But if merely a delegation of the Eupatrids, as such writers suppose, the council would be still more vicious in its constitution.
[212] Pollux.
[213] Aeschines in Timarch.
[214] Each member was paid (as in England once, as in America at this day) a moderate sum (one drachma) for his maintenance, and at the termination of his trust, peculiar integrity was rewarded with money from the public treasury.
[215] When there were ten tribes, each tribe presided thirty-five days, or five weeks; when the number was afterward increased to twelve, the period of the presidency was one month.
[216] Atimos means rather unhonoured than dishonoured.

He to whom, in its milder degree, the word was applied, was rather withdrawn (as it were) from honour than branded with disgrace.

By rapid degrees, however, the word ceased to convey its original meaning; it was applied to offences so ordinary and common, that it sunk into a mere legal term.
[217] The more heinous of the triple offences, termed eisangelia.
[218] This was a subsequent law; an obolus, or one penny farthing, was the first payment; it was afterward increased to three oboli, or threepence three farthings.
[219] Sometimes, also, the assembly was held in the Pnyx, afterward so celebrated: latterly, also (especially in bad weather), in the temple of Bacchus;--on extraordinary occasions, in whatever place was deemed most convenient or capacious.
[220] Plato de Legibus.
[221] Plutarch assures us that Solon issued a decree that his laws were to remain in force a hundred years: an assertion which modern writers have rejected as incompatible with their constant revision.
It was not, however, so contradictory a decree as it seems at first glance--for one of the laws not to be altered was this power of amending and revising the laws.

And, therefore, the enactment in dispute would only imply that the constitution was not to be altered except through the constitutional channel which Solon had appointed.
[222] See Fast.Hell., vol.ii., 276.
[223] Including, as I before observed, that law which provided for any constitutional change in a constitutional manner.
[224] "Et Croesum quem vox justi facunda Solonis Respicere ad longae jussit spatia ultima vitae." Juv., Sat.x., s.

273.
The story of the interview and conversation between Croesus and Solon is supported by so many concurrent authorities, that we cannot but feel grateful to the modern learning, which has removed the only objection to it in an apparent contradiction of dates.