Combining both force and justice together,1 as he says himself. Therefore when he was afterwards asked if he had enacted the best laws for the Athenians, he replied, ‘The best they would receive.’ Now later writers observe that the ancient Athenians used to cover up the ugliness of things with auspicious and kindly terms, giving them polite and endearing names.
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But those things wherein he hoped to find them open to persuasion or submissive to compulsion, these he did,
1 Solon, Frag. 36. 14 (Bergk)
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. 1.
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