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3Moreover, though Solon rightly and justly plumes himself on rejecting absolute power even when circumstances offered it to him and his fellow-citizens were willing that he should take it, it redounds no less to the honour of Publicola that, when he had received a tyrannical power, he made it more democratic, and did not use even the prerogatives which were his by right of possession. And of the wisdom of such a course Solon seems to have been conscious even before Publicola, when he says[3] that a people
“then will yield the best obedience to its guides
When it is neither humoured nor oppressed too much.”
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Notes
[3] Fragment 6 (Bergk); cf. Aristotle, Const. of Athens, xii. 2.