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Plutarch’s Lives: Solon
Introduction
Plutarch, a Roman citizen and historian, wrote a book entitled Parallel Lives recounting the lives
of famous Greeks and Romans. Plutarch’s accounts are vital to modern historians, as they
provide historical accounts, and give us an idea of how Greeks and Romans wanted to remember
and interpret their own past. However, not everything that Plutarch wrote is true. He did not cite
his sources, even though he was writing hundreds of years after these people were alive. Read
the following excerpts from Plutarch’s Lives on the life of the Athenian lawmaker Solon and
answer the following questions.
On Solon’s parents and material background:
Didymus the grammarian, in the book about Solon's laws which he wrote in answer to
Asklepiades, quotes a saying of one Philokles, that Solon was the son of Euphorion, which is
quite at variance with the testimony of all other writers who have mentioned Solon: for they all
say that he was the son of Exekestides, a man whose fortune and power were only moderate, but
whose family was of the noblest in Athens. … Solon, finding that his father had by his
generosity diminished his fortune, and feeling ashamed to be dependent upon others, when he
himself was come of a house more accustomed to give than to receive, embarked in trade,
although his friends were eager to supply him with all that he could wish for. Some, however,
say that Solon travelled more with a view to gaining experience and learning than to making
money.
1. Why do you think it is important that Plutarch includes and explanation of Solon’s
wealth? Based on what we have learned in class, do you think Plutarch gives an accurate
picture of Solon’s family background?
On Reigniting the War with the Megarians
After a long and harassing war with the Megarians about the possession of the Island of Salamis,
the Athenians finally gave up in sheer weariness, and passed a law forbidding any one for the
future, either to speak or to write in favor of the Athenian claim to Salamis, upon pain of death.
Solon, grieved at this dishonor, and observing that many of the younger men were eager for an
excuse to fight, but dared not propose to do so because of this law, pretended to have lost his
reason. His family gave out that he was insane, but he meanwhile composed a poem, and when
he had learned it by heart, rushed out into the market-place wearing a small felt cap, and having
assembled a crowd, mounted the herald's stone and recited the poem which begins with the
lines—
"A herald I from Salamis am come,
My verse will tell you what should there be done."
The name of this poem is Salamis; it consists of a hundred beautifully written lines. After he had
sung it, his friends began to commend it, and Peisistratus made a speech to the people, which
caused such enthusiasm that they abrogated the law and renewed the war, with Solon as their
leader. The common version of the story runs thus: Solon sailed with Peisistratus to Kolias,
where he found all the women of the city performing the customary sacrifice to Demeter (Ceres).
At the same time, he sent a trusty man to Salamis, who represented himself as a deserter, and
bade the Megarians follow him at once to Kolias, if they wished to capture all the women of the
first Athenian families. The Megarians were duped, and sent off a force in a ship. As soon as
Solon saw this ship sail away from the island, he ordered the women out of the way, dressed up
those young men who were still beardless in their clothes, headdresses, and shoes, gave them
daggers, and ordered them to dance and disport themselves near the seashore until the enemy
landed, and their ship was certain to be captured. So the Megarians, imagining them to be
women, fell upon them, struggling which should first seize them, but they were cut off to a man
by the Athenians, who at once sailed to Salamis and captured it.
2. How did Solon convince the other Athenians do reignite the war with the Megarus?
3. How did Solon win the war with Megarus?
4. Do you think Homer and the Mycenaean Greeks (from the Iliad) would have been proud
of Solon’s tactics? Why or why not?