Solon's fragments 9–11 are preserved in three late authors: frr. 9 and 11 by Diodoros Sikelos, 9.20.2, Plutarch, Solon 3.6 and 30.3 respectively, and Diogenes Laertios, 1.50 and 1.51 respectively; and fr. 10 by Diogenes Laertios alone, 1.49. They are all quoted in the context of Solon's reaction to Peisistratos. Stories on this theme were circulating by the time of the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia, and Rhodes' scepticism about them is well founded. Its author did not garnish his version of events (...) with these poems, nor indeed with any Solonian utterance, and he explicitly states that myth-making on this subject had already resulted in two stories about Solon and Peisistratos which were chronologically impossible. (shrink)

A board of ¿law-guardians¿, or nomophulakes, has long been associated with the Athenian regime of Demetrius of Phalerum (317-307 bc). The duties of Demetrius¿ officials have been surmised from an entry on nomophulakes in the Atthis of Philochorus (FGrHist 328 F64), which lists their central functions as the supervision of ma-gistrates and the prevention of illegal resolutions by the assembly and council. This understanding of the fourth-century nomophulakes stands in contradiction to the explicit testimony of Pollux (8.102), who asserts that (...) Demetrius changed the name of the hendeka, the eleven Athenian gaolers, to nomophulakes. A case is made here for the acceptance of Pollux, a case based on textual grounds and on comparison with other reforms associated with Demetrius. It is further argued that Philochorus¿ description applies ¿ as the sole excerpter of the Atthis to give a temporal context, the Lexicon Cantabrigiense, indeed states ¿ to nomophulakes created in the aftermath of Areopagite reform in the mid-fifth century, and that Demetrius¿ officials were linked to these early nomophulakes through their inheritance of different aspects of nomophulakia associated with the early Areopagus. (shrink)