Note 2 — Chapter I

Solon, one of the seven sages of Greece, was born about the year B. C. 639, and died about the year B. C. 558.

Herodotus, the Greek historian, writing in the fifth century before the Christian era, says: “When these were subdued, and Crœsus had joined them to the Lydians, all the learned men at that time, especially those of Greece, resorted to Sardis, which had then reached a high degree of eminence. Among them was Solon, an Athenian, who, having made a code of laws for the Athenians at their request, absented himself for ten years, having sailed away under pretense of seeing the world, that he might not be compelled to abrogate any of the laws he had established: for the Athenians could not do it themselves, as they were bound by the most solemn oaths to preserve inviolate, for ten years, the institutions of Solon. Therefore, having gone abroad for these reasons, as well as to see the world, Solon had visited Amasis, in Egypt, and went from there to Crœsus, at Sardis.”—Herodotus: Clio xxix, xxx.