PlutarchFootnote ¹ is usually taken as seeing Numa Pompilius, Lycurgus, or Epaminondas coming closest to living the ideal of the philosopher-king and being the most virtuous of men.Footnote ² In his account of the life of Solon, the imperfection of Solon's statesmanship is contrasted unfavorably with Lycurgus's lawgiving; Lycurgus makes fewer practical compromises than Solon with his piecemeal reforms (Sol. 16.1–2). In the comparison between Solon and Publicola, Plutarch abandons his normal even-handedness to go so far as to declare Publicola “more fortunate and desirable to emulate” (eutuchês kai zelôtos) than Solon;Footnote ³ the explicit basis of this judgment is the fact that Solon “saw the dissolution of his own city.” Solon's failure, the rise to power of his friend Peisistratus and his subsequent establishment of a tyranny, has become the lens through which this life is now examined.Footnote ⁴ But when Plutarch writes his essays on politics and philosophy, he turns to Solon as a favorite example of a statesman and wise lawmaker.Footnote ⁵ In the dialogue on love, the Erotikos, while Hesiod is invoked as the poetic authority on erôs and Plato for philosophy, Solon represents politics.Footnote ⁶ In the Dinner of the Seven Wise Men, Plutarch portrays Solon as a philosophical paragon who sees through the deceitful charms of the things of this world. In his account of the life of Solon, Plutarch depicts the Platonic statesman in the midst of the real world of politics, a world where virtue does not always guarantee success, and where failure always threatens our happiness.

Within the outlines of Solon's life and his legislation, Plutarch demonstrates the political principles that he articulates in his other works. In particular, Solon's understanding of erôs as an inescapable force in human life and the role of sophrosunê in directing that particular force are identified as the root of his political wisdom. In his personal conduct, his laws, and his political actions he exhibits an attention to the training of all desire, but particularly of erôs. Plutarch highlights the difference between a Solonic and a Stoic conception of the proper treatment of the passions. Where the Stoics embraced a tyrannical rule of the passions by reason, Plutarch's Solon is more indulgent. Erôs has a positive function for Plutarch, which is missing in both the Stoics and the Epicureans, the rival schools of philosophy of his day.Footnote ⁷ According to Plutarch, desires that originate in erôs are the impetus to human companionship and to political power. Unlike the Stoics, who denigrate human desire and expect duty and reason will be enough to motivate statesmen, Plutarch perceives a dangerous error in attempting to remove erôs from the human soul. Only that original desire to possess gives birth to the aspiration to be a statesman. Without an embrace of some human desires, philosophers would lack sufficient motivation for all sorts of action and never experience true human happiness.

But this very same erôs that binds communities and inspires statesmen can lead very easily to destruction. It is the constant habituation of both the people through the laws and of the statesman through his own practice and meditation which staves off both instability and tyranny. Solon's laws serve as a model for the laws of the statesman who would instruct his people in virtue. His own example demonstrates the need for a statesman to evince both experience of erotic desire and a moderation of that same desire.

The moderation of erôs is essential between citizens sharing the city, and in balancing the longing of a ruler between a healthy political ambition and a dangerous and excessive desire for eternal power. But it is also essential to achieve true human happiness. Too little appreciation of erôs, or fear of it, forces some to abandon what is necessary for a happy life. Seeking to protect themselves from unhappiness, they abandon all hope of happiness in the political life.

In the following article, I will first examine the character, actions, and laws of Solon, and show how they illustrate his particular knowledge of erôs and moderation. I will then examine the conclusion of Solon's life, the rise of Peisistratus, and the parallel life of Publicola, showing that the failure of Solon in preventing tyranny in his own city is not indicative of flaws in Solon. It is an essential part of the lesson of Solon that virtue overcomes fortune by allowing us to bear ill-fortune, not to guarantee good fortune.

I

Most Lives of Plutarch begin with seemingly arbitrary comments upon the biographical subject's nature. These details give a feeling for the character involved, but rarely provide any particular elements of plot or foreshadowing directly for the life that is to come.Footnote ⁸ As a result, they contribute significantly to Plutarch's reputation as an unselective and uncritical assembler of every rumor and piece of gossip available about his subjects. D.A. Russell once claimed that Plutarch's writing style “resulted in a loose structure, near incoherence” and declared that in some Lives, there was “sometimes no scheme at all.”Footnote ⁹ But these details are particularly important in Plutarch's mind, for they form an account of the underlying motivation of the subject for entering politics.

In many cases, as in the life of Alcibiades, erôs figures prominently in the definition of the character.Footnote ¹⁰ As in Plutarch's erotic dialogues, erotic longing is truly a desire to possess, and the possession of an individual is only the protodesire for grandeur in politics. Although most clearly the case in exceptionally erotic and power-hungry men, erôs is no less important to the characters of models of restraint such as Cato, Cicero, Coriolanus, and Aristides.Footnote ¹¹ All noble minds are characterized by their relation to erôs. But erôs on its own can lead to either statesmanship or tyranny.Footnote ¹² Only when it is moderated by the simultaneous possession of sophrosuné does it becomes the former rather than the latter. This can be seen most clearly in a close analysis of the life of Solon (1.2).Footnote ¹³ At the very beginning of his account of Solon's life, Plutarch hints at his natural connection to Peisistratus through an otherwise anomalous account of their possible familial relation. According to Heraclides of Pontus, Solon's mother was the cousin of Peisistratus's mother. Plutarch immediately draws another connection between them: Solon supposedly had an erotic ardor for Peisistratus's beauty.Footnote ¹⁴

This first mention of Solon's erotic desires leads to a further and more general account of Solon's erotic character. Prefaced with a quotation from Euripides’ Bacchae, Plutarch notes both Solon's attraction to young men, evident in his poetry, and his attempts to restrain wanton eroticism, as exhibited in his laws prohibiting certain erotic pleasures to slaves. Ostensibly, these are only a set of minor details, of little consequence to the narrative of Solon's story, and quickly forgotten. Yet these details indicate what Plutarch takes to be the strength of Solon's character that allowed him to be the great nomothetés of Athens: an erotic nature that knows how to be restrained, and a restraint that is itself so moderate that it allows for pleasures in their proper sphere.Footnote ¹⁵

This nature is similarly expressed in Plutarch's account of Solon's treatment of money; Plutarch is at pains to defend Solon from accusations and slanders that he lived a life of luxury and extravagance. Such accusations would have come from any of those who thought that the enjoyment of material luxury was itself worthy of disdain.Footnote ¹⁶ But the primary sources of such complaints were contemporary with Plutarch, not Solon—the two dominant philosophical schools that Plutarch opposed so vociferously, the Stoics and Epicureans.Footnote ¹⁷ Plutarch first defensively claims that Solon did not hold wealth and status as the highest of goods, resting this claim on the evidence of Solon's poems and his demonstrated reluctance to take the easy route by using his family advantages to gain wealth or standing. Plutarch insists that Solon considered knowledge and learning as the highest of goods and thus recognized their supremacy over wealth and glory. Once the proper hierarchy of goods is established in the soul, one may properly pursue them in a way that is naturally moderate and prudent.

