Solon 36

Solon 36

Of the reasons I assembled the people, which of them was not achieved when I stopped? 

In the court of Time Mother Earth would be a witness that I removed the boundaries stones and freed her. 

I led back to their homeland Athens many who had been enslaved, some justly, some not, who no longer spoke the Attic tongue. Trembling before their masters, I freed them. 

Uniting force and justice I did all this, achieving what I promised. 

I wrote laws for the noble and ignoble alike. 

An unscrupulous man would have taken the goad and not restrained the people. For if I had been willing to do what either side wanted, the city would have been widowed of many men. So fashioning a defense on every side I whirled like a wolf among dogs. 

• difficult Greek. Compressed and elliptical. The opening phrase alone is tough. I wonder if the more difficult syntax is related to the fact that this poem is in iambs; the only one by Solon in this anthology
• Hard to imagine the context for this poem; it's a retrospective in the first person over Solon's achievements. Feels a bit like a politician running for reelection and listing what they've already done and how they've fulfilled their campaign promises ("I completed as I promised," διῆλθον ὡς ὑπεσχόμην). In line 3 Solon gestures toward posterity ("in the court of time," ἐν δίκῃ χρόνου), and maybe he's intending this poem as a proud billboard of his accomplishments for the future.
• Another very Athenian poem, only surviving in the Ath. Pol. papyrus. Presumably there was a lot more of this kind of epichoric poetry that did not survive; the selection effects leading to Stobaeus don't like this kind of epichoric poetry, and presumably this one only made it because of later interest in the political history of Athens in particular.