It was because at every step the effort to find historical foundation failed utterly that after years of investigation I sought and found in a thorough application of the myth-theory the solution of the enigma. Invariably that gives light where the historical assumption yields darkness. It is thoroughly characteristic of the spirit in which some champions of the biographical view work that, in sequel to the falsification of the problem just noted, we have from them the plea that if we give up the historicity of Jesus, we must give up that of Solon and Pythagoras; and that "obviously Jesus has a far larger chance to have really existed than Solon." [12] Such a use of the conception of "chance" reveals the kind of dialectic we are dealing with. One recalls Newman's derision of the Paleyan position that the "chances" were in favour of there being a God. "If we deny all authenticity to Jesus's teaching," we are asked, "what of Solon's traditional lore?" Well, what of it? Is it to be authenticated by the threat that it must go if we deny that the Sermon on the Mount is a sermon at all? The fragments of Solon's verse purport to have been written by him: have we anything purporting to have been written by Jesus? The very fact that we have only fragments of Solon is in itself an argument in favour of their genuineness: to Jesus any evangelist could ascribe any sayings at will. [13] As usual, the critic falsifies the debate, affirming that "the stories of Plutarch about him [Solon] are, as Grote says, 'contradictory as well as apocryphal.'" What Grote really says [14] is that Plutarch's stories "as to the way in which Salamis was recovered are contradictory as well as apocryphal." He makes no such assertion as to the stories of Solon's life in general, though, like every critical historian, he recognizes that many things were ultimately ascribed to Solon which belong to later times. [15] But the genuine fragments of Solon's verse and laws are sound historical material. As Meyer claims, [16] the Archon list is as valid as the Roman Fasti. It is precisely because of the solid elements in the record that Solon stands as a historic figure, while Lycurgus is given up as a deity Evemerized. [17] On the principles of Dr. Conybeare, we must give up Solon because we give up Lycurgus, or accept Lykurgos if we accept Solon. Historical criticism does no such thing. It decides the cases on their merits by critical tests, and finds the fact of a Solonian legislation historically as certain as the Lycurgean is fabulous. The item that Solon's family claimed to be descended from Poseidon is no ground for doubting the historicity of Solon, because such claims were normal in early Greece. Is it pretended that claims to be the Son of God were normal in later Jewry?