Such claims would not fully satisfy these critics, who were much more demanding. Solon not only enjoyed wealth, it was said, but pursued it like a common merchant; he thereby involved himself with low matters. But Plutarch contended that some mixing was not at all uncommon. “There is indeed no reason why a good political man should set his heart too much upon the grasping of wealth beyond the normal amount nor despise the use of what is necessary and suitable. … Even Thales is said to have engaged in trade, and so is Hippocrates the mathematician; and Plato is supposed to have disposed of some olive oil to provide a traveling allowance for his travels to Egypt” (Solon 2.4).Footnote ¹⁸

Despite the phrasing of these comments, as Plutarch admits, Solon's poems and his life both show an interest in money beyond that of necessity: “[H]e wrote of pleasure more like one who carries burdens than a philosopher. … [H]e demanded a degree of ease and enjoyment” (3.1). Solon's eventual retreat from the political life, which Plutarch contrasts unfavorably with Publicola's embrace of his political role,Footnote ¹⁹ is grounded in that love of ease, and Solon's particular lack of philotimia that makes his life so generally placid. Naturally averse to the struggles of politics and the contest for supremacy, throughout his life Solon has a tendency to avoid anger and difficulty. His preference for the private over the public is demonstrated repeatedly. While Plutarch defends him against any claim that he personally profited from his policy of debt-relief, his friends took advantage of knowledge of his plans (15.6).Footnote ²⁰ His friendship with Peisistratus took precedence over their political disagreements and even proved stronger than the concern of Solon for his city. Solon's retreat from the city is the retreat of a man who would rather not be bothered (25.4–5). In this respect, he bears out the Platonic dictum that a beautiful city can only come into being if those who rule have no wish to rule.Footnote ²¹ Still, his reluctance seems to have created the possibility of Peisistratus seizing control of his city, with only ineffectual resistance from Solon, who knew very well that a worse man would end up ruling.

Plutarch provides a defense of Solon's behavior in an account of his visit to Thales. He at first offers the story as it was traditionally told: Solon visited Thales and expressed surprise at his lack of a family. In order to educate him, Thales led Solon to believe that his son had died, so that he would experience the misery attendant on offering hostages to fortune.Footnote ²² The lesson was that wise men avoid even the most restrained of relationships, marriage and parenthood, lest they lose them. But Plutarch, singularly in this Life, criticizes the lesson of the story he has told in his own voice, a story he already undermined with his incredible account of its source: “[T]his then is what Hermippus said was told by Pataecus … who claimed to have the soul of Aesop” (6). Plutarch calls it “strange and low-born to be so afraid of losing things that one gives away what one ought to have.” Such a person would have to avoid wealth, prestige, and intelligence, all of which could be lost; and a man who wished to avoid them all would also have to forego “friendship, home, and fatherland” (7).Footnote ²³

Plutarch denies Thales was even the author of the original lesson. Thales, he notes, did not flee familial bonds; he adopted his own nephew. Plutarch delivers a long discourse that serves as the lesson of his own Aesopean fable:

Plutarch actually saw his most important contribution as working out the question of the relationship of active and philosophical life in the face of attacks upon the ideal of a Platonically philosophical politikos by the Epicureans and Stoics. In doing so, he distinguishes a Platonic position between the portrait of the human being offered by the Stoics and the Epicureans.

Plutarch's Plato is neither a Stoic in his demand that reason have despotic rule over the passions, nor an Epicurean in his retreat from politics to the greater bliss of the philosophical life; rather, Platonic, political philosophy forms the only possible basis for political action.Footnote ²⁵ While Plutarch develops most of his ideas in polemics against the Stoics and the Epicureans, in his account of Solon's life, he offers a subtle but concrete account of this alternative.Footnote ²⁶

The errors of Stoicism and Epicureanism are greatest where their otherwise innocuously mistaken doctrines lead to a retreat from public life, intentionally in the case of the Epicureans and unintentionally through the implications of Stoic errors.Footnote ²⁷ The Stoics, he says, require such sacrifice of personal desire that no motive for action remains, and their students invariably retreat from an unhappy political life of action to one of private life.Footnote ²⁸ They demand that philosophers participate in politics, but only from a motivation of an impersonal duty. The Stoics condemn the personal desires that seek fulfillment in politics. The Epicureans make the pleasant life they claim to pursue impossible since they deny the things that actually make life pleasant, the higher faculties of the soul and the political and familial life that fulfills them. According to them, human happiness could be found only in the pursuit of a pleasurable life that required a retreat from politics.Footnote ²⁹

The Stoic or Epicurean lesson offered by the Thales of the story—relinquish one's desires to prevent future unhappiness—is based on a mistaken view of humanity. These schools too readily fell into the same grave errors from opposite points: that erôs should be treated as itself the source of all suffering, that it must be controlled despotically, and that the proper way to train the soul is to relinquish all desires, so as to give the tyrant erôs nothing to feed on. Plutarch is sympathetic to the Stoic treatment of grief, as can be seen most directly in the letter of consolation to his wife on the death of his daughter. But he denies that the path of reason requires the expunging of those desires, even though their fulfillment requires the cooperation of chance and fortune, leaving the certainty of happiness outside of one's own hands. To war against these desires eliminates all of the goods essential for the human life. The only way to preserve one's happiness is not to try to avoid the vicissitudes of fortune, but to train one's mind in order to be able to preserve proper behavior and happiness through the tragic turns of life. Establishing rational control of one's own soul does not require the elimination or domination of the human passions; they can be preserved with restraint and allowed only their proper indulgence.Footnote ³⁰ Plutarch offers a revision of the lesson himself, placing the criticism where it belongs: not on the act of embracing goods that could be lost, but in the reaction to those inevitable losses life will bring:

In essence, a teaching that requires one to avoid giving hostages to fortune must always also be a teaching that one should avoid the political life for the private life. In politics, one immerses oneself in conflicts whose outcome is never within the bounds of human power to control. Such suggestions are not unique to the Epicureans, who made them most openly. The Stoics taught that, as political creatures, reason provided its own social commands: duty should make the stoic philosopher endure the evils of politics. But, though the Stoics taught that people should act in politics, Plutarch thought, not without reason, that this contradicted their treatment of the passions and, as a result, most Stoics embraced the private lives the Epicureans praised. Footnote ³²

Nor is Plutarch here objecting only to the Stoics and the Epicureans. Other followers of Plato also noted that Socrates himself made a point of his inactivity in politics.Footnote ³³ The oldest lessons of Platonism seem to be in accord with Stoic and Epicurean teachings that power, prestige, and influence should not be sought because of the misfortunes that they could lead to, while their goods all appear to be illusory.Footnote ³⁴ At times, even Plutarch himself seems to argue either that a quiet life is best or that it is the only life in which philosophy is possible.Footnote ³⁵ Those of Plutarch's heroes who are philosophically inclined statesmen often react to required retreats from the duties of politics with a relief that they can return to a philosophical life. Despite his repeated advocacy of the political life, such statements are more than errors easily refuted; they refer to the true incompatibility of leisure and political life that Plutarch recognized. His warmth and obvious preference for philosophy and study have led some to question his seeming lack of ambition, suggesting he actually preferred the sage's life.Footnote ³⁶

But in Plutarch's view, no man is capable of living without his city, and its preservation and rule require his heroes to take their parts in it. In this political action, they serve their fellow citizens; but they also serve their own ambition. This ambition may lead to unhappiness, but it is an inextricable part of human existence. What Plutarch does in this life of Solon is to defend the wise man who enters politics as not only acceptable from the view of philosophy, but admirable. Where a reading of Plato's dialogues might suggest that the erotic desires that incline one to pursue political power also lead to tyranny when indulged in any direction save the safe path of philosophy, Solon's example suggests a more attractive alternative.

