Solon
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Solon. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
one of the seven sages of Greece, and the celebrated legislator of Athens; born in Salamis, in the 7th ce 1tury B. C. After having enhanced the glory of his country by recovering Salamis, he was chosen archon 594 B. c., and having received full power to do whatever he judged needful, he set himself to the task of improving the condition of his countrymen. He abolished most of the cruel laws of Draco, and formed a new constitution founded on the principle of making property, not birth, the title to the honors and offices of the State. He made many special laws also relating to trade and commerce, marriage, disposition of property by will, etc., caused them to be engraved on wooden cylinders, and t is said to have bound the Athenians by an oath not to make any changes in his code for 10 years. He then left the country, to avoid being obliged to make any alteration in them, and visited Egypt, Cyprus, and Lydia. On his return, after an absence of 10 years, he found the State torn by party violence, and his kinsman SOLON Pisistratus aiming at the sovereignty, which he soon seized. Solon then withdrew from public life and is supposed to have died at the age of 80, about 558 b. c.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
One of the wise men of Greece, who was born at Salamis and educated at Athens . After traveling over Greece he returned, and was elected archon and sovereign legislator, in which capacity he effected numerous reforms in the state, binding the Athenians by a solemn oath to observe the laws he enacted for one hundred years. After this he visited Egypt, and on returning to Athens after ten years' absence he found most of his regulations disregarded by his countrymen. On this he retired to Cyprus , where he died in his eightieth year, 558 years before the Christian era.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts make Solon a native of Salamis and dwell on his constitution and his travels, but neither mentions the reform modern historians consider his most important: the seisachtheia, the cancellation of debts and freeing of those enslaved for debt, which Aristotle treated as the first act of a popular champion. The birthplace is also now doubted -- Solon belonged to an old Athenian family, and the Salamis story looks like a back-formation from his part in Athens' quarrel over that island. On the length of the oath, the 'hundred years' given by 1000 Classical Characters in 1900 is the figure found in the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians, whose papyrus text, first published in 1891, reshaped the study of Solon by preserving both an account of his reforms and quotations from his verse. The larger shift since 1921 is one of caution: Solon's poems survive only in fragments, and fourth-century BC orators such as Aeschines routinely credited him with laws of their own day, so much of the detailed legislation once confidently listed is now treated as later accretion.
Written for this edition, 2026.