot recall it only there was great talk of his wisdom and justice thus every answer heightened Solon's fears and at last in great distress of soul he told his name to the stranger and asked him if it was Solon's son that was dead the man said it was whereupon Solon began to beat his head and to do and say everything else that betokens a transport of grief but Thales took him by the hand and said with a smile this it is oh Solon which keeps me from marriage and the getting of children it overwhelms even thee who are the most stout-hearted of men but be not dismayed at this story for it is not true such at any rate according to Hamipus is the story of Patechus who used to boast that he had Esop's soul however it is irrational and ignoble to renounce the acquisition of what we want for fear of losing it for on this principle a man cannot be gratified by the possession of wealth or honour or wisdom for fear he may be deprived of them indeed even virtue the most valuable and pleasing possession in the world is often banished by sickness and drugs and Thales himself though unmarried was nevertheless not wholly free from apprehension unless he also avoided having friends or relations or country on the contrary he had a son by his own adoption as we are told Sybisthus his sister's son for the soul has in itself a capacity for affection and loves just as naturally as it perceives understands and remembers it clothes itself in this capacity and attaches itself to those who are not akin to it and just as if it were a house or an estate that lacks lawful heirs this craving for affection is entered and occupied by alien and illegitimate children or retainers who along with love for them inspire anxiety and fear in their behalf so that you will find men of a somewhat rugged nature who argue against marriage and the begetting of children and then when children of their servants or offspring of their concubines fall sick and die these same men are racked with sorrow and lament abjectly some too at the death even of dogs and horses have been plunged into shameful and intolerable grief but others have borne the loss of noble sons without terrible sorrow or unworthy conduct and have conformed the rest of their lives to the dictates of reason for it is weakness not kindness that brings men into endless pains and terrors when they are not trained by reason to endure the assaults of fortune such men do not even enjoy what they long for when they get it but are filled with continual pangs tremors and struggles by the fear of future loss however we must be fortified not by poverty against deprivation of worldly goods nor by friendlessness against loss of friends nor by childlessness against death of children but by reason against all adversities this under present circumstances is more than enough on this head once when the Athenians were tired out with a war which they were waging against the Magarians for the island of Salamis they made a law that no one in future on pain of death should move in writing or orderly that the city take up its contention for Salamis Solon could not endure the disgrace of this and when he saw that many of the young men wanted steps taken to bring on the war but did not dare to take those steps themselves on account of the law he pretended to be out of his head and a report was given out to the city by his family that he showed signs of madness he then secretly composed some elegiac verses and after rehearsing them so that he could say them by rote he salad out into the marketplace of a sudden with a cap upon his head after a large crowd had collected there he got upon the herald stone and recited the poem which begins behold in me a herald come from lovely Salamis with a song in ordered verse instead of a harang this poem is entitled Salamis and contains a hundred very graceful verses when Solon had sung it his friends began to praise him and Pisistratus in particular urged and incited the citizens to obey his words they therefore repealed the law and renewed the war putting Solon in command of it the popular account of his campaign is as follows having sailed to Cape Colias with Pisistratus he found all the women of the city there performing the customary sacrifice to Demeter he therefore sent a trusty man to Salamis who pretended to be a deserter and bade the Magarians if they wished to capture the principal women of Athens to sail to Colias with him as fast as they could the Magarians were persuaded by him and sent off some men in his ship but when Solon saw the vessel sailing back from the island he ordered the women to withdraw and directed those of the younger men who were still beardless arraying themselves in the garments, headbands and sandals which the women had worn and carrying concealed daggers to sport and dance on the sea shore until the enemy had disembarked and the vessel was in their power this being done as he directed the Magarians were lured on by what they saw beached their vessel and leapt out to attack women as they supposed vying with one another in speed the result was that not a man of them escaped but all were slain and the Athenians at once set sail and took possession of the island others however say that the island was not taken in this way but that Solon first received this oracle from the god at Delphi the tutelary heroes of the land where once they lived with sacred rites propitiate whom the Asopian plain now hides in its bosom there they lie buried with their faces toward the setting sun there upon Solon sailed by night to the island and made sacrifices to the heroes Perifemus and Cycreus then he took five hundred Athenian volunteers a decree having been made that these should be supreme in the government of the island if they took it and setting sail with a number of fishing boats convoyed by a thirty-odd ship he anchored off the island of Salamis at a point of land looking towards Euboea but