II

Personal happiness necessarily involves the proper satisfaction of human desires, most importantly erotic ones. The correct understanding of the role of erôs is essential for politics. For Plutarch, successful political action and lawmaking require an accurate understanding of the nature of the human beings one shepherds. Only through properly understanding human nature can one grasp what is possible and what is desirable in politics. The same self-understanding that allows a statesman to rule himself allows him to rule others. Solon sees erôs properly, as a manageable but ineradicable force. He understands moderation as a virtue that must be cultivated constantly to restrain human desire. Because of this knowledge, he can rise to power, establish a constitution and laws that settle the conflicts of Athens, and deliver to it freedom and stability.

Like the Stoics, Plutarch and his fellow Platonists regarded the human soul as twofold, made of a rational part and a passionate part.Footnote ³⁷ Plutarch's major concern in his ethical writings was to describe the proper development of the rule of reason over the passions.Footnote ³⁸ For reason to rule over passions properly, it must develop the proper virtues, a traditional list of major and minor virtues handed down through the schools.Footnote ³⁹

In Plutarch's treatment, two elements predominate: the centrality of sophrosuné to the order of the soul and the role of erôs as something divine in the truest classical sense: erôs is a force that opens human beings to the highest potential of happiness and the most terrible dangers when unrestrained. The well-ordered and developed soul is capable of achieving a happy life, which for Plutarch requires both theory and action.Footnote ⁴⁰ Plutarch's dedication to the Oracle at Delphi led him to place the inscriptions at Delphi at the center of philosophical wisdom. “Know Thyself” and “Everything in Moderation” recur explicitly and implicitly throughout his corpus of essays as well as throughout the Lives.Footnote ⁴¹ These two phrases together are truly necessary to grasp the meaning of sophrosuné for Plutarch. According to Plutarch, eubolia (good counsel) is the source of all of the virtues; from it springs phronesis (practical wisdom), and this in turn fosters the development of sophrosuné (moderation), dikaiosuné (justice), and andreia (courage). Sophrosuné is “a kind of phronesis … that kind of eubolía and phronesis which makes men good among pleasures we call self-control (egkráteian) and moderation (sophrosuné) … in communal matters and political activities, we call it law-abidingness (eunomían) and justice (dikaiosuné).”Footnote ⁴²Sophrosuné has a central role in the development of the soul that the others lack. While the intellect and reason are “pure” and “good,”Footnote ⁴³ the passions require moderation before any choices or actions are even possible for a potential statesman.Footnote ⁴⁴ A ruler must first regulate his own soul before addressing the character of his own subjects.Footnote ⁴⁵ Moderation thus plays a central role in the actions of politics; Plutarch far more often talks about “moderating” factions than offering justice.Footnote ⁴⁶ It is the elimination of conflict and the growth of affection that Plutarch praises in politics, not the rendering to each ofhis own.Footnote ⁴⁷

Erôs is a two-sided force for Plutarch. In his Erotikos, an account reminiscent of the Phaedrus in most particulars, Plutarch's son presents his father as the author of his words and defends the divinity of erôs against accusations that some forms of love are improper.Footnote ⁴⁸ Through his son, Plutarch describes erôs as an affectionate and political impulseFootnote ⁴⁹ that can fill one with enthusiasm and divinity.Footnote ⁵⁰ Plutarch's insistence that erôs can be a good and that marriage should not be aphilein, unloving, is the central tenet that leads him to reject Stoicism, which fails to acknowledge the legitimate role of the passions.Footnote ⁵¹

At the same time, Plutarch's erôs is not always of the “heavenly” sort which directs the mind toward virtue.Footnote ⁵²Erôs can be a desire to possess and control rather than a loving affection, and when it seeks control, it sows destructive factions, as in the cases recited in the pseudo-Plutarchian erotikaì diegéseis. The primary question for Plutarch is the relationship of erôs to aphrodité, which he compares to that of the sun to the moon.Footnote ⁵³ The aphrodisiacal desires are only a secondary, pale reflection of erôs.Footnote ⁵⁴ The primary task of erôs is to sow affection (agapétikon), not pleasure (hedoné). Even aphrodité is meant to lead to a sunousia, to the formation of community;Footnote ⁵⁵ but it can also be an uncontrollable and divisive element. In fact, while rejecting Epicurean and Stoic condemnations of aphrodité, Plutarch is reluctant to approve it too strongly. He suggests that refraining from it for a year may be both philosophical and pious.Footnote ⁵⁶ One of the reasons that the elderly should participate in politics is that they have lost their taste for aphrodisiacal pleasures.Footnote ⁵⁷ What these desires require, even in marriage, is sophrosuné.Footnote ⁵⁸ When properly directed, it forms affection within the family and within the state, creating the sense of oneness where “mine” and “not mine” are the same, the essence of community.Footnote ⁵⁹Erôs needs to be tempered by “sober reason”; the true lover participates in both reason and passion.Footnote ⁶⁰ But erôs, like all the passions, must be educated and directed by necessity, not allowed untrammeled freedom.Footnote ⁶¹ We find this balancing in Plutarch's Solon, demonstrated both in his own character and in the character of the laws of the city he wrote.

Having completed the essential outline of Solon's character, Plutarch begins his account of that character being put into action: Solon's rise to eminence. The story of Salamis subtly indicates the continuity of theme in the way by which Solon entered politics, the issue that moved him. This was the possession of the island of Salamis, at the time in the hands of the Megarians. Plutarch notes that “Solon found this ill-repute too heavy to bear” (8). This longing for possession overtook both Solon and the whole of the young Athenian men, and Solon turned to the most erotic of arts, poetry, and wrote a poem that inflamed the passions of the Athenians for the isle of Salamis. Appearing “outside of reason” so as to avoid the law forbidding speaking of Salamis, Solon, overtaken by passion, stirred the souls of the Athenians to bring these desires to the top once again, knowing that this would mean engaging in war.

