Note 248 — Chapter XI · SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION. (continued 2)

Plutarch tells us that several authors rejected the reality of this interview as being chronologically impossible. It is to be recollected that the question all turns upon the interview as described by Herodotus and its alleged sequel; for that there may have been an interview between Solon and Crœsus at Sardis, at some period between B. C. 594 and 560, is possible, though not shown.

It is evident that Solon made no mention of any interview with Crœsus in his poems; otherwise, the dispute would have been settled at once. Now this, in a man like Solon, amounts to negative evidence of some value for he noticed in his poems both Egypt and the prince Philokyprus in Cyprus, and had there been any conversation so impressive as that which Herodotus relates, between him and Crœsus, he could hardly have failed to mention it.

Wesseling, Larcher, Volney, and Mr. Clinton, all try to obviate the chronological difficulties, and to save the historical character of this interview, but in my judgment unsuccessfully. See Mr. Clinton’s F. H. ad ann. 546 B. C., and Appendix, c. 17, p. 298. The chronological data are these,—Crœsus was born in 595 B. C., one year before the legislation of Solon: he succeeded to his father at the age of thirty-five, in 560 B. C.: he was overthrown, and Sardis captured, in 546 B. C., by Cyrus.

Mr. Clinton, after Wesseling and the others, supposes that Crœsus was king jointly with his father Halyattês, during the lifetime of the latter, and that Solon visited Lydia and conversed with Crœsus during this joint reign in 570 B. C. “We may suppose that Solon left Athens in B. C. 575, about twenty years after his archonship, and returned thither in B. C. 565, about five years before the usurpation of Peisistratus.” (p. 300.) Upon which hypothesis we may remark:—

1. The arguments whereby Wesseling and Mr. Clinton endeavor to show that Crœsus was king jointly with his father, do not sustain the conclusion. The passage of Nikolaus Damaskenus, which is produced to show that it was Halyattês (and not Crœsus) who conquered Karia, only attests that Halyattês marched with an armed force into Karia (ἐπὶ Καρίαν στρατεύων): this same author states, that Crœsus was deputed by Halyattês to govern Adramyttium and the plain of Thêbê (ἄρχειν ἀποδεδειγμένος), but Mr. Clinton stretches this testimony to an inadmissible extent when he makes it tantamount to a conquest of Æolis by Halyattês, (“so that Æolis is already conquered.”) Nothing at all is said about Æolis, or the cities of the Æolic Greeks, in this passage of Nikolaus, which represents Crœsus as governing a sort of satrapy under his father Halyattês, just as Cyrus the younger did in after-times under Artaxerxês. And the expression of Herodotus, ἐπεί τε, δόντος τοῦ πατρὸς, ἐκράτησε τῆς ἀπχῆς ὁ Κροῖσος, appears to me, when taken along with the context, to indicate a bequest or nomination of successor, and not a donation during life.

2. The hypothesis, therefore, that Crœsus was king 570 B. C., during the lifetime of his father, is one purely gratuitous, resorted to on account of the chronological difficulties connected with the account of Herodotus. But it is quite insufficient for such a purpose; it does not save us from the necessity of contradicting Herodotus in most of his particulars; there may, perhaps, have been an interview between Solon and Crœsus in B. C. 570, but it cannot be the interview described by Herodotus. That interview takes place within ten years after the promulgation of Solon’s laws,—at the maximum of the power of Crœsus, and after numerous conquests effected by himself as king,—at a time when Crœsus had a son old enough to be married and to command armies (Herod, i, 35),—at a time, moreover, immediately preceding the turn of his fortunes from prosperity to adversity, first in the death of his son, succeeded by two years of mourning, which were put an end to (πένθεος ἀπέπαυσε, Herod. i, 46) by the stimulus of war with the Persians. That war, if we read the events of it as described in Herodotus, cannot have lasted more than three or four years,—so that the interview between Solon and Crœsus, as Herodotus conceived it, may be fairly stated to have occurred within seven years before the capture of Sardis.

If we put together all these conditions, it will appear that the interview recounted by Herodotus is a chronological impossibility: and Niebuhr (Rom. Gesch. vol. i, p. 579) is right in saying that the historian has fallen into a mistake of ten olympiads, or forty years; his recital would consist with chronology, if we suppose that the Solonian legislation were referable to 554 B. C., and not 594.

In my judgment, this is an illustrative tale, in which certain real characters,—Crœsus and Solon; and certain real facts,—the great power and succeeding ruin of the former by the victorious arm of Cyrus,—together with certain facts probably altogether fictitious, such as the two sons of Crœsus, the Phyrgian Adrastus and his history, the hunting of the mischievous wild boar on Mount Olympus, the ultimate preservation of Crœsus, etc., are put together so as to convey an impressive moral lesson. The whole adventure of Adrastus and the son of Crœsus is depicted in language eminently beautiful and poetical.

Plutarch treats the impressiveness and suitableness of this narrative as the best proof of its historical truth, and puts aside the chronological tables as unworthy of trust. Upon which reasoning Mr. Clinton has the following very just remarks: “Plutarch must have had a very imperfect idea of the nature of historical evidence, if he could imagine that the suitableness of a story to the character of Solon was a better argument for its authenticity than the number of witnesses by whom it is attested. Those who invented the scene (assuming it to be a fiction) would surely have had the skill to adapt the discourse to the character of the actors.” (p. 300.)

To make this remark quite complete, it would be necessary to add the words “trustworthiness and means of knowledge,” in addition to the “number,” of attesting witnesses. And it is a remark the more worthy of notice, inasmuch as Mr. Clinton here pointedly adverts to the existence of plausible fiction, as being completely distinct from attested matter of fact,—a distinction of which he took no account in his vindication of the historical credibility of the early Greek legends.