Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/156

132 was cherished by his people with profound reverence. Whether his laws gave satisfaction at the moment, whether they were retained in the next generation, whether they were wholly the issue of his own reasoning or based in part on the work of a predecessor, — these are questions of minor moment compared with the undoubted fact that the spirit of Solon's life and character never wholly vanished from Athens. And if we are to explain this immortality of a great man's life, we can do so by applying to it a commonplace epithet, with a tinge of special meaning in this instance: it was eminently reasonable. In a famous passage Aristotle defines law as reason without passion; of this principle Solon was the personification. And his importance to us in following out the history, of the City-State lies in the fact that with him, in the development of the most perfect state of antiquity, begins the age of reason as applied to politics. Long ages of acquiescence had been followed by an age of discontent and questioning; under the guidance of the wise spirit of Solon's life, passion is eventually stilled, and reason takes its place. This benevolent influence is visible, not only in the gratitude of the Athenians, but in the true ring of Solon's own poems, in every story that is told of him by Herodotus, and in the life which, seven centuries later, the last of the true Greek