XXII. Observing that the city was filled with men who came from all countries to take refuge in Attica, that the country was for the most part poor and unproductive, and that merchants also are unwilling to despatch cargoes to a country which has nothing to export, he encouraged his countrymen to embark in trade, and made a law that a son was not obliged to support his father, if his father had not taught him a trade. As for Lykurgus, whose city was clear of strangers, and whose land was "unstinted, and with room for twice the number," as Euripides says, and who above all had all the Helots, throughout Lacedaemon, who were best kept employed, in order to break their spirit by labour and hardship, it was very well that his citizens should disdain laborious handicrafts and devote their whole attention to the art of war. But Solon had not the power to change the whole life of his countrymen by his laws, but rather was forced to suit his laws to existing circumstances, and, as he saw that the soil was so poor that it could only suffice for the farmers, and was unable to feed a mass of idle people as well, he gave great honour to trade, and gave powers to the senate of the Areopagus to inquire what each man's source of income might be, and to punish the idle. A harsher measure was that of which we are told by Herakleides of Pontus, his making it unnecessary for illegitimate children to maintain their father. Yet if a man abstains from an honourable marriage, and lives with a woman more for his own pleasure in her society than with a view to producing a family, he is rightly served, and cannot upbraid his children with neglecting him, because he has made their birth their reproach.