But Solon's rise to eminence was not founded upon military exploits alone. His political status was truly gained by his role as a judge, first in settling the dispute of the Cylonian affair and latter the conflict between the contending parties of Athenian society, the peoples of the Hills, the Plains, and the Coast. In both cases, Plutarch points to the central role of moderation in Solon's method of mediating disputes—rendering unto each unhappy party a suitable and partial fulfillment of their desire, but allowing no group to have all of what it wanted. This careful balancing avoided the attempt to determine the justice of particular claims and the fulfillment of those just claims alone to the exclusion of all others.Footnote ⁶² So in the Cylonian affairs, the archons were not allowed to escape judgment, as the nobility desired, but they were not judged by the mass of the people. Instead, only the wealthiest sat in judgment of their actions, a compromise which at least allowed the trial to go forward. Similarly in the dispute over debts that lay at the center of the civil factions of Athens, Solon drove a middle road between the redistribution of land that the poor demanded and the upholding of the rights of property that the rich required.Footnote ⁶³

In Plutarch's account, Solon's ability to convince the Athenians to accept this middle road rested as much upon what might be called sophistry as upon reason. But while Solon's supposed promises would seem to lead to resentment, neither side appears to have been disappointed by Solon's solutions.Footnote ⁶⁴ Plutarch tells us that Phanias of Lesbos described Solon as underhanded, promising each side exactly what they wanted, and that his success was at least partly built upon deceit. His remark that “equality does not cause a war” was ambiguous in just such a way that both sides could hear in it what they wanted to hear. But after the reforms, Solon's stature grew. Where before only “the most sensible” of the Athenians were capable of perceiving that Solon had the ability to be the reformer of their city, soon the entire city was united in one thing—their willingness to have Solon assume the tyranny of their city.

Plutarch emphasizes Solon's resistance to the popular demands that he become a tyrant, but he also offers a superior account to that of traditional Platonism for why the people would desire a tyrant in the first place. Where the traditional account of tyranny's birth places the origin in the unthinking passions of the two sides in conflict,Footnote ⁶⁵ Plutarch notes that even those outside of the conflict could think tyranny a superior basis for reform: “Even the many from the political middle saw that it would be a hard and laborious task to effect change by means of speech and laws (logou kai nomou), and so did not flee having the most just and most sensible one rule over things” (14). Tyranny, not yet connected with opprobrium in the Greek by the experience of Peisistratus or the later Thirty Tyrants, merely meant the rule of one without the rule of law, and Plutarch places it in the mouths of Solon's contemporaries in that fashion.

But Solon's view is not as far from the Plato's conception of tyranny as is that of Solon's contemporaries. Solon's refusal of the tyranny draws the familiar connection between tyranny and unhappiness; where the majority considered him a fool for not “pulling in a net full of fish,” he saw the position of tyranny as temporarily delightful, but remarked that “there was no way down from it.” The seriousness of this flaw for him can only be appreciated when one reflects on how assiduously he sought eventually to extricate himself from power.

His rejection of tyranny, however, is perhaps not as thorough as it superficially appears. As Plutarch notes explicitly, Solon did not handle affairs “gently”; and implicit in the history he tells is that Solon's rule was the rule of a single man. In fact, one could say much more truly of Solon what Plutarch reminds us Thucydides said of Pericles: Athens in his time was nominally a democracy, but truly the rule of the foremost man.Footnote ⁶⁶ Lycurgus may have had the advantages of descent from Heracles and the throne of the Spartans, but the gloss that Plutarch places upon these advantages, that Lycurgus had the prestige, followers, and power that Solon lacked, cannot be supported by Plutarch's own account: Solon had acquired preeminent prestige, with less dissent than Lycurgus faced, and his supporters had tried to thrust the tyranny upon him. Solon would seem to be then rejecting tyranny in name only, not in substance. His poetic defense of his refusal of tyranny refers to the shame of the title, not to its inherent evil (14).Footnote ⁶⁷

But Solon rejects tyranny in its substance as well as its name, and when he claims there is no way down from it, he thinks in Platonic terms again, in terms of the effect on the tyrant's character. Shame accrued to tyranny from its brutality and bestiality, characteristics inseparable from the force and strength that allowed the tyrant the ability to impose the grand reforms that a Lycurgus could offer (16). The only true distinction between Lycurgus and Solon's achievements stems from their methods. Lycurgus relied on “force rather than persuasion” (16) while Solon “acted where he hoped to find people persuadable by speech or capable of bearing compulsion” (15). Solon refuses to embrace unlimited force, and restricts himself to “the best laws the Athenians would favorably accept.”Footnote ⁶⁸

III

Although his reforms frustrated the desires of the rich and poor and pleased neither of the parties entirely, and his moderate means restricted the reach of his reforms (16), Solon was granted the power by both sides to reform all of the offices of Athens. Plutarch's account of these laws seems rather random, but they all contribute to the portrayal of the central characteristic of Solon's rule: its moderate nature. Plutarch contrasts Solon's laws with those of his immediate predecessor, Draco. Draco's laws were the epitome of extremity written into law; in Solon's laws, moderation is the one consistent element in everything that Plutarch describes. The establishment of the property classes allowed Solon to steer a middle course between a pure oligarchy and a pure democracy, leaving political offices in the hands of the rich, but diversifying the rest of the political power.Footnote ⁶⁹ His empowerment of the poor, through his reforms of the courts and cancellation of debts, made them dangerously aggressive, so he created a second Council to moderate the passions of the first Council to establish “two anchors … to contain the restlessness of the people” (19). Solon, thereby, is portrayed as the originator of the tradition of mixed government in Athens, as well as the model of democratically pragmatic compromise between conflicting interest groups.

The bulk of Solon's laws reported by Plutarch concern, however, personal behavior, not political structure, laws which Plutarch calls frequently “paradoxical” (paradoxos), “odd” (atopos), “ridiculous” (geloios), and “most strange” (pleistê atopian) (20–23). Plutarch lists laws requiring Athenians to take sides in political disputes rather than standing aloof and being nonpartisan; restrictions forbidding slander of the dead or, in certain places like law courts and temples, the living; requirements for all to have a means of living; and restrictions on the use of public wells. On the surface, Plutarch's attention appears directed purely by idle curiosity in what seems unusual and noteworthy, without further direction. But a closer look at Plutarch's specific interests shows that he is using Solon's laws to illustrate his own vision of a “moderate” moderation in contrast to the Stoic and Epicurean ideals.

The requirement for each citizen to be a partisan allows him to invoke Solon as an authority who rejects the notion that the wise should stand apart from and above political disputes: “Presumably he means that no one should be so indifferent and insensitive to the common good that he just sees to the safety of his own private affairs and congratulates himself on his distance from the pain and suffering afflicting his country.”Footnote ⁷⁰ In all of his essays, Plutarch offers no sharper criticism of Epicurean teachings—or of a Platonism that taught the private life was superior to the political life.

The bulk of laws mentioned serve as examples of Solon's recognition of inescapable passions, particularly erotic ones, and the need to restrain them through a gentle training of the citizens to be moderate in their indulgences of their appetites and desires. But they also show Solon's own moderation in using law and political power. The law that forbids the slander of the dead serves as both an indication of Solon's interest in reining in the passions and a sign of his own moderation in attempting to control the passions. Plutarch praises this law for “taking from anger its undyingness.” It also stays within the limits of possibility. Rather than attempting to eliminate anger everywhere, Solon recognized that “never to rule one's anger is to be uneducated and intemperate, but everywhere to be gentle is hard and impossible.”Footnote ⁷¹ Plutarch refers several times in describing this law to “political expediency,” and he concludes with the Aesopean lesson that “laws must be written according to what is possible, if he wishes to punish a few usefully, and not many uselessly.” Moderation for Solon is not merely a virtue of reining in personal desires, but also applies to one particular political desire—the desire to use political power to correct every wrong and injustice.Footnote ⁷² Solon becomes the model statesman for Plutarch because of his understanding of that lesson.

