administration of affairs; when he had finished his work, he ordered the
laws he had framed to be engraved on tablets and set up in a public
place, then took oath of the people to observe them for ten years, after
which he left the country and set out on travel; at the end of the ten
years he returned, to find things lapsing into the old disorder, and
Pisistratus ready to seize the sovereignty of the State, whereupon he
withdrew into private life, and died the subject of a tyrant at the age
of eighty (640-559 B.C.).

SOLSTICE, summer and winter, the two recurring periods of the year
at which the sun is farthest distant N. or S. from the equator, which
mark midsummer and midwinter, the times being the 21st of June and 22nd
of December; also applied to the two points in the ECLIPTIC (q. v.),
which the sun appears to reach on these two dates.

SOLWAY FIRTH, an arm of the Irish Sea, and in its upper part forming
the estuary of the river Esk, separating Cumberland from the S. of
Scotland (Kirkcudbright and Dumfries); stretches inland from Balcarry
Point 36 m., and from 2 to 20 m. broad; receives the Annan, Dee, Nith,
Eden, and Derwent, and has valuable salmon-fishings; the spring tides ebb
and flow with remarkable rapidity, the "bore" often reaching a speed of
from 8 to 10 m. an hour; is spanned near Annan by a railway viaduct 1960
yards long.

SOLWAY MOSS, a moss, now drained and cultivated, in Cumberland, on
the Scottish border, that was the scene of the defeat of the Scotch army
in 1542, a disaster which broke the heart of James V.

SOLYMAN II., surnamed THE MAGNIFICENT, the tenth and greatest of
the Ottoman sultans, the son and successor of Selim I.; succeeded his
father at 24; set himself at once to reform abuses and place the internal
administration on a strict basis, and after making peace with Persia and
allaying tumult in Syria, turned his arms westwards, captured Belgrade,
and wrested the island of Rhodes from the Knights of St. John; he twice
over led his army into Hungary; in connection with the latter invasion
laid siege to Vienna, from which he was obliged to retire after the loss
of 40,000 men, after which he turned his arms to the east, adding to his
territory, and finally to the North of Africa, to the conquest of the
greater part of it; he died at Szigeth while opening a new campaign
against Hungary; _d_. 1566.

SOMA, the intoxicating juice of a plant offered in libation to a
Hindu god, espe