ABSTRACT
Lawgivers in the tradition, as in this epigram of his own which Diogenes Laertios modestly quotes,1 are men of heavenly wisdom. That wisdom consists largely in ingenious, and often surprising, enactments whose content or attached penalties show great insight into human behaviour, and particularly into human weakness. A further section from Diogenes Laertios, containing laws little discussed in the literature on Solon, illustrates the typical wisdom of the lawgiver:
Solon reduced the rewards to athletes in the games, fixing a rate of 500 dr. for an Olympic victor and 100 for a victor at the Isthmian Games, and analogously for other games. He thought that it was naive to increase the rewards of these; only the rewards of those who died in war, whose children should be publicly reared and educated, should be increased. As a result many were anxious to appear as fine and noble warriors-like Polyzelos, Kynegeiros, Kallimakhos, and all the Marathonomakhoi; and also like Harmodios, Aristogeiton, Miltiades and ten thousand more. But athletes cost a lot when they are in training, and when they are victorious prove more of a bane than a blessing, crowned more for a victory over their homeland than a victory over their opponents. And when they get old, as Euripides says, ‘they go around like cloaks which have lost their nap’. Solon saw this and gave them only a moderate welcome. Excellent also is his provision that the guardian may not cohabit with the mother of the ward, and that the man who would inherit if the orphans died may not be guardian. And this one too, that a seal-cutter may not keep an impression of the ring he has sold. And if someone knocks out the eye of a man who has only one eye, he shall have both his eyes knocked out. A man who did not deposit something may not take it back, or else the punishment is death. Death is the penalty for a magistrate who is caught drunk.2
