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NUMBER CXVIII.

by an ordinance for the remission of debts of a | he also bound the people by oath to their due certain description; this act raised a storm of observance; and having done all this with a opposition and abuse from all the rich and usuri- temper and prudence, particularly expressive of ous against his administration, and some who had his character, Solon took his leave of Athens, been his intimates took part in the faction, and and set out upon his travels into Egypt. began to persecute him in the bitterest manner, charging him with the meanness of exempting himself as a creditor from the conditions of the act; he soon turned the odium of the charge upon the contrivers of it, by giving public proof to the city that he himself had been the first who obeyed his own law, and remitted a considerable sum to his debtors; this proof of his disinterestedness as a creditor convinced his countrymen of his uprightness as a legislator, and he rose the higher in their esteem for the malevolent attack he had so fully repulsed: reason and public gratitude at length prevailed, and the voice of faction being put to silence, the whole care of the commonwealth was surrendered into his hands, to be regulated and reformed according to his wisdom and discretion.

Solon, though too magnanimous to accept the title of king, was too good a citizen to decline the trust; and now it was that he abrogated all Draco's sanguinary laws, except those that affected murderers: this, as I before observed, occurred in the course of the forty-sixth Olympiad; he arranged the people into four classes, according to the different proportions of their property; he erected the principal council of the Areopagites, with inferior courts for the administration of law and justice, and published his famous manifesto for rendering infamous all persons, who in civil seditions should remain spectators of their country's danger by a criminal neutrality; he enacted many wholesome regulations respecting marriages, tending to the increase of population; he suppressed libels, and made idleness punishable by law; he put under certain disabilities, parents who were convicted of having grossly neglected the education of their families, and restrained by sumptuary laws every species of public excess. Many more of his laws might be enumerated, if it were necessary to enlarge upon facts so generally known, but it will suffice to mention, that when he had completed his code, he bound the senators to the observance of what it contained by the solemnest oath he could devise, and causing his laws to be engraven on tables of wood, hung them in the public courts that no man might plead ignorance.

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The nature of this oath is curious: the senator was led up to a ponderous stone preserved in the forum; there the oath was publicly administered, and the obligation of it was, that he should dedicate a piece of gold to the temple of Delphi of equal weight with the stone if he was proved guilty of having violated his oath: not content with thus swearing the judges and senators to the faithful administration of his laws,

ALTHOUGH the wisdom and magnanimity of Solon are conspicuous in every action of his life, which history has transmitted to us, nothing is more worthy of our admiration and praise than the circumstance last recorded of his secession from Athens.

It is not necessary to follow him in his travels, in which, after some time spent in visiting Egypt, Cyprus, and Lydia, he obeyed the summons of his fellow-citizens and returned to Athens: that city during his absence had been distracted by furious and contending factions; Lycurgus headed one party, Megacles, son of Alemæon, another, and Pisistratus was leader of a third, in which was included nearly the whole inferior order of the people: all these parties nevertheless preserved a respect for their ancient benefactor and lawgiver, and he spared no pains in return to assuage and compose the disorders of the state, but in vain; age indeed had not yet deprived him of his mental faculties, but his corporeal ones were debilitated, and the crisis called for more activity than he was now capable of exerting; he could no longer speak in public, nor address the people in the forum as he was accustomed to do; he tried his influence separately and in private with the leaders of the several factions: Pisistratus, whose manners were of the gentlest kind, affected to receive the advice and counsels of Solon with great external respect, but ambition had taken too firm hold of his heart, and he had laid his plans too deep to be diverted from them by the patriotic discourses of this venerable citizen; the sagacity of Solon, penetrated his designs, and when he was convinced of his dissimulation, and saw the liberties of his country on the point of being overthrown by this artful demagogue, he came into open court in military array, and presented himself to the assembly ready to head the friends of their country, and expel Pisistratus by force of arms: the noble effort was too late, for the spirit of the people was lost, and all men seemed disposed to surrender themselves without resistance to the usurper. Solon, finding that he could not

rouse them to a consideration of their ancient dignity, nor inspire them with a becoming sense of the value of liberty, laid aside his arms, and suspending them at the door of the Court-house,

net, and which the Delphic oracle, upon reference of the controversy, had decreed to the wisest man of the age, was by general suffrage given to Solon; each person with becoming deference to the others, had severally declined the prize, but Solon was at length constrained to receive it by concurrent vote of the whole assembly.

took a short but pathetic leave of Athens, and once again retired into voluntary hanishment: whither is not distinctly ascertained; many pressing invitations were addressed to him from different parts, and I am inclined to think he accepted that of Croesus king of Lydia, and that he closed an illustrious life in extreme old age in the island of Cyprus. His ashes, by his Historians are not agreed upon the exact time express direction, were transported to his native of Solon's departure from Athens, and some island of Salamis, and there deposited. The maintain that he continued there till his death; Athenians erected his statue in brass, but l'isis- this is not probable; but the result of the actratus revoked his laws: the laws of Draco, counts puts it out of doubt that he remained notwithstanding their severity, were in execu- there, whilst there was any hope of composing tion for a longer period than the mild and pru- the disturbances of the state, and of restoring its dent ordinances of Solon. The people it is true tranquillity and freedom, under the prudent renever wholly forfeited their respect for this ex-gulations he had established when he was cellent person, but they were unworthy of him: even Pisistratus, amidst the struggles of ambition, offered no insult to his person, and every country, which his fame had reached, presented an asylum to the venerable exile.

