SOLON Solon Is Much More Famous As a Lawgiver Than As a Poet, but It Is Only the Latter That Will Be Emphasized Here, Except In

SOLON

Solon is much more famous as a lawgiver than as a poet, but it is only the latter that will be emphasized here, except in so far as historical details need be introduced in order to understand his poetry.

Date

Although neither the date of his birth nor of his death can be fixed with certainty, the year 594/93 is widely accepted as the date of his archonship. The Suda gives his floruit as the 47th Olympiad (592- 89), but adds that according to some it was the 56th (556-53). The former is close to the date of his archonship and the latter is manifestly wrong. Plutarch (Solon 32.3) cites two authorities for the date of his death, the one (Heraclides) claiming that he lived a considerable length of time after Pisistratus became tyrant (560), the other (Phanias) that he survived the beginning of the tyranny by less than two years. Diogenes Laertius (1.61) states that he died at the age of eighty. It is probable, therefore, that he was born c. 640 or shortly after.

Poetry

Except for the Theognidean corpus, much of which is of doubtful authenticity, we have more of Solon's poetry than we have for any other elegist of the archaic period. There are extant 287 elegiac verses and in addition there are 42 iambic trimeters and 20 tro chaic tetrameters. Fr. 13 is also the longest elegiac poem (76 verses) we have before Hellenistic times. According to the Suda Solon composed 1tOt11J.tU ot' eA.eyeirov 0 LaAaJ.tl<; E1tt ypa(j>e'tat. Urto6ipca<; ot' EAeyeia~· Kat a.AA.a. Diogenes Laertius (1.61) is more explicit, attri buting to him 0'11tl11'YOPia<; Kal d.<; £au'tov uno9ftKm;, €A.eyda· Kat 'ta rtept 1:aA.aJ.Ll. vo<; Kat til<; ·Ae11vairov no .At 1:eia<; ... Kat latJ.f3ou<; Kat Ertq>oouc;. Nothing is known of his epodes and his trochaic tetra meters are probably included in the word i

5000 verses as the total of Solon's elegiac output, a number deemed excessive by many. Since several of Solon's fragments were in cluded in the Theognidean corpus, it is possible that Diogenes was referring to a gnomological collection which contained enough of Solon's poetry for the whole collection to be assigned to him. It is unclear how Diogenes distinguished between "public speeches" (Bru.LTryopta<;) and poems on the Athenian constitution. Both presu mably indicated poems on political conditions in Athens and on Solon's reforms. The term u7to9fl1Cat ("precepts") is used of many of the early elegists and suits a poem such as the long fr. 13 which begins with a self-address (cf. Diogenes' addition of ei<; £CL1J't6v). Finally, both the Suda and Diogenes mention a poem on Salamis, a poem which Plutarch (Solon 8.3) tells us contained 100 lines, but which is now preserved in only three short fragments totalling eight verses (frr. 1-3). Much of the background to the poem is suspect,I but in any event Athens was successful in capturing Salamis from the Megarians and Solon's poem (which Plutarch describes as xaptev'tro<; 1t

1 See Podlecki, Early Gr. Poets 122-24, and E. Stehle, Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece (Princeton 1997) 61-63. 2 In some sources the Delphic saying f..Ll)oev O.yav is attributed to Solon.