The Poems of Solon

What remains of Solon is a body of elegiac and iambic fragments, quoted by later writers, in which the lawgiver speaks in his own voice. He answers his critics, insists that he gave the people “as much privilege as is sufficient,” and warns that the wealth gained by injustice never goes unpunished. The longest pieces — the so-called Eunomia and the lines on the ages of man — fuse political argument with ethical reflection, and stand among the first poems to treat the life of a city as a moral whole.