The Warning of Solon the Athenian

I woke up this morning and was seized by the desire to make a new English adaptation of one of the great verse admonitions of all time, attributed to Solon the Athenian, the great king and law-maker. This is based on Demosthenes, "On the Embassy," in which the orator recites from memory these lines by Solon. His warning about civil strife and its costs, and his admonition in favor of wisdom, ring down through the ages. Of course I have adapted his words a little to the present day, and inserted some ideas and images under sudden inspiration, as any poet-translator would do. So here it is: read and tremble.

Athanaia! Athanaia! Xaira Theá!


Athenians! We know that Zeus will never plan our destruction
nor will any of the immortal gods plot against us,
For such is the power of Wisdom, our great-hearted goddess
Athena, daughter of the king of of gods,
she from whose bright temple extends her hands over all
who shelter in this blessed city.


But now her own people, for greed and profit,
risk ruining all, imperil the city itself with foolishness!
The leaders of the Assembly are of unsound mind:
bad morals and pride lead by the leash to a downfall.
Orgied, they know not how to restrain themselves,
or keep behind closed doors their gluttony and lust.
They have grown rich through bribes and malfeasance.
They loot the common land and temples, and steal
from the poor their tiny recompense. They scrawl
their one day's wishes on the tablets of law, rewrite
with their bloated thoughts the ways of our tradition.
The columns of Justice tremble but stand: does She
not know what is and was and has ever been?
Ah! she is silent, but for how long, Athenians?
How long until the truth avenges itself?


When corruption comes, the end is sure as disease
in wasting away the city: men's clouded reason
falls into an evil servitude, fathers and sons
brothers and sisters draw knives against one another
in civil discord and party strife. For no cause at all
except the desire to chaos, they bring us to War —
no matter the cause or pretext, a vile war does naught
but waste the prime and beauty of manhood,
leaving the polis a place of stumped cripples.



In their dark caucuses, yea, even in the Assembly,
they turn the ear to foreign conspirators; they turn
one faction of Athens against another, hating
their fellows more than the dread barbarians.
These evils seep down among the common folk,
those of little reason who but repeat the slogans
repeated o'er and o'er into their wearied brains.


How long will it be, if this goes on,
until our own citizens put on the chains of slavery?
How long until our own brothers are sent abroad
into strange servitude to masters we do not know?
How will we ever bring our kindred home
when their legs and minds are fettered thus?


And so the common evil comes to all, when flags
and bonnets and streaming slogans divide us,
house against house no longer neighbors at all.
Then come the evil officers with false arrest,
armed so that no door can bar their entry.
No matter what wall or hedge he leaps,
the single man cannot escape his judgment,
called before a dark and sinister tribunal.


So my heart bids me to tell you, Athens,
that even as bad government is as a pestilence
among us, good rule is like the cleansing breeze
that dissipates disease and ends disorder.
Wisdom shall hurl the evil-doers down
into the dark cells they have dug themselves
(all the cruel punishments their fevered minds
devised, not even those shall suffice to punish
the traitor who sells his own state to darkness!).


Wisdom shall smooth things out at the end,
if we choose her over hateful Eris, discord's
abominable mistress! She brings excess to order;
she stills the loud folly of bloated outrage.
No longer will weeds spring up in our roadways,
and once again will green abundance bless us
as all can walk freely without fear of slayers.


Wisdom shall straighten crooked judgments.
She tempers the pride of invention and wealth,
even the arrogance of the returning warrior.
The howling works of faction, the wrath of strife,
will gave way to common reason in the assembly.

Heed Athena, your only hope to make all good
and wise and perfect in the bright human world.

Athanaia! Athanaia! Xaira Theá!