[156] Plutarch, Solon, i; Diogen. Laërt. iii, 1; Aristot. Polit. iv, 9, 10.
The first particular event in respect to which Solon appears as an active politician, is the possession of the island of Salamis, then disputed between Megara and Athens. Megara was at that time able to contest with Athens, and for sometime to contest with success, the occupation of this important island,—a remarkable fact, which perhaps may be explained by supposing that the inhabitants of Athens and its neighborhood carried on the struggle with only partial aid from the rest of Attica. However this may be, it appears that the Megarians had actually established themselves in Salamis, at the time when Solon began his political career, and that the Athenians had experienced so much loss in the struggle, as to have formally prohibited any citizen from ever submitting a proposition for its reconquest. Stung with this dishonorable abnegation, Solon counterfeited a state of ecstatic excitement, rushed into the agora, and there, on the stone usually occupied by the official herald, pronounced to the crowd around a short elegiac poem,[158] which he had previously composed on the subject of Salamis. He enforced upon them the disgrace of abandoning the island, and wrought so powerfully upon their feelings, that they rescinded the prohibitory law: “Rather (he exclaimed) would I forfeit my native city, and become a citizen of Pholegandrus, than be still named an Athenian, branded with the shame of surrendered Salamis!” The Athenians again entered into the war, and conferred upon him the command of it,—partly, as we are told, at the instigation of Peisistratus, though the latter must have been at this time (600-594 B. C.) a very young man, or rather a boy.[159]
[158] Plutarch, Solon, viii. It was a poem of one hundred lines, χαριέντως πάνυ πεποιημένων.
Diogenês tells us, that “Solon read the verses to the people through the medium of the herald,”—a statement not less deficient in taste than in accuracy, and which spoils the whole effect of the vigorous exordium, Ἀυτὸς κήρυξ ἦλθον ἀφ᾽ ἱμερτῆς Σαλαμῖνος, etc.
[159] Plutarch, _l. c._; Diogen. Laërt. i, 47. Both Herodotus (i, 59) and some authors read by Plutarch ascribed to Peisistratus an active part in the war against the Megarians, and even the capture of Nisæa, the port of Megara. Now the first usurpation of Peisistratus was in 560 B. C., and we can hardly believe that he can have been prominent and renowned in a war no less than forty years before.