SOLINGEN (37), a manufacturing town of Prussia, situated near the Wupper, 13 m.  E. of Duesseldorf; has long been famed for its steel and iron works and cutlery manufactures.

SOLOMON, king of Israel from 1015 to 977 B.C., second son of David and Bathsheba, and David’s successor; in high repute far and wide for his love of wisdom and the glory of his reign; he had a truly Oriental passion for magnificence, and the buildings he erected in Jerusalem, including the Temple and a palace on Mount Zion, he raised regardless of an expense which the nation resented after he was gone; the burden of which it would seem had fallen upon them, for when his successor, following in his courses, ascended the throne, ten of the tribes revolted, to the final rupture of the community, and the fall of first the one section and then the other under alien sway.

SOLOMON OF ENGLAND, an appellation conferred on Henry VII., and also satirically on James I., characterised by Sully as “the wisest fool in Christendom.”

SOLOMON OF FRANCE, a title bestowed on Louis IX.

SOLOMON ISLANDS (167), a large group of islands in the West Pacific, 500 m.  E. of New Guinea, the N. islands of which belong to Germany, and the S. to Britain; are volcanic in origin, mountainous, wooded, and thickly populated by Melanesian savages, who are totem worshippers, and still practise cannibalism.

SOLOMON’S RING, a ring worn by Solomon, in which was a stone from which, according to the Rabbins, he learned whatever he wished to know.

SOLON, the great Athenian law-giver, and one of the seven sages of GREECE (q. v.), born in Athens, was of royal degree, and kinsman of Pisistratus; began life as a trader, and in that capacity acquired a large experience of the world, and he soon turned his attention to political affairs, and showed such wisdom in the direction of them that he was elected archon in 594 B.C., and in that office was invested with full power to ordain whatever he might deem of advantage for the benefit of the State; he accordingly set about the framing of a constitution in which property, not birth, was made the basis of the organisation, and the title to honour and office in the community; he divided the citizens into four classes, gave additional power to the assemblies of the people, and made the archons and official dignitaries responsible to them in the administration of affairs; when he had finished his work, he ordered the laws he had framed to be engraved on tablets and set up in a public place, then took oath of the people to observe them for ten years, after which he left the country and set out on travel; at the end of the ten years he returned, to find things lapsing into the old disorder, and Pisistratus ready to seize the sovereignty of the State, whereupon he withdrew into private life, and died the subject of a tyrant at the age of eighty (640-559 B.C.).

SOLSTICE, summer and winter, the two recurring periods of the year at which the sun is farthest distant N. or S. from the equator, which mark midsummer and midwinter, the times being the 21st of June and 22nd of December; also applied to the two points in the ECLIPTIC (q. v.), which the sun appears to reach on these two dates.