as he wrote when an old
man,

"Old to grow, but ever learning,"

but disregarded wealth, for he wrote that he regarded as equally rich
the man who owned

"Gold and broad acres, corn and wine;
And he that hath but clothes and food,
A wife, and youthful strength divine."

Yet elsewhere he has written, but

"I long for wealth, not by fraud obtained,
For curses wait on riches basely gained."

There is no reason for an upright statesman either to be over anxious
for luxuries or to despise necessaries. At that period, as Hesiod tells
us, "Work was no disgrace," nor did trade carry any reproach, while the
profession of travelling merchant was even honourable, as it civilised
barbarous tribes, and gained the friendship of kings, and learned much
in many lands. Some merchants founded great cities, as, for example,
Protis, who was beloved by the Gauls living near the Rhone, founded
Marseilles. It is also said that Thales the sage, and Hippocrates the
mathematician, travelled as merchants, and that Plato defrayed the
expenses of his journey to Egypt by the oil which he disposed of in that
country.

III. Solon's extravagance and luxurious mode of life, and his poems,
which treat of pleasure more from a worldly than a philosophic point of
view, are attributed to his mercantile training; for the great perils of
a merchant's life require to be paid in corresponding pleasures. Yet it
is clear that he considered himself as belonging to the class of the
poor, rather than that of the rich, from the following verses:

"The base are rich, the good are poor; and yet
Our virtue for their gold we would not change;
For that at least is ours for evermore,
While wealth we see from hand to hand doth range."

His poetry was originally written merely for his own amusement in his
leisure hours; but afterwards he introduced into it philosophic
sentiments, and interwove political events with his poems, not in order
to record them historically, but in some cases to explain his own
conduct, and in others to instruct, encourage, or rebuke the Athenians.
Some say that he endeavoured to throw his laws into an epic form, and
tell us that the poem began--

"To Jove I pray, great Saturn's son divine,
To grant his favour to these laws of mine."

Of ethical philosophy, he, like most of the sages of antiquity, was most
interested in that branch which deals with political obligations. As to
natu