The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [272]
20. ‘If we honour and commend such play as this, we shall soon find it in our business.’ And soon enough it was, as a trick played by Pisistratus showed.
21. For Pisistratus wounded himself, and was brought into the marketplace in a chariot pretending to suffer,
22. On purpose to stir up the people, as if he had been thus treated by his political opponents. A great many were enraged, but Solon, going up to him, said,
23. ‘This is a bad copy of Homer’s Odysseus; you do, to trick your countrymen, what he did to deceive his enemies.’
24. After this the people were eager to protect Pisistratus, and met in assembly, where a motion was put that Pisistratus should be allowed fifty clubmen to guard his person.
25. Solon, knowing that Pisistratus did this to have a private army with which to capture the government, opposed the motion,
26. But observing that the poor were tumultuously bent on gratifying Pisistratus, and the rich were fearful and wished to keep out of harm’s way,
27. He departed, saying he was wiser than some and stouter than others;
28. Wiser than those who did not understand Pisistratus’ plan,
29. Stouter than those who, though they understood it, were afraid to oppose it.
Chapter 27
1. Now, the people, having passed the law granting Pisistratus a bodyguard, did not watch how many he gathered around him; until he seized the Acropolis.
2. When that was done, and the city was in an uproar, Megacles, with all his family, at once fled;
3. But Solon, though he was now very old, and had none to back him, nevertheless came into the marketplace and made a speech to the citizens,
4. Partly blaming their inadvertency and timidity, and in part urging and exhorting them not to lose their liberty so tamely;
5. And likewise then spoke that memorable saying, that, before, it was an easier task to stop the rising tyranny,
6. But now the greater and more glorious action was to destroy it, when it was begun already, and had gathered strength.
7. But all being afraid to side with him, he returned home, and, taking his sword and shield, he brought them out and laid them in the porch before his door, with these words:
8. ‘I have done my part to maintain my country and my laws,’ and then he busied himself no more.
9. His friends advising him to flee, he refused; but wrote poems reproaching the Athenians for putting tyrannical power into one man’s hands.
10. Many warned him that the tyrant would take his life for this, and asking what he trusted to, that he ventured to speak so boldly, he replied, ‘To my old age.’
11. But Pisistratus so extremely courted Solon, so honoured him, obliged him, and sent to see him, that Solon gave him his advice, and approved many of his actions;
12. For the tyrant retained most of Solon’s laws, observed them himself, and compelled his friends to obey.
13. And Pisistratus himself, though already absolute ruler, being accused before the Areopagus of murder, came quietly to clear himself; but his accuser did not appear.
14. And he added other laws, one of which is that the maimed in the wars should be maintained at the public charge;
15. In this Pisistratus followed Solon’s example, who had decreed it in the case of a soldier named Thersippus;
16. And Theophrastus asserts that it was Pisistratus, not Solon, that made that law against laziness, which was the reason that the country became more productive, and the city more tranquil.
17. Thus Solon survived after Pisistratus seized the government; Heraclides Ponticus says that Solon lived many years after Pisistratus began his tyranny,
18. Whereas Phanias the Eresian says he lived less than two years after it began.
19. The story that his ashes were scattered about the island Salamis is too strange to be easily believed,
20. Yet it is told, amongst other good authors, by Aristotle the philosopher.
Chapter 28: Pericles of Athens
1. The greatest ruler of Athens in its greatest age was Pericles.
2. He was the leading citizen of that city for fifty-five years, and in that time he brought