Solon says in his poems,
"I long for wealth, but not procured
By means unholy."
Now Poplicola not only possessed wealth honourably acquired, but also
was able to spend it, much to his credit, in relieving the needy. Thus
if Solon was the wisest, Poplicola was certainly the most fortunate of
men; for what Solon prayed for as the greatest blessing, Poplicola
possessed and enjoyed to the end of his days.
II. Thus has Solon done honour to Poplicola; and he again honoured Solon
by regarding him as the best model a man could follow in establishing a
free constitution: for he took away the excessive power and dignity of
the consuls and made them inoffensive to the people, and indeed made use
of many of Solon's own laws; as he empowered the people to elect their
own consuls, and gave defendants a right of appeal to the people from
other courts, just as Solon had done. He did not, like Solon, make two
senates, but he increased the existing one to nearly double its number.
His grounds for the appointment of quaestors was to give the consul
leisure for more important matters, if he was an honest man; and if he
was a bad man, to remove the opportunity of fraud which he would have
had if he were supreme over the state and the treasury at once. In
hatred of tyrants Poplicola exceeded Solon, for he fixed the penalty for
a man who might be proved to be attempting to make himself king, whereas
the Roman allowed any one to kill him without trial.
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