The laws requiring each father to teach his son a trade and punishing all who were unemployed, the laws about wells, and the laws forbidding the removal of another's trees all contribute to the goal of unifying the city, a common goal of statesmen in the Platonic tradition in which Plutarch writes.Footnote ⁷³ In each case, harmony is promoted by controlling the grounds of potential conflict, principally feelings of resentment about possible freeloaders.Footnote ⁷⁴ The laws minimize the number of the unemployed and recognize that those who have labored to dig wells would feel wronged if others could enjoy the fruits of their labor freely. At the same time, Solon acknowledges the need for some measure of charity for those whose labor is not enough. Just as he allowed for a moderate forgiveness of debts, he permits those who have attempted to sink a well but come up dry a limited ability to draw from the wells of others: “[I]f they had not discovered water on their land after digging to a depth of ten fathoms, they could get it from their neighbor, by filling a six choes jar twice a day, for the problem was how to assist those who need while not supplying the idle” (23). Political unity could only be created by someone who understood moderation on an intuitive level between the claims of justice and necessity, between property and poverty. Such balance was not merely the necessary equilibrium of the able politician seeking to maintain support from all of the parties of his city, but statesman's judgment of the proper division of rights and goods among the parts irrespective of the political benefits attendant upon that division.

Plutarch's portrayal of Solon, then, is meant to illustrate a curious concept: an ideal non-ideal ruler, a perfect demonstration of the philosopher-king within the limits of practicality, as opposed to the impossible divinity of a Lycurgus. Unlike Lycurgus, Solon must find what is acceptable to the people. Unlike Lycurgus, Solon must win respect for his laws from their own apparent value, not their inherent goodness. Plutarch's Solon is not only a Platonic model of a statesman but also an insightful sketch of the democratic politician at work, building coalitions, distributing various goods, satisfying conflicting demands and interests. Plutarch provides a bridge between the world of philosophical ideals and the practical laws and actions that are the substance of political practice.

IV

Solon has long been associated with compromises and the virtue of moderation in politics.Footnote ⁷⁵ But Plutarch's account of Solon's laws includes a notable emphasis on laws regulating erôs and erotic relationships. His laws governing marriage, dowries, children, the behavior of women, adultery, and prostitution are all given rather long descriptions that emphasize their uniqueness. Stressing this indicates that these laws originate not in a science of politics but in the personality of Solon as an individual. They are reflections of his own erotic concerns. But their uniqueness does not make them mere curiosities. Solon's erotic nature helps him understand human nature and personal relationships. The superiority of Solon's laws and statesmanship is bound up with his inherent eroticism.

The first of the erotic laws mentioned by Plutarch is the permission granted to heiresses whose husbands are impotent to sleep with a relative (20). Referring to certain unnamed defenders of the law, Plutarch glosses it through their third-party criticism: its intention was said to be the dissuading of the “impotent” “from marrying a woman for her money and using the protection of the law to abuse nature.” Supposedly, this law was intended not to make up for true impotence but to prevent homosexuals from using the civil cover of marriage.Footnote ⁷⁶ But according to Plutarch, the goal of Solon's law was not the regulation of sexual orientation; it was avarice (philoploutia). Solon also “abolished dowries and stipulated that the bride was to bring only three items of clothing and some household items of little worth, with nothing besides. He did this because he wanted marriage not to be mercenary or for sale, but that man and woman should live together for the sake of child-bearing, good will (chariti), and affection (philotêti).” Avarice is the great vice that Solon combats in Athens, from the warring over debts to Peisistratus taking possession of the entire city as his own; its greatest danger seems to come when it invades the realm of erôs and mingles with it.

Solon does not merely seek to purify the soul and expel its graver vices. He also intends to nurture its proper development by requiring each citizen to engage in suitable behavior, and in no place is suitable behavior more important than in erotic situations. After marriage, husband and wife are to be shut away together after the woman eats a quince.Footnote ⁷⁷ The husband must provide aphroditic services to his wife at least three times a month.Footnote ⁷⁸ The purpose of this is not procreation, but a demonstration by the husband of affection for his wife and respect for her normal self-restraint. Plutarch praises Solon's practice, agreeing that “cities should not … permit disorder, nor permit unseasonable and unloving (acharitous) unions which neither have the action (ergon) nor the end (telos) of marriage” (21).

If Plutarch and Solon at times emphasize what is “inappropriate” about unions— words that echo current discourse about the proper definition of marriage—they both emphasize the avoidance of “unloving” unions, rather than prescribing who can form such unions. Certain unions were not presumed to be loving and, therefore, embraced; those which in fact were built on affection were approved. Actual affection trumped all formal definitions of relationships. Solon created legislation allowing for property to be willed, rather than simply requiring it to be passed along according to universally defined legal paths of kinship, valuing “friendship” above family. Just as parents were not required to leave property to their children, so children were not required to monetarily assist their parents in all situations: if a son were to be born outside of wedlock, he would be exempt from supporting his father. Solon's reason for this law was to reprimand those who sought only pleasure in sexual unions and not the honorable state of marriage. Seeking monetary gain or pleasure apart from true affection is inimical to the proper wedded state which breeds strong bonds between people of affection.

Plutarch's meticulous account of these laws demonstrates the mutual concern he and Solon share with the force of erôs. Both recognize a need to regulate and restrain the force of a potentially terrible cause of discord between men. But its dangers are not considered irremediable. Erôs requires guidance and a careful eye to develop properly. Women are not expected to give up their sexual desires for the sake of some too strict disdain for the passions and for erôs. Where the Stoic Chrysippus saw only a flaw to be excised from the human soul by the force of reason,Footnote ⁷⁹ the wiser Solon acknowledges a need that must be indulged.Footnote ⁸⁰ A woman not only is entitled to sexual pleasure from her husband, but if he is unwilling or unable to offer her that service, her right to erotic satisfaction extends beyond the marriage bonds. But this is not a license for all kinds of sexual behavior; instead, it is very specifically regulated: the heiress is restricted to her husband's relatives, so that the family bond and the demands of erôs can find mutual acknowledgment.

Solon's most stringent and disturbing laws, his regulation of women outside the home and his punishments for sexual crimes, stem from this overriding view that erôs can neither be entirely eliminated nor allowed to express itself without restraint. He “imposed certain conditions of neatness and orderliness” upon women, particularly when they were outdoors. Plutarch recounts a rather punctilious code covering items that women were either required or forbidden from having outside the home (21). Connected with this description is a similar one of the restrictions that are placed upon the conduct of mourners and festivals. These restrictions, which include forbidding self-laceration, attendance at “outsider's” funerals, and laying out more than three sets of clothing, all encourage a sense of reserved and proper expressions of grief, which Plutarch notes are banned also at his time and punished by the Superintendents of Women. Plutarch and Solon share the tendency to treat it as one and the same thing to regulate women and to regulate erotic passions. The way in which dangerous and inextricable parts of human nature are to be handled is through such precise guidance, through a carefully constructed space for their expression and a tight hold upon them in all other circumstances, “outside” the family.