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in readiness to receive a master in either of the contending partisans, who should prevail over his competitors.

But no sooner had this excellent citizen turned his back upon Athens than all these hopes perished, and universal despair took place; the degeneracy of the people became incurable, and As an orator, Solon stands high in point of no one was found with authority or zeal to merit, and first in order of time: as a poet, his oppose the approaching revolution: though Solon genius was sublime, various, and fluent; in was far in the decline of life, yet if there had subjects of fiction and fancy he never dealt; but been any public virtue subsisting, the liberty of though he chose his topics with the gravity of a Athens had not been lost without a struggle; statesman, and handled them with the fidelity but, although neutrality in civil commotions had of an historian, he composed with ardour, and been declared infamous and criminal by the laws never failed to fire his hearers with the recita- of Solon, the populace through despair or indosion of his poems; he is supposed to have repro-lence declined the contest, and held themselves bated the drama, but, if this be a fact, we may well conclude, that it was the old corrupt mask of Bacchus and the satyrs, of which he signified bis dislike, and in this he is warranted. In two expeditions, where he had a military command, he was eminently successful, and gained a high degree of glory: no statesman ever stood in times more perilous, no citizen ever resisted more alluring offers of ambition, and no legislator ever regulated a more disorderly community: though devoted to the study of philosophy, and a great master in the early science of the times, he mixed with cheerfulness in society, was friendly and convivial, and did not hold back from those tender ties and attachments which connect a man to the world, and which by some have been considered incompatible with a life devoted to wisdom, and sublime philosophy: strict in his morals as Draco, he was not like Whilst these party struggles were in suspense, him disposed to put criminals to death, whilst Pisistratus used an artifice for recommending there was any hope of conducting them by gen- himself to the people, which was decisive in his tle measures to repentance: his modesty was favour: one day on a sudden he rushed into the natural and unaffected, and though he was gen- forum, where the citizens were assembled, as if erally silent in company, his silence threw no he had been flying from assassins, who were in damp upon festivity, for it did not savour of pursuit of him, and presented himself to public sullenness, and he was known to be a friend to view defaced with wounds, and covered with the use of wine with freedom, but without ex-blood; he was mounted in his chariot, and the cess: at the meeting of the seven celebrated mules that drew him were streaming with blood sages (his contemporaries and colleagues in wis- as well as himself: the crowd flocked around dom) when they were entertained by Periander him, and in this situation, without wiping his at Corinth, the golden salver, which the Milesian wounds or dismounting from his chariot, he fishermen had dragged out of the sea in their harangued the forum; he told them he had that

Fortune and superior address at length decided the prize of ambition to Pisistratus and his party, for he possessed every qualification that could recommend him to the public; of insinuating manners, with a beautiful and commanding person, he was gallant, eloquent, and munificent; no man acquitted himself more gracefully as a public speaker, and when Pericles in after times alarmed the jealousy of the Athenians, the resemblance he bore to Pisistratus in eloquence, as well as in features, was so striking that he was universally called the Second Pisistratus, and the comic poets in their satirical allusions exhibited him on the stage by that name and character.

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instant escaped from the assassinating swords | Megacles, finding his party the weaker, invited of the nobles, who had cruelly attempted to Pisistratus to return to Athens, vainly imagindestroy the man of the people for his acti- ing he could lull his ambition, and secure him vity in opposing the exactions of sordid cred- to his interest by giving him his daughter Ca itors and usurious tyrants. His tears, his syra in marriage. Pisistratus accepted the sufferings, the beauty of his person now stream- terms, and obeyed the welcome recall, but it ing with blood, which he had spilt in their was in such a manner as might have put the cause, his military services at Megara, and his weakest man upon his guard; for his return protestations of affection to the people, in whose and entrance into Athens were accompanied by defence he solemnly protested a determination one of the most barefaced attacks upon public to persist or perish, all together formed such an credulity and superstition that is to be found in address to the passions, and presented such a the history of man. picture to the eye, that were irresistibly affecting.

