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The order of the words ἄλλοι τε οἱ (not οἵ τε ἄλλοι) shows H. did not consider Solon a σοφιστής; he uses the word (ii. 49. 1) of the followers of Melampus and (iv. 95. 2) of Pythagoras. The word here has, of course, no bad sense, though the causal participle (ἀκμαζούσας πλούτῳ) reminds us of the reproach of venality made against the sophists. ὡς ἕκαστος, ‘on whatever grounds each might come,’ opposed to Solon's θεωρίη; the optative is distributive. Ephorus (Diog. Laert. i. 1. 40) said that all the Seven Sages except Thales met at the court of Croesus. H. knows nothing of this fiction. The truth of his story as to Solon and Croesus was early doubted, and it is now universally given up, on chronological grounds, though Plutarch (Sol. 27) declined to surrender a story ‘so famous and so becoming to the character of Solon’, because of χρονικοί τινες λεγόμενοι κανόνες. Solon's legislation is put in 594 B. C. (or perhaps in 591, Ἀθ. Πολ. 14. 1), while Croesus came to the throne in 560 (or later); hence the Athenian's travels belong to the generation before Croesus. Of the travels there is no reason to doubt; they probably were mentioned in Solon's poems (cf. v. 113. 2, the praise of Philocyprus at Soli). A similar chronological mistake occurs when H. makes Solon borrow a law from Amasis of Egypt (cf. 30. 1; ii. 177. 2 n.). Early attempts (e. g. by Clinton) to save the credit of H. are refuted by Grote (iii. 150-1). Were the general chronology of H. for the sixth century less weak (cf. App. XIV. 6), the story of this meeting might be defended by adopting the later form of the tradition (Diog. Laert. i. 2. 50-1), that Solon's travels were after the usurpation of Pisistratus, i. e. after 560; D. L. improves on H. by making Solon say that Croesus in all his glory was not arrayed like a pheasant and a peacock. This date is given in a fourth century (?) philosophical dialogue (Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iv. 72 seq.), which also synchronizes the tyrannies of Pisistratus and Periander (cf. v. 95 nn.); but this only proves that H.'s mistakes had gained wide acceptance. It is best to look upon the tale as a piece of popular philosophy, in which Croesus and Solon are introduced as illustrations, on ethical and not on historical grounds. The fact that H. tells us nothing of the laws of Solon is a good instance of the danger of the ‘argumentum ex silentio’; it is oversubtle to suppose, as some have done, that H.'s informants suppressed the constitutional work of Solon, in order to exalt the credit of the Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes as the founder of Athenian democracy. The explanation of the omission is probably that H. has no interest in constitutional history. πρόφασις includes the real as well as the ostensible cause. Translate ‘having set forth, as he said, to see the world’.
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