Solon was a shallow thinker and a man of counsel void;2
When the gods would give him blessings, of his own will he refused.
When his net was full of fish, amazed, he would not pull it in,
All for lack of spirit, and because he was bereft of sense.
I had certainly been willing, for the power, and boundless wealth,
And to be tyrant over Athens no more than a single day,
Then to have a pouch flayed from me, and my lineage blotted out.1
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[6]
And as for the ridicule which many heaped upon him for refusing the tyranny, he has written as follows;—
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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