Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/163

141 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GKEECE. 141 party and order its due share of power, he had not succeeded in satisfying any. In order to shame his opponents, he wrote some iambics, in which he calls on his censors to consider of how many citizens the state would have been bereaved, if he had listened to the demands of the contending factions. As a witness of the goodness of his plans, Solon calls the great goddess Earth, the mother of Cronus, whose surface had before his time been covered with numerous boundary stones, in sign of the ground being mortgaged : these he had succeeded in removing, and in restoring the land in full property to the mortgagers. This frag- ment is well worth reading*, since it gives as clear an idea of the poli- tical situation of Athens at that time, as it does of Solon's iambic style. It shows a truly Attic energy and address in defending a favourite cause, while it contains the first germs of that power of speecht, which afterwards came to maturity in the dialogue of the Athenian stage, and in the oratory of the popular assembly and of the courts of justice. In the dialect and expressions, the poetry of Solon retains more of the Ionic cast. In like manner the few remnants of Solon's trochaics enable us to form some judgment of his mode of handling this metre. Solon wrote his trochaics at nearly the same time as his iambics ; when, notwith- standing his legislation, the struggle of parties again broke out between their ambitious leaders, and some thoughtless citizens reproached Solon, because he, the true patriot, the friend of the whole community, had not seized the reins with a firm hand, and made himself monarch : " Solon was not a man of deep sense or prudent counsel ; for when the god offered him blessings, he refused to take them : but when he had caught the prey, he was struck with awe, and drew not up the great net, failing at once in courage and sense: for else he would have been willing, having: named dominion and obtained unstinted wealth, and having been tyrant of Athens only for a single day, afterwards to be flayed, and his skin made a leathern bottle, and that his race should become extinct t- ? ' The other fragments of Solon's trochaics agree with the same subject ; so that Solon probably only composed one poem in this metre. § 13. Far more nearly akin to the primitive spirit of the iambic verse was the style of Hipponax, who flourished about the 60th Olympiad (540 B.C.). He was born at Ephesus, and was compelled by the tyrants Athenagoras and Comas to quit his home, and to establish himself in another Ionian city, Clazomena?. This political persecution (which affords a presumption of his vehement love of liberty) probably laid the foundation for some of the bitterness and disgust with which he regarded mankind. Precisely the same fierce and indignant scorn
 * Solon, No. 28, Gainfurd. ffanerr,;. J Fragment 2'y, G..isfonl.