The remaining fragments of Solon contain the celebrated lines upon the Life of Man, which he divided into ten periods of seven years. He rebuked Mimnermus for wishing to make sixty the term of human life, and bade him add another decade. We also possess some amorous verses of questionable character, supposed to have been written in his early youth. The prudes of antiquity were scandalized at Solon, a lawgiver and sage, for having penned these couplets. The libertines rejoiced to place so respectable a name upon their list of worthies. To the student of history they afford, in a compact form, some insight into the pursuits and objects of an Athenian man of pleasure. Plato quotes one couplet in the _Lysis_, and the author of the dialogue #peri erôtôn# (On Loves), attributed to Lucian, makes use of the same verses to prove that Solon was not exempt from the passion for which he is apologizing. Apuleius mentions another as "lascivissimus ille versus." It should be added that the most considerable of these elegies has also been ascribed to Theognis. The doubt of authorship which hangs over all the gnomic fragments warns us, therefore, to be cautious in ascribing them to Solon. At the same time there is no strong external or internal argument against their authenticity. Solon displays no asceticism in his poetry, or in anything that is recorded of his life or sayings.[60] It is probable that he lived as a Greek among Greeks, and was not ashamed of any of their social customs. Passing from Solon to Phocylides, we find a somewhat different tone of social philosophy. Phocylides was a native of Miletus who lived between 550 and 490 B.C. If Mimnermus represents the effeminacy of the Asiatic Greeks, Phocylides displays a kind of prosaic worldly wisdom, for which the Ionians were celebrated. He is thoroughly _bourgeois_, to use a modern phrase; contented with material felicity, shrewd, safe in his opinions, and gifted with great common-sense. Here are some of his maxims: "First get your living, and then think of getting virtue." ... "What is the advantage of noble birth, if favor follow not the speech and counsel of a man?" ... "The middle classes are in many ways best off; I wish to be of middle rank in the State." Aristotle (_Pol._, iv. 9, 7) quotes the last of these sayings with approbation. It is a thoroughly Ionian sentiment. Two of his genuine fragments contain the germ of Greek ideas afterwards destined to be widely developed and applied by the greatest thinkers of Greece. One of these describes the Greek conception of a perfect State: "A small city, set upon a rock, and well governed, is better than all foolish Nineveh." We here recognize the practical wisdom and thorough solidity of Greek good-sense. Wealth, size, and splendor they regarded as stumbling-blocks and sources of weakness. To be compact and well governed expressed their ideal of social felicity. Plato in the _Republic_, and Aristotle in the _Politics_, carry the