Solon's punishments of sexual crimes show his continued concern with balancing restraint and permission for the terrible force of erôs, but here he and Plutarch have perhaps their only break. Noting that Solon established the death penalty for adultery but only a fine for rape, Plutarch notes the strange contradiction of ruthlessness and leniency in these different cases.Footnote ⁸¹ Nonetheless, while Plutarch may disapprove of these laws, they align with Solon's other concerns. They acknowledge the sometimes uncontrollable nature of erôs while considering the mutual dishonoring of the family by willful adultery to be worse than the crime of rape. The institution of the family gives the necessary guidance to erôs, moderates it, and provides direction so that its destructive power is not let loose upon the city.

V

Solon's personal moderation was demonstrated again in his eventual abandonment of his position in Athens. Plutarch explains his action in part as a reaction against the ever-present demands of busybodies to alter his laws and partly as the result of an urge to pursue philosophical travels under the guise of a business trip.Footnote ⁸² The familiar story of Solon's encounter with Croesus Plutarch recites almost verbatim from Herodotus.Footnote ⁸³ Solon's philosophical journey into Egypt and his quiet life of study appeal to Plutarch, who often elsewhere muses upon the incompatibility of the political and the philosophical lives.

But Solon seems incapable of not being a great political actor. In his travels, his philosophical stay in Egypt is followed by an account of his role in the movement of the town of Soli (26), and the story of Solon and Croesus is not simply a philosophical parable but a record of Solon's political arête in full flight. An exemplar of Plutarch's essay On the Benefits of Philosophers Conversing with Men in Power, Solon shows himself to be as fine an advisor for the right leaders as he was a statesman in his own right: “Solon gained the reputation of having with a single saying saved one king and educated another” (28). Even his quiet theoretical life cannot prevent Solon from demonstrating his public spiritedness and his political skill. The conflict in Plutarch's writing between the demands of the two lives is reconciled in the life of Solon.

Solon returns, however, into the midst of the ascension of his old friend Peisistratus to the tyranny of Athens. Peisistratus has the appearance of Solon: “He was quick to come to the aid of the poor and he approached his political conflicts with reason and moderation” (29).Yet this is only appearance, and not reality. Thucydides had claimed about the Peisistraridae that they “carried out the tyranny with virtue and comprehension (arêten kai xunesin).”Footnote ⁸⁴ But Plutarch makes it abundantly clear that Peisistratus was not actually virtuous: “[H]e did not have them by nature but had them by reputation more than those who really did have them.” What virtues he only appeared to have are not left in doubt: “[H]e was taken to be a prudent, self-controlled man” (29). This self-control was, however, simply appearance. Peisistratus shares with Solon the nature of an erotic man, but he lacks the element of moderation so central to Solon's public-spiritedness and integral to Solon's disdain for continuing his own rule.

The relationship of Solon and Peisistratus in the final pages of the life is one of odd sympathy. Solon “did not dislike Peisistratus, but sought to calm him and teach him his errors … he told him and others that all it would take to bring out his most incomparable tendency towards virtue and to make him a model citizen would be the removal from his soul of his overwhelming ambition and the purging of his desire for tyranny.” After Peisistratus's ascension, Solon openly called for the eradication of the tyranny, yet refused to go into exile (30). But Peisistratus showed uncharacteristic and untyrannical restraint in his treatment of Solon. While everyone understood the nature of tyrants was to put to death those who opposed them, Peisistratus “set about winning Solon over; he expressed such admiration for him, showed him such kindness, and sent for him so often that Solon actually became his advisor and approved of many of his measures” (31).

Peisistratus's actions in this regard agree with the traditional account of him as a “good tyrant.” His rule was supposedly benevolent, and he introduced many political innovations seen positively in the light of history.Footnote ⁸⁵ His age coincided with the flowering of Athenian art.Footnote ⁸⁶ Plutarch's account in the life of Solon contributes heavily to this tradition. He notes, as Thucydides and Aristotle did, that most of Solon's laws stayed intact during Peisistratus's reign.Footnote ⁸⁷ He recites the story of Peisistratus's willing appearance in a court of law, and dismisses the illusory aspect of this political play as negligible. (The fear of Peisistratus was so great the prosecutor failed to appear.) Solon, he notes, was an advisor of Peisistratus and an approver of many of his measures. But this leaves the question, then, of what the tyranny of Peisistratus actually consisted. Why was he then not considered a virtuous king?Footnote ⁸⁸ To what extent can Solon's warnings about Peisistratus be justified by an ending that describes his rule in such mild terms? Despite Plutarch's explicit condemnation of Peisistratus, does he not show Solon to be an erroneous and cantankerous old man, crying doom where no warning is truly warranted? The wise Solon appears finally mistaken, and then reconciled to his mistake.

That Plutarch considers Solon's reentry into Athenian politics not only praiseworthy but also exemplary is unmistakable. He repeatedly endorses the judgment of Solon, not only about Peisistratus, but about the Athenian people, whose timidity Plutarch calls “ill-advised” (30). Plutarch himself refers to Peisistratus consistently as a tyrant. Plutarch offers no dissent to Solon's description of the ascent of Peisistratus as a loss of freedom to the Athenians. At first Plutarch notes, seemingly critically, that Solon was too old to have the energy or inclination to take an active role in politics (29). But Solon involved himself through private meetings and through his personal interest in Peisistratus, rather than inappropriate public demonstrations. Only when Peisistratus's ally, Ariston, makes the request for a bodyguard does Solon speak again in the public assembly. After Peisistratus's bodyguard expands and his control of the city sends most of his enemies into exile, Solon, “despite his extreme old age and political isolation,” appeared in the public square and attempted to rouse his fellow citizens to arms. When Solon's call falls on deaf ears, Plutarch admiringly records his statement in laying down his arms that “I have done all I could for my homeland and my laws” (31). This entire passage parallels in language and particulars Plutarch's essay on the participation of the elderly in public life to the extent that clearly one was the gloss for the other.Footnote ⁸⁹

But Solon's complaints are not clear. What does differentiate his rule from that of Peisistratus? Solon warns the Athenians about a potential loss of their freedom and equality. But the effects of Peisistratus's laws are so close to those of Solon's that they differ hardly at all. Solon may have rejected tyranny in name, but his rule was as much the rule of a sole individual of unquestioned authority as was Peisistratus's rule, perhaps more. During his years as lawgiver, Solon had no external advisor. Peisistratus had Solon.

The one explicit criticism Plutarch indicates is that the means by which Peisistratus gains power are illegitimate, founded on lies and deceit. Peisistratus, like all incipient tyrants, hides his intentions and uses fabrications to build a bodyguard to guarantee his power. Plutarch emphasizes this with an anomalous account of Solon's criticism of Thespis and his introduction of tragedy. This is the one passage in the last few sections to have nothing to do directly with Peisistratus. Solon asks Thespis if “he should not be ashamed to tell such enormous lies in front of so many people? … [B]efore long we'll start to find it emerging in important areas of life” (29). This story precedes the account of Peisistratus's self-inflicted wound, which he uses to portray himself as threatened and to win his bodyguard, essential to his assumption of the tyranny of Athens. Clearly, Plutarch means for the association to indicate that the dangers Solon saw in tragedy were proved real by the dramatic lies and political theater of Peisistratus. Criticizing Peisistratus, Solon compares him unfavorably to Odysseus's returning to Ithaca, noting that Odysseus “did it to trick his enemies, not to mislead his fellow citizens” (30). His willingness to lie for personal advantage demonstrates that Peisistratus does not think of other Athenians as equals and fellow citizens but as future subjects.

