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 SOLOTHURN SOLYMAN II. 159 Athens prior to the first usurpation of Pisis- tratus (560), and amid violent dissensions was respected by all parties, but was unable to overrule the popular favor of his kinsman. The chief sources for the biography of Solon are the compilations of Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius. The extant fragments of his verses are usually contained in the collections of the Greek gnomic poets, and there is a separate edition of them by Bach (Leyden, 1825). SOLOTHURN (Fr. Soleure), a N. W. canton of Switzerland, bordering on Basel Country, Aar- gau, and Bern ; area, 303 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 74,713, of whom 62,078 were Roman Catho- lics. The Jura mountains occupy a part of the canton, and the remainder of the surface is level and fertile. It is traversed by the river Aar, a tributary of the Rhine. Gold, silver, iron, and lignite are found. The soil is remarkably fertile. A great deal of the sur- face is occupied by meadows and pastures, upon which large numbers of cattle are kept. The forests are extensive, and afford valuable timber. German is the language of the canton. The government was formerly aristocratic, but democratic principles have been largely intro- duced into it, especially by the revision of the constitution in 1841. SOLOTHURN, the capital, is at the foot of the Weissenstein, on the Aar, 17 m. N. by E. of Bern; pop. in 1870, 7,054. It has one of the finest cathedrals of Switz- erland, an arsenal with a large collection of ancient armor, and a museum containing a rich collection of Jura fossils. Till 1874 it was the seat of the bishop of Basel. SOLSTICE (Lat. sol, the sun, and stare, to stand), the period in the annual revolution of the earth round the sun when he is at that point in the ecliptic furthest north or south from the equator, or in other words reaches his greatest northern 'or southern declination. There are two solstices in the year : the sum- mer solstice, June 22, when the sun seems to traverse the tropic of Cancer ; and the winter solstice, Dec. 22, when he reaches his greatest southern declination, and appears to traverse the tropic of Capricorn. For several days be- fore and after the solstice there is but a slight variation in the sun's apparent declination, and so far as his motion from and toward the eclip- tic is concerned he may be said to stand still. The solstitial points are the two points of the sun's greatest elevation above or depression below the equator; and a circle .through these points and the poles of the earth is called the solstitial colure. SOLUBLE GLASS. See GLASS, SOLUBLE. SOLWAY FRITH, an arm of the Irish sea, which extends 40 m. K E. between England and Scotland, with a breadth varying from 24 m., between St. Bees Head in Cumberland and Rayberry Head in Kirkcudbrightshire, to 2 m. It receives on the English side the rivers Derwent, Ellen, Waver, Wampool, and Eden ; and on the Scottish side, the Urr, Kith, and Annan. Whitehaven, Maryport, and Allonby 751 VOL. xv. 11 are on the English side, and Annan and Kirk- cudbright on the Scottish. At ebb tide the broad sands which occupy a considerable por- tion of the frith are left dry. SOLYMM II., or Snleiman, called the MAGNIFI- CENT, an Ottoman sultan, born about 1495, died before Sziget in Hungary, Sept. 5, 1566. He was the son of Selim I., whom he succeed- ed in 1520. In 1521 he subdued the rebellion of Ghazali Bey in Syria, and in Hungary took Belgrade and other fortified towns. After an ' arduous siege he took Rhodes from the knights of St. John in 1522. 'He invaded Hungary a second time in 1526, won the decisive battle of Mohacs (Aug. 29), in which Louis II. of Hun- gary lost his life, overran a part of the king- dom, and recognized as king John Zapolya, who put himself under Solyman's protection. This embroiled the sultan with Ferdinand I. of Hapsburg, who was elected king by the major- ity of the Hungarians, and began the first of the Turkish wars against Germany. In 1529 Solyman took Buda, and appeared before Vienna with a vast army ; but after a number of assaults he retired with a loss of 80,000 men. A second attempt in 1532 was baffled by the resistance of Guns under Jurisics. In 1534 he invaded Persia, and subdued Armenia and Irak, with the cities of Tabriz and Bag- dad; in 1536 formed an alliance with Francis I. of France against Charles V., the brother of Ferdinand ; in the same year created the Bar- bary corsair Khair ed-Din or Barbarossa a Turkish admiral, and thus swept the Mediter- ranean and Italian coasts; conquered Croatia in 1537 by a great victory over the imperial- ists at Eszek ; and in 1538 made the conquest of Yemen. An attempt in 1537 on Corfu failed. Upon the death of John Zapolya in 1540, he supported his son John Sigismund, and continued the war with Ferdinand till 1547, when a truce humiliating to that prince was agreed upon. He now again invaded Persia, in 1548 gained a victory at Van in Ar- menia, and in 1549-'50 conquered the prov- inces of Shirvan and Georgia. Hostilities in Hungary were renewed in 1552. John Sigis- mund was established in Transylvania under Turkish protection, and Solyman's fleets under Piali, the successor of Khair ed-Din, gained a victory over the combined fleets of the empe- ror at Jerba on the African coast. A truce made in 1562 left the Turks in possession of their Hungarian conquests. In an attempt upon Malta in 1565, the whole naval force of Solyman was repulsed. In 1566 he again led a vast army to the invasion of Hungary, crossed the Drave, and laid siege to the fortress of Sziget, which was defended by a small garri- son under Zrinyi ; but a paroxysm of anger at the terrible repulses he encountered induced an attack of apoplexy, in which he died a few days before the last and fatal assault was made. Under this sultan the Ottoman empire attained its greatest military power, and it be- gan immediately to decline under his succes-