‘And if,’ he says, “I spared my land,1 From this it is clear that even before his legislation he was in high repute.
My native land, and unto tyranny and violence implacable
Did not set hand, polluting and disgracing my fair fame,
I'm not ashamed; in this way rather shall my name be set above
That of all other men.”
[5]
None of these things shook Solon from his resolution. To his friends he said, as we are told, that a tyranny was a lovely place, but there was no way down from it. And in his poems he writes to Phocus:—
1 Solon, Frag. 32 (Bergk).
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