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Such being the system in the constitution, and the many being enslaved to the few, the people rose against the notables. [2] The party struggle being violent and the parties remaining arrayed in opposition to one another for a long time, they jointly chose Solon as arbitrator and Archon, and entrusted the government to him, after he had composed the elegy that begins:“I mark, and sorrow fills my breast to see,
Ionia's oldest land being done to death,—
”Solon Fr. 28in which he does battle on behalf of each party against the other and acts as mediator, and after this exhorts them jointly to stop the quarrel that prevailed between them. [3] Solon was by birth and reputation of the first rank, but by wealth and position belonged to the middle class, as is admitted on the part of the other authorities, and as he himself testifies in these poems, exhorting the wealthy not to be covetous:“Refrain ye in your hearts those stubborn moods,
Plunged in a surfeit of abundant goods,
And moderate your pride! We'll not submit,
Nor even you yourselves will this befit.1
”Solon Fr. 28And he always attaches the blame for the civil strife wholly to the rich; owing to which at the beginning of the elegy he says that he fears“Both love of money and overweening pride—,
”Solon Fr. 28 implying that these were the causes of the enmity that prevailed.
1 'Nor shall ye possess what ye have now without decrease' (Edmonds).
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 20, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1952.
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