The History of Antiquity, Vol. 3 (of 6)

806

Hamilton, "Asia Minor," p. 144, 145. Spiegelthal, "Monatsber. B. A." 1854, s. 700 ff. Olfers, "Die lydischen Königsgräber, Abhandl. B. A." 1858, s. 539 ff.

807

Herod. 1, 92. Nicol. Damasc. fragm. 65, ed. Müller.

808

Herod. 1, 25. Pausan. 10, 16, 1, 2. Athen. p. 210.

809

Aesch. "Pers." v. 45. Herod. 1, 29; 5, 101.

810

Fragm. 11, ed. Welcker.

811

Herod. 1, 170. Diog. Laert. 1, 25.

812

Herod. 1, 82, says: "as many as to Delphi, and like the Delphian presents."

813

Æl. "Var. Hist." 3, 26. Polyæn. "Strateg." 6, 50. If Ælian tells us that Pindarus was at that time tyrant of Ephesus, and had received the throne by inheritance, the statement is corrected by the tenor of the narrative in which Pindarus gives advice, not orders, to the Ephesians. The "tyranny" of Pindarus therefore was no more than a prominent position in the city, such as would fall to a man of the race of the Basilidæ, who carried the sceptre and wore purple. This does not set aside the fact that Melas, the father of Pindarus, had to wife a daughter of Alyattes: only I observe that Nicolaus of Damascus calls the Milesian, who had to wife a sister of Sadyattes, a descendant of Melas, the brother-in-law of Gyges.

814

Herod. 1, 27. That the Ionians did not render service in war is clear from the account which Herodotus gives of the war of Crœsus against Cyrus. Another point is more doubtful. Herodotus remarks, 1, 141, that the cities at the approach of Cyrus had "surrounded themselves with walls." If we take this in the strictest sense, we might draw the conclusion, that the cities had been compelled to throw down their walls when subjugated by Crœsus.

815

Herod. 6, 37.

816

Herod. 1, 69.

817

Herod. 6, 125. If Herodotus on this occasion has in his mind the embassy which Crœsus sent to Delphi in 551 B.C., Alcmæon must at that time have been at least 70 years old. But Crœsus had sent to Delphi earlier (Herod. 1, 85). Xenophon ("Cyr. inst." 7, 2, 7) represents Crœsus as sending to Delphi before he had any sons born to him, and again after the death of Attys. According to the Parian Marble, Ep. 41, 42, the first mission of Crœsus was 14 years before his overthrow, in the first year of his reign.

818

Pind. "Pyth." 1, 184.

819

The chronological difficulties which are brought against this meeting, and to which Plutarch refers, "Sol." c. 27, rest on the fact that Plutarch, like Herodotus, represents Solon as going to Sardis after the establishment of the Athenian constitution. According to this the meeting occurred in 593, or rather in 583 B.C. Either date is impossible: in 593 B.C. Crœsus was five years old, in 583 B.C. he was fifteen, and he did not ascend the throne till 563 B.C. The meeting with Crœsus therefore cannot be placed earlier than 560 B.C. when Solon left Athens after Pisistratus became tyrant. After 558 B.C. Crœsus could no longer count as the happiest of mortals, with whom everything went well, for in 558 B.C. Cyrus had already deposed Astyages, the connection of Crœsus. Herodotus says (1, 34, 46), that Crœsus had bewailed the loss of his son Attys for two years before the account of the fall of Astyages was brought to him; Attys must have died in 560 B.C. With this the exact account of Phanias of Eresus, a scholar of Aristotle (Suidas, Φανιάς), entirely agrees. He tells us that Solon did not live two complete years after Pisistratus had seized the tyranny, for Pisistratus became tyrant under the archonship of Comias; Solon died under the archonship of Hegestratus (Plut. "Sol." 32); the archonship of Comias falls in the year 559 B.C. Cf. Ælian, "Var. Hist." 8, 16. Diogenes Laertius, 1, 50, 62, remarks that Solon, after Pisistratus had become tyrant, went to Crœsus, to Cilicia and Cyprus; that he died in Cyprus in his eightieth year. If Suidas tells us that Solon went to Soli in Cilicia after Pisistratus became tyrant, this, like the founding of the city in Diogenes, is a confusion with Soli in Cyprus. Solon went to Cyprus, where he had been so well received between 583 and 573 B.C., where Soli, his own foundation, offered him a worthy refuge. As there can hardly have been direct communication between Athens and Soli, he went by way of the Ionian harbours. The general statement of Heracleides of Pontus, that Solon lived for a long time after the tyranny of Pisistratus (Plut. "Sol." c. 32), proves nothing against the precise statement of Phanias, and that Solon, as Plutarch says without giving his authority, died in Athens as the adviser of Pisistratus, is as much opposed to the character of Solon as to the statement that he died in Cyprus.

820

Schol. Pind. "Olymp." 7, 152; Aen. Tact. c. 17. Pausan. 2, 20, 3. Plut. fragm. 22, 7, ed. Dübner.