Plutarch Lives, Solon 638 - 539 BC
Now when Pisistratus, having wounded himself, was brought into the marketplace in a chariot, and stirred up the people, as if he had been thus treated by his opponents because of his political conduct, and a great many were enraged and cried out, Solon coming close to him, said, 'This, O son of Hippocrates, is a bad copy of Homer's Ulysses; you do, to trick your countrymen, what he did to deceive his enemies.' After this, the people were eager to protect Pisistratus, and met in an assembly, where one Ariston making a motion that they should allow Pisistratus fifty clubmen for a guard to his person, Solon opposed it and said much to the same purport as what he has left us in his poems:
'You dote upon his words and talking phrase;'
And again:
'True, you are singly each a crafty soul,
But all together make one empty fool.'
But observing the poor men bent to gratify Pisistratus, and tumultuous, and the rich fearful and getting out of harm's way, had departed, saying that he was wiser than some and stouter than others; wiser than those that, though they understood it, were afraid to oppose the tyranny.
Now, the people, having passed the law, were not nice with Pisistratus about the number of his clubmen, but [he] took no notice of it, though he enlisted and kept as many as he would, until he seized the Acropolis. When that was done, and the city in an uproar, Miracles, with all his family, at once fled; but Solon, though he was now very old, and had some to back him, yet came into the marketplace and made a speech to the citizens, partly blaming their inadvertency and meanness of spirit, and in part urging and exhorting not thus tamely to lose their liberty; and likewise then spoke that memorable saying, that, before it was an easier task to stop the rising tyranny, but now the great and more glorious action to destroy it, when it was begun already, and had gathered strength.
But all being afraid to side with him, he returned home, and, taking his arms, he brought them out and laid them on the porch before his door with these words: 'I have done my part to maintain my country and my laws', and then he busied himself no more. His friends advising him to fly, he refused, but wrote poems, and then reproached the Athenians in them:
'If now you suffer, do not blame the Powers,
For they are good, and all the fault was ours,
All the strongholds you put into his hands,
And now his slaves must do what he commands.'
And many telling him that the tyrant would take his life for this, and asking what he trusted to, that he wanted to speak so badly, he replied: 'To my old age.'
