Solon, at length, was induced to believe that his ordinances required the sanction and repose of time, and that absence -- that moral death--would not only free himself from importunity, but his infant institutions from the frivolous disposition of change.

In his earlier years he had repaired, by commercial pursuits, estates that had been empoverished by the munificence of his father; and, still cultivating the same resources, he made pretence of his vocation to solicit permission for an absence of ten years.

He is said to have obtained a solemn promise from the people to alter none of his institutions during that period [223]; and thus he departed from the city (probably B.C.

575), of whose future glories he had laid the solid foundation.

Attracted by his philosophical habits to that solemn land, beneath whose mysteries the credulous Greeks revered the secrets of existent wisdom, the still adventurous Athenian repaired to the cities of the Nile, and fed the passion of speculative inquiry from the learning of the Egyptian priests.