[243] See a case of such indifference manifested by the people of Argos, in Plutarch’s Life of Aratus, c. 27.
[244] Plutarch, Solon, 29; Diogen. Laërt. i, 59.
[245] Plutarch, Solon, 15.
[246] Herodot. i, 29. Σόλων, ἀνὴρ Ἀθηναῖος, ὃς Ἀθηναίοισι νόμους κελεύσασι ποιήσας, ἀπεδήμησε ἔτεα δέκα, ἵνα δὴ μή τινα τῶν νόμων ἀναγκάσθῃ λῦσαι τῶν ἔθετο· αὐτοὶ γὰρ οὐκ οἷοί τε ἦσαν αὐτὸ ποιῆσαι Ἀθηναῖοι· ὁρκίοισι γὰρ μεγάλοισι κατείχοντο, δέκα ἔτεα χρήσεσθαι νόμοισι τοὺς ἄν σφι Σόλων θῆται.
One hundred years is the term stated by Plutarch (Solon, 25).
[247] Plutarch, Solon, 26; Herodot. v, 113. The statements of Diogenês that Solon founded Soli in Kilikia, and that he died in Cyprus, are not worthy of credit (Diog. Laërt. i, 51-62).
[248] Plutarch tells us that several authors rejected the reality of this interview as being chronologically impossible. It is to be recollected that the question all turns upon the interview as described by Herodotus and its alleged sequel; for that there may have been an interview between Solon and Crœsus at Sardis, at some period between B. C. 594 and 560, is possible, though not shown.
It is evident that Solon made no mention of any interview with Crœsus in his poems; otherwise, the dispute would have been settled at once. Now this, in a man like Solon, amounts to negative evidence of some value for he noticed in his poems both Egypt and the prince Philokyprus in Cyprus, and had there been any conversation so impressive as that which Herodotus relates, between him and Crœsus, he could hardly have failed to mention it.
Wesseling, Larcher, Volney, and Mr. Clinton, all try to obviate the chronological difficulties, and to save the historical character of this interview, but in my judgment unsuccessfully. See Mr. Clinton’s F. H. ad ann. 546 B. C., and Appendix, c. 17, p. 298. The chronological data are these,—Crœsus was born in 595 B. C., one year before the legislation of Solon: he succeeded to his father at the age of thirty-five, in 560 B. C.: he was overthrown, and Sardis captured, in 546 B. C., by Cyrus.
Mr. Clinton, after Wesseling and the others, supposes that Crœsus was king jointly with his father Halyattês, during the lifetime of the latter, and that Solon visited Lydia and conversed with Crœsus during this joint reign in 570 B. C. “We may suppose that Solon left Athens in B. C. 575, about twenty years after his archonship, and returned thither in B. C. 565, about five years before the usurpation of Peisistratus.” (p. 300.) Upon which hypothesis we may remark:—