rational view of the uncertainty of life, and who cannot enjoy the presence of their loved ones because of their constant agony for fear of losing them.  We should not make ourselves poor for fear of losing our property, nor should we guard ourselves against a possible loss of friends by making none; still less ought we to avoid having children for fear that our child might die.  But we have already dwelt too much upon this subject.

VIII.  After a long and harassing war with the Megarians about the possession of the Island of Salamis, the Athenians finally gave up in sheer weariness, and passed a law forbidding any one for the future, either to speak or to write in favour of the Athenian claim to Salamis, upon pain of death.  Solon, grieved at this dishonour, and observing that many of the younger men were eager for an excuse to fight, but dared not propose to do so because of this law, pretended to have lost his reason.  His family gave out that he was insane, but he meanwhile composed a poem, and when he had learned it by heart, rushed out into the market-place wearing a small felt cap, and having assembled a crowd, mounted the herald’s stone and recited the poem which begins with the lines—­

    “A herald I from Salamis am come,
    My verse will tell you what should there be done.”

The name of this poem is Salamis; it consists of a hundred beautifully written lines.  After he had sung it, his friends began to commend it, and Peisistratus made a speech to the people, which caused such enthusiasm that they abrogated the law and renewed the war, with Solon as their leader.  The common version of the story runs thus:  Solon sailed with Peisistratus to Kolias, where he found all the women of the city performing the customary sacrifice to Demeter (Ceres).  At the same time, he sent a trusty man to Salamis, who represented himself as a deserter, and bade the Megarians follow him at once to Kolias, if they wished to capture all the women of the first Athenian families.  The Megarians were duped, and sent off a force in a ship.  As soon as Solon saw this ship sail away from the island, he ordered the women out of the way, dressed up those young men who were still beardless in their clothes, headdresses, and shoes, gave them daggers, and ordered them to dance and disport themselves near the seashore until the enemy landed, and their ship was certain to be captured.  So the Megarians, imagining them to be women, fell upon them, struggling which should first seize them, but they were cut off to a man by the Athenians, who at once sailed to Salamis and captured it.

IX.  Others say that the island was not taken in this way, but that first of all Solon received the following oracular response from Apollo at Delphi: 

    “Appease the land’s true lords, the heroes blest,
    Who near Asopia’s fair margin rest,
    And from their tombs still look towards the West.”