the Magarians in the city of Salamis hearing only an uncertain report of what had happened armed themselves hurriedly and set out for the place at the same time dispatching a ship to spy out the enemy this ship came near and was captured by Solon who put her crew in confinement then he manned her with the best of his Athenians and ordered them to sail against the city keeping themselves as much concealed as was feasible at the same time with the rest of his Athenians he engaged the Magarians on land and while the fight was still raging the crew of the ship succeeded in capturing the city now there seems to be a confirmation of this story in certain ceremonies afterwards established namely an attic ship would approach the island in silence at first then its crew would make an onset with shouts and cries and one man in full armor would leap out with a shout of triumph and run to the promontory of Cyradium to inform those who were attacking by land hard by that place is the temple of Enialius which was erected by Solon for he conquered the Magarians and all who were not slain in the battle were released on parole notwithstanding all this the Magarians persisted in their opposition and both sides inflicted and suffered many injuries in the war so that finally they made the Lacedemonians arbiters and judges of the strife accordingly most writers say that the fame of Homer favoured the contention of Solon for after himself inserting a verse into the catalogue of ships he read the passage at the trial thus Ajax from Salamis brought twelve ships and bringing stationed them near the Athenian hosts the Athenians themselves however think this an idle tale and say that Solon proved to the judges that Phileus and Euryceses the sons of Ajax became citizens of Athens made over their island to them and took up their residence in Attica one at Browron and the other at Meliti and they have a township named after Phileus namely Phileidae to which Pisistratus belonged they say too that Solon wishing to refute the claims of the Magarians still further made the point that the dead on the island of Salamis were not buried after the Magarian but after the Athenian fashion for the Magarians bury their dead facing the east but the Athenians facing the west however Herius the Magarian denies this and says that the Magarians also turn the faces of their dead to the west and what is still more important than this he says that the Athenians use one tomb for each body whereas the Magarians like the early inhabitants of Salamis place three or four bodies in one tomb however they say that Solon was further supported by Sundrypithian oracles in which the god spoke of Salamis as Ionian this case was decided by five Spartans Criterleodas, Amompharitas, Hipsecodas, Anaxilas and Cleomenes these events then presently made Solon famous and powerful but he was even more admired and celebrated among the Greeks for what he said in behalf of the temple at Delphi namely that the Greeks must come to its relief and not suffer the people of Cyra to outrage the oracle but aid the Delphians in maintaining the honor of the god for it was by his persuasion that the Amphictians undertook the war as Aristotle among others testifies in his list of the victors at the Pythian games where he ascribes the measure to Solon he was not however appointed general for this war as Evanthes the Samian says, according to Hermipus for Iskinnes the orator makes no such statement and in the records of Delphi it is stated that Alchmion and not Solon commanded the Athenians now this Silonian pollution had for a long time agitated the city ever since Megacles the archon had persuaded Silon and his fellow conspirators who had taken Sanctuary and the temple of Athena to come down and stand their trial they fastened a braided thread to the image of the goddess and kept hold of it but when they reached the shrine of the Orignes on their way down the thread broke of its own accord upon which Megacles and his fellow archons rushed to seize them the idea that the goddess refused them the rights of suppliance those who were outside of sacred precincts were stoned to death and those who took refuge at the altars were slaughtered there only those were spared who made supplication to the wives of the archons therefore the archons were called polluted men and were held in execration the survivors of the followers of Silon also recovered strength and were forever at variance with the descendants of Megacles at this particular time the quarrel was at its height and the people divided between the two factions Solon therefore being now in high repute interposed between them along with the noblest of the Athenians and by his entreaties and injunctions persuaded the men who were held to be polluted to submit to a trial and to abide by the decision of 300 jurors selected from the nobility Myron of Phyla conducted the prosecution and the family of Megacles was found guilty those who were alive were banished at the bodies of the dead were dug up and cast forth beyond the borders of the country during these disturbances the Megarians also attacked the Athenians who lost Nicaea and were driven out of Salamis once more the city was also visited with superstitious fears and strange appearances and the Seers declared that their sacrifices indicated pollutions and defilements which demanded expiation under these circumstances they summoned to their aid from Crete epimenides of Feastus who is reckoned as the seventh wise man by some of those who refuse Periander a place in the list he was reputed to be a man beloved of the gods and endowed with a mystical and heaven sent wisdom in religious matters therefore the men of his time said that he was the son of a nymph named Balti and called him a new curies and coming to Athens he made Solon his friend assisted him in many ways and paved the way for his legislation for he made the Athenians