United States or Liberia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On the deck above the sailors were tumbling the cargo, and singing at their toil, but Glaucon never heard them. Flinging himself on a straw pallet, for the first time came the comfort of hot tears. Very early the Solon’s square mainsail caught the breeze from the warm southwest. The hill of Munychia and the ports receded.
Hippias kept up his rule for a few years longer, but he found all going against him, and that the people were bent on having Solon’s system back; so, fearing for his life, he sent away his wife and children, and soon followed them to Asia, B.C. 510. This—which is called the Expulsion of the Pisistratids—was viewed by the Athenians as the beginning of their freedom.
There were no unnatural laws as there were at Sparta; people might live at home as they pleased; but there were schools, and all the youths were to be taught there, both learning and training in all exercises. And whether it was from Solon’s laws or their own character, there certainly did arise in Athens some of the greatest and noblest men of all times.
“The Solon is dying, men,” he trumpeted through his hands. “To the boat! Save who can!” The pinnace set in the waist was cleared away by frantic hands and axes. Ominous rumblings from the hold told how the undergirding could not keep back the water. The pinnace was dragged to the ship’s lee and launched in the comparative calm of the Solon’s broadside.
“Perhaps!” Glaucon passed his hand across his eyes with a dreamy gesture. “Yet sometimes I almost say, ‘Welcome a misfortune, if not too terrible,’ just to ward off the god’s jealousy of too great prosperity. In all things, save my father’s anger, I have prospered. To-morrow I can appease that, too. Yet you know Solon’s saying, ‘Call no man fortunate till he is dead.’ ”
Word Of The Day