power, and both were protected by a firm shield[1]. But this feeling of culm satisfaction was not of long continuance, as Solon observed and soon expressed his opinion in elegies, "that the people, in its ignorance, was bringing itself under the yoke of a monarch (Pisistratus), and that it was not the gods, but the thoughtlessness with which the people put the means of obtaining the sovereign power into the hands of Pisistra- tus, which had destroyed the liberties of Athens[2]."
Solon's elegies were therefore the pure expression of his political feelings; a mirror of his patriotic sympathies with the weal and woe of his
country. They moreover exhibit an excited tone of sentiment in the
poet, called forth by the warm interest which he takes in the affairs of
the community, and by the dangers which threaten its welfare. The
prevailing sentiment is a wide and comprehensive humanity. When
Solon had occasion to express feelings of a different cast — when he
placed himself in a hostile attitude towards his countrymen and contemporaries, and used sarcasm and rebuke, he employed not elegiac, but
iambic and trochaic metres. The elegies of Solon are not indeed quite
free from complaints and reproaches ; but these flow from the regard
for the public interests, which animated his poetry. The repose which
always follows an excited state of the mind, and of which Solon's elegies
would naturally present the reflection, was found in the expression of
hopes for the future, of a calm reliance on the gods who had taken
Athens into their protection, and a serious contemplation of the consequences of good or evil acts. From his habits of reflection, and of reliance on his understanding, rather than his feelings, his elegies contained
more general remarks on human affairs than those of any of his predecessors. Some considerable passages of this kind have been preserved;
one in which he divides human life into periods of seven years, and
assigns to each its proper physical and mental occupations[3]; another in
which the multifarious pursuits of men are described, and their inability
to command success ; for fate brings good and ill to mortals, and man
cannot escape from the destiny allotted to him by the gods[4]. Many
maxims of a worldly wisdom from Solon's elegies are likewise preserved, in which wealth, and comfort, and sensual enjoyment are
recommended, but only so far as was, according to Greek notions, consistent with justice and fear of the gods. On account of these general
maxims, which are called (
Greek characters), sayings or apophthegms, Solon has
been reckoned among the gnomic poets, and his poems have been
denominated gnomic elegies. This appellation is so far correct, that the
gnomic character predominates in Solon's poetry ; nevertheless it is to
be borne in mind that this calm contemplation of mankind cannot