decorous and careful in their religious services and milder in their rites of mourning by attaching certain sacrifices immediately to their funeral ceremonies and by taking away the harsh and barbaric practices in which their women had usually indulged up to that time most important of all by sundry rites of propitiation and purification and by sacred foundations he hallowed and consecrated the city and brought it to be observant of justice and more easily inclined to unanimity it is said that when he had seen Munichia and considered it for some time he remarked to the bystanders that man was indeed blind to the future for if the Athenians only knew what mischiefs the place would bring upon their city they would devour it with their own teeth a similar insight into futurity is ascribed to Thales they say that he gave directions for his burial in an obscure and neglected quarter of the city's territory predicting that it would one day be the marketplace of Miletus well then Epimenides was vastly admired by the Athenians who offered him much money and large honors but he asked for nothing more than a branch of the sacred olive tree with which he returned home End of Solon Part 1 Recording by Graham Redman Part 16 of Volume 1 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Graham Redman Volume 1 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans Translated by Bernadotte Perrin Solon Part 2 But the Athenians, now that the Silonian disturbance was over and the polluted persons banished, as described relapsed into their old disputes about the form of government the city being divided into as many parties as there were diversities in its territory the hillmen favoured an extreme democracy the plain men an extreme oligarchy the shoremen formed a third party which preferred an intermediate and mixed form of government was opposed to the other two and prevented either from gaining the ascendancy at that time too the disparity between the rich and the poor had culminated as it were and the city was in an altogether perilous condition it seemed as if the only way to settle its disorders and stop its turmoil was to establish a tyranny all the common people were in debt to the rich for they either tilled their lands for them, paying them a sixth of the increase whence they were called hectimorioi and thetes or else they pledged their persons for debts and could be seized by their creditors some becoming slaves at home and others being sold into foreign countries many too were forced to sell their own children for there was no law against it or go into exile because of the cruelty of the moneylenders but the most and sturdiest of them began to band together and exhort one another not to submit to their wrongs but to choose a trusty man as their leader set free the condemned debtors, divide the land anew and make an entire change in the form of government at this point the wisest of the Athenians cast their eyes upon Solon they saw that he was the one man least implicated in the errors of the time that he was neither associated with the rich in their injustice nor involved in the necessities of the poor they therefore besought him to come forward publicly and put an end to the prevailing dissensions and yet Fenias the lesbian writes that Solon of his own accord played a trick upon both parties in order to save the city and secretly promised to the poor the distribution of land which they desired and to the rich validation of their securities but Solon himself says that he entered public life reluctantly and fearing one party's greed and the other party's arrogance however he was chosen Archon to succeed Philombratus and made mediator and legislator for the crisis the rich accepting him readily because he was well to do and the poor because he was honest it is also said that a certain utterance of his which was current before his election to the effect that equality bred no war pleased both the men of substance and those who had none the former expecting to have equality based on worth and excellence the latter on measure and count therefore both parties were in high hopes and their chief men persistently recommended a tyranny to Solon and tried to persuade him to seize the city all the more confidently now that he had it completely in his power many citizens too who belonged to neither party seeing that it would be a laborious and difficult matter to effect a change by means of argument and law were not reluctant to have one man the justice and wisest of all put at the head of the state furthermore some say that Solon got an oracle at Pytho which ran as follows take thy seat amid ships the pilot's task is thine perform it many in Athens are thine allies and above all his familiar friends chid him for being a verse 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 formally found this true of Tynondas and so had the Middelineans now that they had chosen Pythicus 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 Focus and if he says I spared my land my native land and unto tyranny and violence implacable did not set hand polluting and disgracing my frail fame I'm not ashamed in this way rather shall my name be set above that of all other men 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 Solon was a shallow thinker and a man of council void when the gods would give him blessings of his own will he refused when his net was full of fish amazed he would not pull it in all for lack of spirit and because he was bereft of sense I had certainly been willing for the power and boundless wealth and to be tyrant over Athens no more than a single day than to have a pouch flayed from me and my lineage blotted out 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 but those things wherein he hoped to find them open to persuasion or submissive to compulsion these he did combining both force and justice together as he says himself therefore