It is evident that Solon made no mention of any interview with Crœsus in his poems; otherwise, the dispute would have been settled at once. Now this, in a man like Solon, amounts to negative evidence of some value for he noticed in his poems both Egypt and the prince Philokyprus in Cyprus, and had there been any conversation so impressive as that which Herodotus relates, between him and Crœsus, he could hardly have failed to mention it. Wesseling, Larcher, Volney, and Mr. Clinton, all try to obviate the chronological difficulties, and to save the historical character of this interview, but in my judgment unsuccessfully. See Mr. Clinton’s F. H. ad ann. 546 B. C., and Appendix, c. 17, p. 298. The chronological data are these,—Crœsus was born in 595 B. C., one year before the legislation of Solon: he succeeded to his father at the age of thirty-five, in 560 B. C.: he was overthrown, and Sardis captured, in 546 B. C., by Cyrus. Mr. Clinton, after Wesseling and the others, supposes that Crœsus was king jointly with his father Halyattês, during the lifetime of the latter, and that Solon visited Lydia and conversed with Crœsus during this joint reign in 570 B. C. “We may suppose that Solon left Athens in B. C. 575, about twenty years after his archonship, and returned thither in B. C. 565, about five years before the usurpation of Peisistratus.” (p. 300.) Upon which hypothesis we may remark:— 1. The arguments whereby Wesseling and Mr. Clinton endeavor to show that Crœsus was king jointly with his father, do not sustain the conclusion. The passage of Nikolaus Damaskenus, which is produced to show that it was Halyattês (and not Crœsus) who conquered Karia, only attests that Halyattês _marched_ with an armed force into Karia (ἐπὶ Καρίαν στρατεύων): this same author states, that Crœsus was deputed by Halyattês to govern _Adramyttium and the plain of Thêbê_ (ἄρχειν ἀποδεδειγμένος), but Mr. Clinton stretches this testimony to an inadmissible extent when he makes it tantamount to a conquest of _Æolis_ by Halyattês, (“_so that Æolis is already conquered_.”) Nothing at all is said about Æolis, or the cities of the Æolic Greeks, in this passage of Nikolaus, which represents Crœsus as governing a sort of satrapy under his father Halyattês, just as Cyrus the younger did in after-times under Artaxerxês. And the expression of Herodotus, ἐπεί τε, δόντος τοῦ πατρὸς, ἐκράτησε τῆς ἀπχῆς ὁ Κροῖσος, appears to me, when taken along with the context, to indicate a bequest or nomination of successor, and not a donation during life.