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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: 'The truth of the story is a great advantage,' if we read between the
lines, an indication of the fiction? It is only a legend that Solon went
to Egypt, and if he did he could not have conversed with Egyptian priests
or have read records in their temples. The truth is that the introduction
is a mosaic work of small touches which, partly by their minuteness, and
also by their seeming probability, win the confidence of the reader. Who
would desire better evidence than that of Critias, who had heard the
narrative in youth when the memory is strongest at the age of ten from his
grandfather Critias, an old man of ninety, who in turn had heard it from
Solon himself? Is not the famous expression--'You Hellenes are ever
children and there is no knowledge among you hoary with age,' really a
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