when he was afterwards asked if he had enacted the best laws for the Athenians he replied the best they would receive now later writers observe that the ancient Athenians used to cover up the ugliness of things with auspicious and kindly terms giving them polite and endearing names thus they called harlots, companions, taxes, contributions the garrison of a city, its guard and the prison a chamber but Solon was the first it would seem to use this device when he called his cancelling of debts disperntment for the first of his public measures was an enactment that existing debts should be remitted and that in future no one should lend money on the person of a borrower some writers however and Androthion is one of them affirmed that the poor were relieved not by a cancelling of debts but by a reduction of the interest upon them and showed their satisfaction by giving the name of disperntment to this act of humanity and to the augmentation of measures and the purchasing power of money which accompanied it for he made the miner to consist of a hundred drachmas which before had contained only seventy-three so that by paying the same amount of money but money of a lesser value those who had debts to discharge were greatly benefited and those who accepted such payments were no losers but most writers agree that the disperntment was a removal of all debt and with such the poems of Solon are more in accord for in these he proudly boasts that from the mortgaged lands he took away the record stones that everywhere were planted before earth was in bondage now she is free and of the citizens whose persons had been seized for debt some he brought back from foreign lands uttering no longer attic speech so long and far their wretched wanderings and some who here at home in shameful servitude were held he says he set free this undertaking is said to have involved him in the most vexatious experience of his life for when he had set out to abolish debts and was trying to find fitting arguments and a suitable occasion for the step he told some of his most trusted and intimate friends namely Conan, Clineas and Hipponicus that he was not going to meddle with the land but had determined to cancel debts they immediately took advantage of this confidence and anticipated Solon's decree by borrowing large sums from the wealthy and buying up great estates then when the decree was published they enjoyed the use of their properties but refused to pay the monies due their creditors this brought Solon into great condemnation and odium as if he had not been imposed upon with the rest but were a party to the imposition however this charge was at once dissipated by his well-known sacrifice of five talents for it was found that he had lent so much and he was the first to remit this debt in accordance with his law some say that the sum was fifteen talents and among them is Polizilis the Rodion but his friends were ever after called Creocopidi or debt-cutters he pleased neither party however the rich were vexed because he took away their securities for debt and the poor still more because he did not redistribute the land as they had expected nor make all men equal and alike in their way of living as Lycurgus did but Lycurgus was eleventh in descent from Heracles and had been king in Lassidemon for many years he therefore had great authority many friends and power to support his reforms in the Commonwealth he also employed force rather than persuasion in so much that he actually lost his eye thereby and most effectively guaranteed the safety and unanimity of the city by making all its citizens neither poor nor rich Solon on the contrary could not secure this feature in his Commonwealth since he was a man of the people and of modest station yet he in no wise acted short of his real power relying as he did only on the wishes of the citizens and their confidence in him nevertheless he gave offence to the greater part of them who expected different results as he himself says of them in the lines then they had extravagant thoughts of me but now incensed all looker sconce at me as if I were their foe and yet had any other man he says acquired the same power he had not held the people down nor made an end until he had confounded all and skimmed the cream soon however they perceived the advantages of his measure ceased from their private fault-finding and offered a public sacrifice which they called Sizechtheia or dispersement they also appointed Solon to reform the constitution and make new laws laying no restrictions whatever upon him but putting everything into his hands magistracies assemblies courts of law and councils to fix the property qualification for each of these their numbers and their times of meeting abrogating and maintaining existing institutions at his pleasure in the first place then he repealed the laws of Draco all except those concerning homicide because they were too severe and their penalties too heavy for one penalty was assigned to almost all transgressions namely death so that even those convicted of idleness were put to death and those who stole salad or fruit received the same punishment as those who committed sacrilege or murder therefore Demides in later times made a hit when he said that Draco's laws were written not with ink but blood and Draco himself they say being asked why he made death the penalty for most offences replied that in his opinion the lesser ones deserved it and for the greater ones no heavier penalty could be found in the second place wishing to leave all the magistracies in the hands of the well-to-do as they were but to give the common people a share in the rest of the government of which they had hitherto been deprived Solon made an appraisement of the property of the citizens those who enjoyed a yearly increase of 500 measures wet and dry he placed in the first class and called them Pentecostia medimnoi the second class