Everyone knows that after creating laws for the Athenians, Solon left Athens and founded a colony in the eastern Mediterranean named after himself. Some are able to elaborate: merely a part of his desire for theo ria, this colony wasn't technically his, but simply the result of some friendly, and certainly wise, advice to a king whose city needed relocating. Others, more cyncial, know that conflict with Pisistratus forced Solon to found his own colony with a group of like-minded Athenians. This latter group further relate that Solon's colonists were easily influenced by the language of their new neighbours, and hence provided the origin of solecism, a term they claim derives from the'bad'language spoken at Solon's oikismos.

Everyone knows this story, or, rather, they used to. It is not a story we choose to repeat often. Whether because we doubt its historicity or we generally think less of Solon, or for other reasons, it has fallen out of the loop of the stories we select when reconstructing antiquity. And yet the sheer frequency of its repetition by ancient commentators, scholiasts, compilers of etymologies suggests that this story was of enormous importance for those engaged in activities similar (in process, if not results) to our own. 1 Therefore as an introduction to one world of the scholiasts, this paper will look at many different appearances of this once popular story in order to demonstrate what the content and frequent repetition of this story reveal about the concerns and preoccupations of the scholiasts and their audience. An examination of Solon's colony in the many kinds of ancient reference materials will shed light on the nature of the scholiastic enterprise as a whole.