Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/106

 JK) HISTORY OF GREECK. writers or speakers, such as ThucydidGs, Isokrates, or Demosthe- nes. His poetry and his reputation became known throughout many parts of Greece, and he was classed along with Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Pittakus of Mytilene, Periander of Cor- inth, Kleobulus of Lindus, Cheilon of Lacedrernon, altogether forming the constellation afterwards renowned as the Seven wi.-o men. The first particular event in respect to which Solon appears as an active politician, is the possession of the island of Salamis, then disputed between Megara and Athens. Megarn was at that time able to contest with Athens, and for sometime to contest with success, the occupation of this important island, a re- markable fact, which perhaps may be explained by supposing that the inhabitants of Athens and its neighborhood carried on the struggle with only partial aid from the rest of Attica. How- ever this may be, it appears that the Megarians had actually es- tablished themselves in Salamis, at the time when Solon began his political career, and that the Athenians had experienced so much loss in the struggle, as to have formally prohibited a:iy citizen from ever submitting a proposition for its reconqtiest. Stung with this dishonorable abnegation, Solon counterfeited a state of ecstatic excitement, rushed into the agora, and there, on the stone usually occupied by the official herald, pronounced to the crowd around a short elegiac poem, 1 which he had previously composed on the subject of Salamis. He enforced ypon them the disgrace of abandoning the island, and wrought so powerfully upon their feelings, that they rescinded the prohibitory law : " Rather (he exclaimed) would J forfeit my native city, and be- come a citizen of Pholegandrus, than be still named an Athenian, branded with the shame of surrendered Salamis ! " The Athe- nians again entered into the war, and conferred upon him the command of it, partly, as we are told, at the instigation of 1 Plutarch, Solon, viii. It was a poem of one hundred lines, r ilVV TTTTOlTlfJ.ei>UV. Diogenes tells us, that " Solon read the verses to the people through the medium of the herald," a statement not less deficient in taste than in accu- racy, and which spoils the whole effect of the vigorous exordium, K9pv r/Atfoi dtf' inepTTjs Xa/la/iZvof, etc.