xcuse to fight, but dared not
propose to do so because of this law, pretended to have lost his reason.
His family gave out that he was insane, but he meanwhile composed a
poem, and when he had learned it by heart, rushed out into the
market-place wearing a small felt cap, and having assembled a crowd,
mounted the herald's stone and recited the poem which begins with the
lines--

"A herald I from Salamis am come,
My verse will tell you what should there be done."

The name of this poem is Salamis; it consists of a hundred beautifully
written lines. After he had sung it, his friends began to commend it,
and Peisistratus made a speech to the people, which caused such
enthusiasm that they abrogated the law and renewed the war, with Solon
as their leader. The common version of the story runs thus: Solon sailed
with Peisistratus to Kolias, where he found all the women of the city
performing the customary sacrifice to Demeter (Ceres). At the same time,
he sent a trusty man to Salamis, who represented himself as a deserter,
and bade the Megarians follow him at once to Kolias, if they wished to
capture all the women of the first Athenian families. The Megarians were
duped, and sent off a force in a ship. As soon as Solon saw this ship
sail away from the island, he ordered the women out of the way, dressed
up those young men who were still beardless in their clothes,
headdresses, and shoes, gave them daggers, and ordered them to dance and
disport themselves near the seashore until the enemy landed, and their
ship was certain to be captured. So the Megarians, imagining them to be
women, fell upon them, struggling which should first seize them, but
they were cut off to a man by the Athenians, who at once sailed to
Salamis and captured it.

IX. Others say that the island was not taken in this way, but that first
of all Solon received the following oracular response from Apollo at
Delphi:

"Appease the land's true lords, the heroes blest,
Who near Asopia's fair margin rest,
And from their tombs still look towards the West."

After this, Solon is said to have sailed by night, unnoticed by the
Megarians, and to have sacrificed to the heroes Periphemus and Kychreus.
His next act was to raise five hundred Athenian volunteers, who by a
public decree were to be absolute masters of the island if they could
conquer it. With these he set sail in a number of fishing-boats, with a
triaconter or ship of war of thirty o