But such grounds for condemning Peisistratus cannot be claimed unequivocally by either Solon or Plutarch, for this is not the earliest example of the tools of the dramatic arts being used to sway the people of Athens in politics. There is an earlier example in Solon's own rise to power. Solon's pretense of madness in the affair of Salamis has all of the trademarks of acting that Peisistratus's wound has; both engaged in demeaning theater, extravagant emotion, and attempts to deceive the public. Both sought power and were willing to lie in order to achieve it. In this as in so many things, Plutarch demonstrates the extent to which Peisistratus and Solon parallel each other.

What brings Solon and Peisistratus together is their similar attraction to, means to, and use of political power, as well as their erotic nature, items not unrelated. But what truly separates them is the virtue of sophrosunê. Solon exhibits moderation in his own desire for power, Peisistratus only a lack of restraint. Solon was unwilling to claim unlimited power and sought to give it up. Peisistratus not only sought power even after being expelled from Athens but also was unwilling to give it up at the end of his life. He sought immortality and everlasting rule through his family. His children were to retain that power, though they shared none of the great virtue that Solon sees in Peisistratus.Footnote ⁹⁰

The desire to possess provides the original disposition toward the political life for Plutarch; Solon, the great authority on erôs, is also the great example of a statesman for Plutarch, not Lycurgus or Epaminondas. But Plutarch's vision of erôs, like his vision of political life, is two-sided. Erôs can be driven by desire to possess, which leaves it potentially destructive, as it becomes with the sons of Peisistratus. But it can also be the first movement toward something divine if it is moderated in the soul, relinquishes the pursuit of pleasure and control, and leads instead to affection and friendship. Both Solon and Peisistratus sought power and a primary place in Athens; but only Solon's desire is driven in the proper direction, the healthy desire of affection for one's fellow citizens that leads to the glory of being a statesman praised by history and not a tyrant whose name becomes cursed by the future citizens of one's land.

VI

Looking to Solon as a model does pose one particular problem: the quite apparent disagreement of Plutarch himself. Solon is paired with Publicola, and there is no question that the synkriseis for once weighs unequivocally in one direction: while “Solon was the wisest of men, Publicola was the happiest.”Footnote ⁹¹ According to the synkriseis, Publicola was what Solon prayed to be. He was superior even to Tullus, whom Solon had proposed to Croesus as the most blessed of men.Footnote ⁹²

The crux of the judgment is the inability of Solon to prevent the tyranny of Peisistratus, while Publicola's Rome lasted “until the recent civil wars.”Footnote ⁹³ Thus, according to many readings, Solon serves as evidence that philosophy cannot effectively be a guide for action.Footnote ⁹⁴ It has been suggested that Solon even serves as a stand-in for Plutarch himself, a philosopher who is unable to put his wisdom into practice, a wise but ineffectual Greek philosopher who can only hope to gain a limited potency through instructing a (Roman) man of action.Footnote ⁹⁵

The closest Solon comes to political efficacy is as a teacher. In the synkriseis, Plutarch claims that Solon was the teacher of Publicola. But Solon's attempts to teach in his own lifetime are noticeable failures. He fails to convince the Athenians of the dangers of Peisistratus. He fails to convince Peisistratus not to pursue tyranny. He fails even to teach Croesus. Far from actually “educating two rulers,” as Plutarch claims, Solon imparts no useful wisdom to Croesus. He learns nothing from his encounter with Solon. It is only after his own experiences lead to tragedy that Croesus shows any appreciation for what Solon said, and, even then, the lesson he takes is evidently different than what Solon intended.Footnote ⁹⁶

Underneath Plutarch's positive account of Solon can be found a much darker story. The rosy description of Solon's old age belies the start of tyranny, and the parallel with Publicola implies flaws not apparent in the original account. There must be flaws in Solon's character and practices that lead to his failures, while Publicola's successes must be based on superior virtues, it is inferred.

But the account of Publicola and of the synkriseis both have their own internal particularities. The Life of Publicola is notable for its lack of focus on its titular subject. Actions of others, particularly the elder Brutus, receive as much attention as the actions of Publicola, if not more. Brutus dominates the life from the beginning to his death in battle with Tarquin's son.Footnote ⁹⁷ Until that time, Publicola is a minor actor. Despite Plutarch's claim that “it was clear, if a democracy would come to be, he should be first,” the Roman people did not share Plutarch's view of what was clear: “[T]hey appointed Tarquinius Collatinus consul with Brutus, and Valerius withdrew from the Senate … and ceased to do all public things.”Footnote ⁹⁸

Even what Plutarch reports of Publicola's actions requires a significant rewriting of the history of early Rome.Footnote ⁹⁹ Actions that were attributed to other leaders or to the Roman people by Livy are attributed to Publicola by Plutarch. Plutarch credits him with restoring the Senate after Brutus's death. According to Livy, this had already been done by Brutus.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Plutarch credits him with discovering the plot of the Aquillii and Vitellii to restore Tarquin, and protecting the slave Vindicius who reported it. Livy gives no role to Publicola and reports that the slave went directly to the Senate.Footnote ¹⁰¹ According to Plutarch, the rewards for the heroic defense of the bridge by Horatius Cocles were established by Publicola. Again, in Livy's account, Publicola has no role in this grant.Footnote ¹⁰² The most dramatic rewriting comes in the story of Cloelia, the Roman maiden who led an escape of hostages from Porsena. Plutarch adds a character not in Livy's account—Publicola's daughter, Valeria. He further reduces the role of Cloelia, makes the escape a matter of chance rather than a plan, and even attributes some leadership and the state at the Via Sacra to Valeria.Footnote ¹⁰³ Even the end of the war is rewritten to magnify Publicola's role: the story of the peace party of Attius Clausus within the Etruscan forces that split and became the Claudians was told briefly in the history of Livy, and without reference to Publicola. According to Plutarch, it was Publicola, on the lookout for factions among his enemies, who took advantage by recruiting Clausus and making him a senator.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Along with his actions in defense of Rome, Publicola is praised by Plutarch for his democratic character. He gives up his house and removes the lictors’ rods to make himself more agreeable to the many. He allowed the common people to hear appeals of all judgments, and made them the ones who bestowed all offices.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ His life ends with his being honored by the people and given a public burial in honor, a claim of gratitude that fits well with the theme that his democratic impulses were well rewarded.

