caped who made supplication to the wives of the magistrates.

The Athenians, now the Cylonian sedition was over and the polluted gone
into banishment, fell into their old quarrels about the government,
there being as many different parties as there were diversities in the
country. The Hill quarter favored democracy; the Plain, oligarchy; and
those that lived by the Sea-side stood for a mixed sort of government,
and so hindered either of the parties from prevailing. And the disparity
of fortune between the rich and the poor at that time also reached its
height; so that the city seemed to be in a truly dangerous condition,
and no other means for freeing it from disturbances and settling it to
be possible but a despotic power.

Then the wisest of the Athenians, perceiving Solon was of all men the
only one not implicated in the troubles, that he had not joined in the
exactions of the rich, and was not involved in the necessities of
the poor, pressed him to succor the commonwealth and compose the
differences. Solon, reluctantly at first, engaged in state affairs,
being afraid of the pride of one party and the greediness of the other;
he was chosen archon, however, after Philombrotus, and empowered to be
an arbitrator and lawgiver; the rich consenting because he was wealthy,
the poor because he was honest. There was a saying of his current before
the election, that when things are even there never can be war, and this
pleased both parties, the wealthy and the poor; the one conceiving him
to mean, when all have their fair proportion; the other, when all are
absolutely equal. Thus, there being great hopes on both sides, the chief
men pressed Solon to take the government into his own hands, and, when
he was once settled, manage the business freely and according to his
pleasure; and many of the commons, perceiving it would be a difficult
change to be effected by law and reason, were willing to have one wise
and just man set over the affairs; and some say that Solon had this
oracle from Apollo:

Take the mid-seat, and be the vessel's guide;
Many in Athens are upon your side.

From which it is manifest that he was a man of great reputation before
he gave his laws. The several mocks that were put upon him for refusing
the power, he records in these words:

Solon surely was a dreamer, and a man of simple mind; When the gods
would give him fortune, he of his own will declined; When the new was
full of fishes, over-heavy