Both men cut their people free of creditors and of kings, Solon at Athens and Publicola at Rome. Solon wrote the laws and then left the city. Publicola stayed, pulled his own house down to quiet suspicion, and kept the new republic in his hands.

Plutarch thinks Publicola finished the work he began. Solon's laws were soon bent by the men who came after him. The comparison leans to the Roman who lived inside the state he had made.