was composed of those who were able to keep a horse or had a yearly increase of 300 measures and they were called Hippodotillontes since they paid a night's tax the members of the third class whose yearly increase amounted to 200 measures wet and dry together were called Zugetai all the rest were called Thetes they were not allowed to hold any office but took part in the administration only as members of the assembly and as jurors this last privilege seemed at first of no moment but afterwards proved to be of the very highest importance since most disputes finally came into the hands of these jurors for even in cases which Solon assigned to the magistrates for decision he allowed also an appeal to a popular court when anyone desired it besides it is said that his laws were obscurely and ambiguously worded on purpose to enhance the power of the popular courts for since parties to a controversy could not get satisfaction from the laws the result was that they always wanted jurors to decide it and every dispute was laid before them so that they were in a manner masters of the laws and he himself claims the credit for this in the following words for to the common people I gave so much power as is sufficient neither robbing them of dignity nor giving them too much and those who had power and were marvelously rich even for these I contrived that they suffered no harm I stood with a mighty shield in front of both classes and suffered neither of them to prevail unjustly moreover thinking it his duty to make still further provision for the weakness of the multitude he gave every citizen the privilege of entering suit in behalf of one who had suffered wrong if a man was assaulted and suffered violence or injury it was the privilege of anyone who had the ability and the inclination to indict the wrong doer and prosecute him the law giver in this way rightly accustomed the citizens as members of one body to feel and sympathize with one another's wrongs and we are told of a saying of his which is consonant with this law being asked namely what city was best to live in that city he replied in which those who are not wronged no less than those who are wronged exert themselves to punish the wrong doers after he had established the council of the ariopagus consisting of those who had been archons year by year and he himself was a member of this body since he had been archon he observed that the common people were uneasy and bold in consequence of their release from debt and therefore established another council besides consisting of four hundred men one hundred chosen from each of the four tribes these were to deliberate on public matters before the people did and were not to allow any matter to come before the popular assembly without such previous deliberation then he made the upper council a general overseer in the state and guardian of the laws thinking that the city with its two councils riding as it were at double anchor would be less tossed by the surges and would keep its populace in greater quiet now most writers say that the council of the ariopagus as I have stated was established by Solon and their view seems to be strongly supported by the fact that Draco nowhere makes any mention whatsoever of ariopagus but always addresses himself to the epiti in cases of homicide yet Solon's thirteenth table contains the eighth of his laws recorded in these very words as many of the disfranchised as were made such before the archonship of Solon shall be restored to their rights and franchises except such as were condemned by the ariopagus or by the epiti or in the Pritonium by the kings on charges of murder or homicide or of seeking to establish a tyranny and were in exile when this law was published this surely proves to the contrary that the council of the ariopagus was in existence before the archonship and legislation of Solon for how could men have been condemned in the ariopagus before the time of Solon if Solon was the first to give the council of the ariopagus its jurisdiction perhaps indeed there is some obscurity in the document or some omission and the meaning is that those who had been convicted on charges within the cognizance of those who were ariopagites and epiti and Pritonies when the law was published should remain disfranchised while those convicted on all other charges should recover their rights and franchises this question however my reader must decide for himself among his other laws there is a very peculiar and surprising one which ordains that he shall be disfranchised who in time of faction takes neither side he wishes probably that a man should not be insensible or indifferent to the common wheel arranging his private affairs securely and glorying in the fact that he has no share in the distempers and distresses of his country but should rather espouse promptly the better and more righteous cause share its perils and give it his aid instead of waiting in safety to see which cause prevails that law too seems absurd and ridiculous which permits an heiress in case the man under whose power and authority she is placed by law is himself unable to consort with her to be married by one of his next of kin some however say that this was a wise provision against those who are unable to perform the duties of a husband and yet for the sake of their property marry heiresses and so undercover of law do violence to nature for when they see that the heiress can consort with whom she pleases they will either desist from such a marriage or make it to their shame and be punished for their avarice and insolence it is a wise provision too that the heiress may not choose her consort at large but only from the kinsmen of her husband that her offspring may be of his family and lineage conformable to this also is the requirement that the bride eat a quince and be shut up in the chamber with the bridegroom and that the husband of an heiress shall approach