This final element is a sign that Plutarch is intentionally magnifying both the democratic character of Publicola and the positive response he receives from the people for his democratic actions. According to Livy, the public burial was required as a result of the poverty he had fallen into after the destruction of his house and a lifetime of public service.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Livy actually indicates Publicola was not so democratic; his speech recorded there condemning the people for their suspicions is notably omitted by Plutarch, as is Publicola's desire to have sole credit for the laws. Instead, his nomination of the elderly Spurius Lucretius as his fellow consul is treated as an example of humility by Plutarch.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Livy tells us that Publicola passed a law requiring the forfeiture of all civil rights by any who plotted to bring back the monarchy. Plutarch alters this again to make him an extreme opponent of monarchy: “Although about these other things he showed himself to be a measured and democratic lawgiver, in the case of those non-measured (me metrioi) the desert was set higher; for he wrote a law that those who intended to become a tyrant could be put to death without a trial.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Although the radicalization of Publicola's democratic inclinations may suggest that he is in some way superior to Solon, who balances the parties of Athens, being democratic is not a virtue for Plutarch. Much as one would expect from a Platonist such as Plutarch, and in accord with Plutarch's other writings, being a democrat reduces one to servitude to the preferences of the majority. Where Solon can wisely regulate the masses by giving them laws, Publicola is described as being eager to please the masses with his actions.

The comparison is no less troubling. In the synkriesis, Plutarch does not distinguish Solon from Publicola in terms of virtue or wisdom. It is the superior fortune of Publicola that Plutarch emphasizes over and over again.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ What makes Publicola superior is that he not only acts in an admirable way, but that his actions also lead to success. To suggest that Solon is less worthy of imitation and admiration than Publicola is to accept that success is a dependable basis of comparison. Publicola's city resists Tarquin, his children are successes, and as a result, the circumstances of Publicola's life leave him not only wise, but happy.Footnote ¹¹⁰

Yet such matters are, even in the words of the synkriseis, only a matter of luck. Publicola's actions and character were comparable at best with Solon, but he was more fortunate. From Plutarch's own perspective, to be fortunate is not to imply anything admirable about a person.Footnote ¹¹¹ When Plutarch asked if the achievements of Alexander or Rome were the result of virtue or fortune, it was the equivalent of asking if they should be praised for their successes, if they were responsible for them or merely lucky. In this way, Publicola appears very much like his own city, whose history of triumphs and current supremacy appeared to attest to its virtue, but which were in reality merely the result of chance.Footnote ¹¹² So in Publicola, we have a hero who is inactive in large parts of his own life, who follows the crowd rather than leading them, and who is most praised for his good fortune. These facts stand in dramatic opposition to Plutarch's glowing estimate, and they are all emphasized by Plutarch himself.

But while Publicola may not merit praise, this does not mean that Solon does not deserve criticism for his failures. He failed to educate Peisistratus, the people of Athens, and Croesus. His city descended into tyranny, and he watched it happen. He was ineffectual, and ineffectuality is no sign of virtue or ability. But Plutarch is not of the opinion that virtue always succeeds. Ability in politics does not guarantee success; conversely, lack of success is no evidence of a lack of ability—or, necessarily, grounds for any criticism. A statesman can do everything properly and yet fail.

In fact, to believe otherwise is also to be a poor student of Thales and Solon. Because even an able, virtuous person is still a victim of the vicissitudes of fortune that human life appears ever open to disappointment. If one engages in life, one gives hostages to fortune in becoming attached to external objects. One would avoid family because one has no ability to guarantee the health, happiness, and long life of one's children; one would avoid politics because one could do every thing right and fail. There is no hope that by taking the right precautions, by being the best and brightest, fortune could be conquered. In the synkriseis, along with his political success, it is the happiness of his children and descendents that provides evidence of the superiority of Publicola's life. But, as the Thales story explicitly indicates, this is a very poor way to measure the comparative excellence of the two. The happiness of Publicola is a matter of chance.

What is left as a difference is that Solon creates, while Publicola supposedly copies. Solon demonstrates wisdom in his life, rising to power, creating laws, foreseeing the dangers of Peisistratus, and moderating his tyranny, but most significantly, he demonstrates wisdom in his continued happiness despite the failures that he witnesses.Footnote ¹¹³ Plutarch's vocal preference for Publicola, of course, is a vote for the superiority of Rome to Solon's Athens. Much like the parallel essays upon the Romans and Alexander (the exemplar of Greek philosophy in action), Plutarch gives us a Rome that appears superior because it is more successful, while quietly showing that Rome's successes (and Alexander's and Solon's failures) were largely the result of fortune.

Plutarch must assert this subtly, if at all. It would be unwise for a minor Greek potentate subject to the Roman Empire to assert boldly that Greece was superior to Rome in its abilities and wisdom. It would seem to be foolish to do so when time had proven Rome's virtues through its victories and Greece's inferiority by its submissive state. But the actual tale Plutarch tells proves the opposite. The Roman Publicola was fortunate, and that was his only claim to be preferred above the Greek Solon. As the Life of Solon itself demonstrates, that is hardly a powerful claim.

VII

The life of Solon is often neglected. It lacks the stirring and fascinating reformation of a society that the life of Lycurgus has, and by its internal comparison with Lycurgus, makes Solon appear a far more conventional and less interesting politician, whose laws are full of dry details and half-measures. At the same time, Solon's life has none of the typically tragic structure that makes the life of a Cato or Themistocles so fascinating. Revered continually through his life, not even persecuted by a tyrant who treats him as a trusted advisor, Solon dies honored in a quiet life at home, at work in philosophy and poetry. But Solon is the paradigmatic example for Plutarch of the combination of poetry and politics under the guidance of philosophy. As such, he models the combination of all of the things that Plutarch holds dear in his writings and his actions in his own life.

At the same time, his life of Solon is a response to his philosophical opponents, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and even to certain readings of Platonic thought. For Plutarch, the question of whether the pursuit of philosophy should drive one away from politics was a lively one. Not only had Plato given grounds for supposing that a philosopher would, of necessity, try to escape politics, but also his life and writings suggested that there was no real chance for a philosopher to have any influence on a tyrant. On the one side of the debates, Epicureans suggested that any involvement in politics could lead only to misery. On the other, Stoics suggested that an active public life was a duty of reason. But the Epicureans, who claimed the satisfaction of the passions to be the only source of happiness for man, contradicted themselves by barring most philosophers from the greatest source of enjoyment, the satisfactions of public service. The Stoics, meanwhile, prescribed politics but offered no reason for anyone to engage in it by their disdain for the satisfaction of those same passions.

Plutarch's solution to that problem lay in neither accepting the leveling of the passions of the Epicureans or the domination of them by reason demanded by the Stoics. Rather, the passions were, for Plutarch as for Solon, an ineradicable part of human nature, capable of great evil if not properly molded and restrained, but also leading to great good if guided, developed, and directed to their natural end. In the case of erôs, whose divinity Plutarch argues for at length, it needed to be neither ignored, dominated, nor left unrestrained, but guided by moderation to find its satisfaction in the affection of healthy marriage and society. Plutarch's philosopher-king enters politics in part from irrational desires and longings, but he remains not from force or desire but from affection. The dichotomy of reason and passion gives way in Plutarch's view to a more complicated and tamer hierarchical relationship that provides rule without tyranny, and combines law and freedom in their proper proportions.