sts, in which he commands
the master of any dog that bit a man to deliver him up with a log about
his neck four and a half feet long-a happy device for men's security.
All his laws he established for an hundred years, and wrote them on
wooden tables or rollers, named axones, which might be turned round in
oblong cases; some of their relics were in my time still to be seen in
the Prytaneum, or common hall, at Athens. These, as Aristotle states,
were called cyrbes, and there is a passage of Cratinus the comedian,
By Solon, and by Draco, if you please,
Whose Cyrbes make the fires that parch our peas.
But some say those are properly cyrbes, which contain laws concerning
sacrifices and the rites of religion, and all the other axones. The
council all jointly swore to confirm the laws, and every one of the
Thesmothetae vowed for himself at the stone in the market-place, that,
if he broke any of the statutes, he would dedicate a golden statue, as
big as himself, at Delphi.
Now when these laws were enacted, and some came to Solon every day, to
commend or dispraise them, and to advise, if possible, to leave out, or
put in something, and many criticised, and desired him to explain,
and tell the meaning of such and such a passage, he, to escape all
displeasure, it being a hard thing, as he himself says,
In great affairs to satisfy all sides,
As an excuse for traveling, bought a trading vessel and, having obtained
leave for ten years' absence, departed, hoping that by that time his
laws would have become familiar.
His first voyage was for Egypt, and he lived, as he himself says,
Near Nilus' mouth, by fair Canopus' shore,
And spent some time in study with Psenophis of Heliopolis, and Sonchis
the Saite, the most learned of all the priests; from whom, as Plato
says, getting knowledge of the Atlantic story, he put it into a poem,
and proposed to bring it to the knowledge of the Greeks. From thence he
sailed to Cyprus, where he was made much of by Philocyprus, one of the
kings there, who had a small city built by Demophon, Theseus's son, near
the river Clarius, in a strong situation, but incommodious and uneasy
of access. Solon persuaded him, since there lay a fair plain below,
to remove, and build there a pleasanter and more spacious city. And he
stayed himself, and assisted in gathering inhabitants, and in fitting it
both for defence and convenience of living; insomuch that many flocked
to Philocy
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