Solon's poetry comes to us almost wholly in the elegiac couplet. This variation on the hexameter was the first invented form of stanza, and appears to have been hit upon in the seventh century B. C. It had for a time almost as many-sided currency as our own heroic couplet or rhymed pentameter; but was soon displaced in great degree by the iambic trimeter, which, like our "blank verse," was extremely close to the average movement of a colloquial prose sentence. This latter rhythm (which is also used by Solon) became the favorite form, in particular, for the dialogue of Attic drama. Hence, even in the fifth century, both hexameter proper and the elegiac had already come to be somewhat archaic and artificial. This is still truer of such verse in Latin; though Ovid wears the bonds of elegiac with consummate ease and grace. In modern speech it is all-but impossible. Longfellow composed, in his later years, clever renderings from several of Ovid's 'Tristia'; but the best isolated examples are Clough's preludes to the 'Amours de Voyage,' especially the verses on the undying charm of Rome:

"Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim transalpine,
Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare?

Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger,

Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in arms to the gate?» But he would be a bold adventurer who would attempt to make our Anglo-Saxon speech dance in this measure, while fast bound to the practical prosaic ideas of Solon's political harangues!

There is no satisfactory annotation or translation of Solon's fragments. They have been somewhat increased by citations in the recently discovered Aristotelian 'Constitution of Athens'; and would make a fruitful subject for a monograph, in which poetical taste, knowledge of history, and philological acumen, might all work in harmony.

[NOTE. The essentially prosaic character of Solon's thought makes him doubly ineffective in translation. He seems to be hardly represented at all in English versions. Neither of the experiments here appended satisfies the translator himself. Solon's iambics are not quite so slow and prose-like as our "blank verse.» On the other hand, the Omar-like quatrain into which Mr. Newcomer has fallen is both swifter and more ornate than the unapproachable elegiac couplet of the Greeks.]

DEFENSE OF HIS DICTATORSHIP

Y WITNESS in the court of Time shall be

MY

The mighty mother of Olympian gods,

The dusky Earth,- grateful that I plucked up The boundary stones that were so thickly set;

So she, enslaved before, is now made free.
To Athens, too, their god-built native town,
Many have I restored that had been sold,
Some justly, some unfairly; some again
Perforce through death in exile. They no more
Could speak our language, wanderers so long.
Others, who shameful slavery here at home
Endured, in terror at their lords' caprice,

I did, uniting right and violence;

And what I had promised, so I brought to pass.

For base and noble equal laws I made,

Securing justice promptly for them both.

Another one than I, thus whip in hand,

An avaricious evil-minded man,

Would not have checked the folk, nor left his post

Till he had stolen the rich cream away!

Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature' by W. C. Lawton.

SOLON SPEAKS HIS MIND TO THE ATHENIANS

EVER shall this our city fall by fate

Of Zeus and the blest gods from her estate,

So noble a warder, Pallas Athena, stands

With hands uplifted at the city's gate.

But her own citizens do strip and slay,
Led by the folly of their hearts astray,

And the unjust temper of her demagogues,-
Whose pride will tumble to its fall some day.

For they know not to hold in check their greed,
Nor soberly on the spread feast to feed;

But still by lawless deeds enrich themselves,
And spare not for the gods' or people's need.

They take but a thief's count of thine and mine;
They care no whit for Justice's holy shrine,-

Who sits in silence, knowing what things are done,
Yet in the end brings punishment condign.

See this incurable sore the State consume!
Oh, rapid are her strides to slavery's doom,

Who stirs up civil strife and sleeping war

That cuts down many a young man in his bloom.

Such are the evils rife at home; while lo,
To foreign shores in droves the poor-folk go,

Sold, and perforce bound with disfiguring chains,
And knowing all the shame that bondsmen know.

So from the assembly-place to each fireside
The evil spreads; and though the court-doors bide
Its bold assault, over the wall it leaps
And finds them that in inmost chambers hide.—

Thus to the Athenians to speak, constrains
My soul I fares the State where License reigns;
But Law brings order and concordant peace,
And fastens on the unjust, speedy chains.

She tames, and checks, and chastens; blasts the bud
Of springing folly; cools the intemperate blood;

Makes straight the crooked; - she draws after her
All right and wisdom like a tide at flood.

Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature by
A. G. Newcomer

From an article on Greek Elegy in British Quarterly Review, Vol. xlviii.,

page 87