Solon

Solon (640BC - 559 BC), the great Athenian law-giver, was one of the seven sages (the Seven Wise Men) of the ancient Greece. He is known to have reformed Athenian Constitution in 594 BC. He was born in Athens, was of royal degree, and kinsman of Pisistratus. Though he began his life as a trader, and in that capacity acquired a large experience of the world, but he soon turned his attention to political affairs, and showed such wisdom in the direction of them that he was elected archon in 594 B.C., and in that office was invested with full power to ordain whatever he might deem of advantage for the benefit of the State.

Accordingly, he set about the framing of a constitution in which property, not birth, was made the basis of the organisation, and the title to honour and office in the community. He divided the citizens into four classes, gave additional power to the assemblies of the people, and made the archons and official dignitaries responsible to them in the administration of affairs. When he had finished his work, he ordered the laws he had framed to be engraved on tablets and set up in a public place, then took oath of the people to observe them for ten years, after which he left the country and set out on travel.

At the end of the ten years he returned, to find things lapsing into the old disorder, and Pisistratus ready to seize the sovereignty of the State, whereupon he withdrew into private life, and died the subject of a tyrant at the age of eighty.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Nothing to excess.

-quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

• Call no man happy until he dies; he is at best but fortunate.

- quoted in Herodotus, Histories

• Laws are like spiders' webs: If some poor weak creature come up against them, it is caught; but a big one can break through and get away.

- quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

• Poets tell many lies.

-fragment

• No mortal is happy, and all men on earth who look upon the sun are wretched.
• If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
• Many bad men are rich, many good men are poor; but we shall not exchange wealth for honour, for money flits from man to man but honour abides forever.
• A boy who is still a child grows baby teeth and loses them all in seven years.

When God makes him fourteen, the signs of maturity begin to shine on his body.
In the third seven, limbs growing, chin bearded, his skin acquires the color of manhood.
In the fourth age a man is at a peak in strength—a sign in man of excellence.
The time is ripe in the fifth for a young man to think of marriage and of offspring.
In the sixth the mind of man is trained in all things; he doesn't try the impossible.
In the seventh and eighth, that is, fourteen years, he speaks most eloquently in his life.
He can still do much in the ninth but his speech and thought are discernibly less keen, and if he makes the full measure of ten sevens, when death comes, it will not come too soon.

Zoroaster