her thrice a month without fail for even though they have no children still this is a mark of esteem and affection which a man should pay to a chaste wife it removes many of the annoyances which develop in all such cases and prevents their being altogether estranged by their differences in all other marriages he prohibited dowries the bride was to bring with her three changes of raiment household stuff of small value and nothing else for he did not wish that marriage should be a matter of profit or price but that man and wife should dwell together for the delights of love and the getting of children Dionysius indeed when his mother asked him to give her in marriage to one of his citizens said that although he had broken the laws of the city by being its tyrant he could not outrage the laws of nature by giving in marriage where age forbade and so our cities should not allow this irregularity nor tolerate unions which age forbids and love does not invite which do not fulfill the function of marriage and defeat its object nay to an old man who is marrying a young wife any worthy magistrate or law-giver might say what is said to Philoctetes indeed poor wretch, thou art in fine state for marrying and if he discovers a young man in the house of a rich and elderly woman waxing fat like a cock-partridge in her service he will remove him and give him to some marriageable maid that wants a husband thus much then on this head praise is given also to that law of Solon which forbids speaking ill of the dead for it is piety to regard the deceased as satrid, justice to spare the absent and good policy to rob hatred of its perpetuity he also forbads speaking ill of the living in temples, courts of law, public offices and at festivals the transgressor must pay three drachmas to the person injured and two more into the public treasury for never to master one's anger is a mark of intemperance and lack of training but always to do so is difficult and for some impossible and a law must regard the possibilities in the case if its maker wishes to punish a few to some purpose and not many to no purpose he was highly esteemed also for his law concerning wills before his time no will could be made but the entire estate of the deceased must remain in his family whereas he, by permitting a man who had no children to give his property to whom he wished ranked friendship above kinship and favour above necessity and made a man's possessions his own property on the other hand he did not permit all manner of gifts without restriction or restraint but only those which were not made under the influence of sickness or drugs or imprisonment or when a man was the victim of compulsion or yielded to the persuasions of his wife he thought very rightly and properly that being persuaded into wrong was no better than being forced into it and he placed deceit and compulsion gratification and affliction in one and the same category believing that both were alike able to pervert a man's reason he also subjected the public appearances of the women, their mourning and their festivals to a law which did away with disorder and license when they went out they were not to wear more than three garments they were not to carry more than an obel's worth of food or drink nor a penny or more than a cubit high and they were not to travel about by night unless they rode in a wagon with a lamp to light their way laceration of the flesh by mourners and the use of set lamentations and the bewailing of anyone at the funeral ceremonies of another he forbade the sacrifice of a nox at the grave was not permitted nor the burial with the dead of more than three changes of braiment nor the visiting of other tombs than those of their own family except at the time of interment most of these practices are also forbidden by our laws but ours contain the additional proviso that such offenders shall be punished by the board of censors for women because they indulge in unmanly and effeminate extravagances of sorrow when they mourn observing that the city was getting full of people who were constantly streaming into Attica from all quarters for greater security of living and that most of the country was unfruitful and worthless and that seafaring men are not wont to import goods for those who have nothing to give them in exchange he turned the attention of the citizens to the arts of manufacture and enacted a law that no son who had not been taught a trade should be compelled to support his father it was well enough for Lycurgus whose city was free from swarms of strangers and whose country was, in the words of Euripides, for many large, for twice as many more than large and because above all that country was flooded with a multitude of helots whom it was better not to leave in idleness but to keep down by continual hardships and toil it was well enough for him to set his citizens free from laborious and mechanical occupations and confine their thoughts to arms giving them this one trade to learn and practice but Solon adapting his laws to the situation rather than the situation to his laws and observing that the land could give but a mere subsistence to those who tilled it and was incapable of supporting an unoccupied and leisured multitude gave dignity to all the trades and ordered the council of the Areopagus to examine into every man's means of livelihood and chastise those who had no occupation but that provision of his was yet more severe which as Heraclides Ponticus informs us relieved the sons who were born out of wedlock from the necessity of supporting their fathers at all for he that avoids the honorable state of marriage clearly takes a woman to himself not for the sake of children but of pleasure and he has his reward in that he robs himself of all right to upgrade his sons for neglecting him since he has made their very existence a reproach to them End of Solon Part 2 Recording by Graham Redman