This passed in the fifty-first Olympiad, when Phæa's marriage with Hipparchus soon conComias was archon,

his daughter Casyra in marriage; such alliances | after the fugitives to assure them of pardon and rarely answer the political ends for which they protection if they would go back to their homes are made: Pisistratus had several sons by his and resume their occupations in peace like good first wife, and having re-established himself in the citizens; Pisistratus was far advanced in age, tyranny after the manner we have been describ- and having carried this decisive action by straing, and bestowed his favourite Phæa upon his tagem, took every prudent precaution for estason Hipparchus, he took the daughter of Me-blishing his advantage by seizing the sons of the gacles as the condition of his contract with her father, but with a fixed determination against a second family, whose pretensions might come in competition with those of his children by his first marriage, in whose favour he wished to secure the succession, and who, both by age and capacity, were fit for government, whenever it should devolve upon them.

him in learning (says Cicero), or what orator was more eloquent or accomplished than Pisistratus, who first disposed the works of Homer in that order of compilation we have them at this very time?" De Orat. iii. 137.

furnished the great library at Alexandria with forty thousand volumes. This library was unhappily set on fire when Julius Cæsar found it necessary to burn his ships in the docks at Alexandria; so Plutarch states the case; but Aulus Gellius says they were set on fire accidentally by the auxiliary troops-non sponte, neque opera consulta, sed a militibus forte auxilia riis incensa sunt.-This misfortune was in a great measure repaired by the library which Marc Antony presented to Cleopatra, and by subsequent additions was increased to such an amount, that when it was at last irretrievably destroyed by the Caliph Omar, it consisted of seven hundred thousand volumes.

The institution of this library forms a signal | epoch in the annals of literature, for from this period Attica took the lead of all the provinces of Greece in arts and sciences, and Athens henceforward became the school of philosophers, the theatre of poets, and the capital of taste and elegance, acknowledged to a proverb throughout the world. From this period to the death of Menander the comic poet, an illustrious scene presents itself to our observation. Greece, with unbounded fertility of genius, sent a flood of This amazing repository of ancient science compositions into light, of which, although a was buried in ashes by the well known quibfew entire specimens have descended to pos- bling edict of that barbarous fanatic-“ If, said terity, yet these, with some fragments, and the caliph, these volumes contain doctrines conwhat may be further collected on the subject, formable to the Koran, then is the Koran alone from the records of the scholiasts and gramma-sufficient without these volumes; but, if what rians, afford abundant matter for literary dis- they teach be repugnant to God's book, then is quisition.

It is painful in the extreme to reflect upon the ravages of time, and to call to mind the host of authors of this illuminated age who have perished by the irruptions of the barbarous nations. When we meditate on the magnificence of the ancient buildings of Greece and Rome, the mind is struck with awe and veneration; but those impressions are of a very melancholy cast, when we consider that it is from their present ruins we are now measuring their past splendour in like manner from a few relics of ancient genius, we take a mournful estimate of those prodigious collections, which, till the fatal conflagrations at Alexandria, remained entire, and were, without comparison, the most valuable treasure upon earth.

it fitting they were destroyed."-Thus, with false reason for their judge, and false religion for their executioner, perished an innumerable company of poets, philosophers, and historians, with almost every thing elegant in art and edifying in science, which the most illuminated people on earth had in the luxuriancy of their genius produced. In vain did the philosopher John of Alexandria intercede to save them; universal condemnation to the flames was the sentence ignorance denounced against these literary martyrs. The flow of wit, the flights of fancy, and the labours of learning, alike contributed to feed the fires of those baths in which the savage conquerors recreated themselves after the siege. Need we inquire, when art and science were extinct, if darkness overspread the nations? It is a period too melancholy to reflect upon, and too vacant to record. History passes over

with this cutting recollection accompanying it, that in this ocean are buried many of the brightest monuments of ancient genius.

Pisistratus, as we have observed, established the first public library in Greece: Xerxes plundered Athens of this collection, much augment-it as over the chart of an ocean without a shore, ed by the literary munificence of Hipparchus and the succeeding archons: Xerxes was not, like the barbarians of the lower ages, insensible to the treasure he had possessed himself of: on the contrary, he regarded these volumes as the most solid fruits of his expedition, and imported them into Persia as splendid trophies of his triumph on his return. Seleucus, surnamed Nicanor, afterwards restored this library to Athens, with a princely magnanimity. The kings of Pergamus also became great collectors, and the Pergamæan library grew into much reputation and resort. But of all the libraries of antiquity, that collected at Alexandria by the Ptolemies of Egypt was much the most respectable. Athenæus says (p. 3) that Ptolemy Philadelphus purchased the Pergamæan library, and in particular the books collected by Nileus, principally consisting of the Greek dramatists, which, with what he got at Athens and Rhodes

It appears that, at the time Terence was writing, Rome was in possession of two thousand Greek comedies; of all which, væ barbaris! not one hath descended to us, except what are found in our scanty volume of Aristophanes, and these are partly of the old personal class. The gleanings of a few fragments from the grammarians and scholiasts, with the translations of the Roman stage, are now the only samples of the Greek comedy in its last purity and perfection. It is true that writers of the lower ages, and even the fathers of the Christian church, have quoted liberally from the new comedy of the Greeks; these fragments are as respectable for their moral cast, as for their elegant turn of expression; but what a poignancy do they give to our regret, when we