society. To preserve the sanctity of the marriage bed, he permitted any one to kill an adulterer, if he was taken in the fact; and though he allowed of public brothels, he branded both the women and men who frequented them with an indelible mark of disgrace.

Such were the chief institutions of this celebrated lawgiver, which he bound the Athenians, by a public oath, to observe religiously, at least for the space of a hundred years; and having thus completed the task assigned him, he set out on his travels, leaving his countrymen to become habituated to the new form of government. But it was not easy for a people long torn by civil dissensions to yield implicit obedience to any laws, however wisely framed; their former animosities began to revive, when that authority was removed which alone could hold them in subjection. The factions of the state were headed by three different leaders, Pisistratus, Megacles, and Lycurgus. Of these Pisistratus was at once the most powerful, the most artful, and in the end the most successful. He had many virtues, and hardly a single vice, except that of an inordinate ambition. He was learned himself, and an encourager of learning in others. Cicero says, he was the first that made the Athenians acquainted with the works of Homer; that he disposed of them in the order in which we now have them, and first caused them to be read at the feasts called Panathenæa.

By his promises, his professions, his liberality, and address, he so far gained upon the affections of his countrymen, that he was just upon the point of making himself master of the government, when he had the mortification to see Solon return, after an absence of ten years, fully apprized of his treacherous designs, and determined, if possible, to prevent their completion. This, however, he could not do for any length of time; for Pisistratus, now finding his schemes ripe for execu tion, gave himself several wounds, which he pretended to have received in the cause of the people; and in that condition, with his body all bloody, he ordered himself to be carried in his chariot to the marketplace, where, by his complaints and eloquence, he so inflamed

C

the minds of the populace, that he obtained a guard of fifty persons for the security of his person. This was all he aimed at; for, having now got the rudiments of a standing army, he soon increased it to such a degree, as to enable him to set all opposition at defiance. In a little time, therefore, he seized upon the citadel, and in effect usurped the supreme power. Solon did not long survive the liberties of his country. He died about two years after at the age of eighty, admired and lamented by all the states of Greece, as the greatest legislator, and, excepting Homer, the greatest poet that had hitherto appeared.

By adhering to the same arts by which he had acquired his power, Pisistratus contrived to maintain himself in the possession of it to his dying day, and transmitted it to his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus. These young men seemed to tread in the footsteps of their father; they encouraged learning and learned men; they invited to their court Anacreon, Simonides, and other poets, and honoured them with their friendship, and loaded them with presents. They established schools for the improvement of youth, and caused Mercuries to be erected in all the highways, with moral sentences written upon them, for the instruction of the lowest vulgar. Their reign, however, lasted but eighteen years, and terminated upon the following occasion.

Harmodius and Aristogiton, two citizens of Athens, had contracted a most sincere and inviolable friendship, and resolved to consider any insult that should be offered to either as an injury done to both. Hipparchus, being naturally of an amorous disposition, debauched the sister of Harmodius, and afterwards published her shame as she was about to walk in one of the sacred processions, alleging that she was not in a condition to assist at the ceremony. Such an indignity was not to be borne; and they therefore resolved to destroy the tyrant, which, after various efforts, they at last effected, though they themselves fell in the attempt. Hippias naturally wreaked his resentment upon all whom he supposed privy to the conspiracy, and, among others,

upon a courtesan of the name of Leona, whose courage and constancy deserve to be mentioned. When put to the torture, she bore all the cruelty of her executioners with invincible fortitude; and lest she should, in the agony of pain, be induced to a confession, she bit off her tongue, and spit it in the tyrant's face. To perpetuate her memory, the Athenians erected a statue, representing a lioness without a tongue.

Hippias, dreading the fate of his brother, endeavoured to fortify himself by foreign alliances, and particularly by one with the Lacedæmonians; but in this he was prevented by the family of the Alcmeonidæ, who had been banished from Athens at the beginning of the usurpation, and who, having rebuilt the temple of Delphos in a most magnificent manner, had secured the priestess in their interest. Whenever, therefore, the Spartans came to consult the Oracle, they never received any promise of the God's assistance, but upon condition of setting Athens free. This task, therefore, they resolved to undertake; and, though unsuccessful in their first attempt, they at last dethroned the tyrant the very same year in which the kings were expelled from Rome [A. M. 3496]. The family of Alcmaon were chiefly instrumental in this great work; but the people seemed fonder of acknowledging their obligations to the two friends who struck the first blow. The names of Harmonius and Aristogiton were ever after held in the highest veneration; and their statues were erected in the marketplace, an honour which had never been paid to any one before.

CHAPTER IV.

FROM THE EXPULSION OF HIPPIAS TO THE DEATH OF

MILTIADES.

THOUGH Hippias, upon being driven from the throne, was obliged to abandon his native country, he did not, however, abandon all hopes of being able, some time or other, to recover his lost power. He first applied to the Lacedæmonians, and that people seemed suffi

ciently willing to espouse his cause; and they thought that they might the more easily effect his restoration, as Athens was at this time thrown into confusion, by the introduction of the new mode of voting by ostracism, that is, of procuring the banishment of any citizen for ten years, whose wealth or popularity rendered him dangerous to the state, by allowing every one above sixty years of age to give in the name of the obnoxious person written upon a tile or oyster-shell. Before they undertook, however, to assist Hippias in reascending the throne, they thought it prudent to consult the other states of Greece with regard to the propriety of the measure, and finding them all to be totally averse to it, they abandoned the tyrant and his

cause for ever.

Hippias, disappointed in his hopes of aid from the Lacedæmonians, had recourse to one whom he considered as a much more powerful patron. This was

Artaphernes, governor of Sardis, for the king of Persia. To him he represented the facility with which an entire conquest might be made of Athens; and the Persian court, influenced by the prospect of gaining such an addition of territory, and particularly such an extent of seacoast, readily adopted the proposal. When the Athenians, therefore, sent a messenger into Persia to vindicate their proceedings with regard to Hippias, they received for answer, "That if they wished to be safe, they must admit Hippias for their king." But these gallant republicans had too ardent a passion for liberty, and too rooted an aversion to slavery, patiently to submit to so imperious a mandate. They, therefore, returned to it a flat and peremptory refusal. And from that time forward the Athenians and Persians began to prepare for commencing hostilities against each other.

The gallantry, indeed, of the Athenians upon this occasion is the more to be admired, as their numbers and resources bore no proportion to those of the prince whom they thus set at defiance. The Persian monarch was, at that time, the most powerful sovereign in the universe; whereas the small state of Athens did not contain above twenty thousand citizens, ten thousand

strangers, and about fifty or sixty thousand servants. The state of Sparta, which afterwards took such a considerable share, and made so capital a figure in the war against Persia, was still more inconsiderable with respect to numbers. These did not amount to above nine thousand citizens, and about thirty thousand peasants. And yet these two states, with very little assistance from the inferior republics, were able not only to resist, but even to baffle and defeat all the attempts of the Persian monarch; a memorable instance what acts of heroism may be performed by men animated by a love of freedom, and inspired with a passion for military glory.

The restoration of Hippias was not the only cause of quarrel between the Persians and the Athenians. The Greek colonies of Ionia, Æolia, and Caria, that had been settled for above five hundred years in Asia Minor, were at length subdued by Croesus, king of Lydia; and he, in turn, sinking under the power of Cyrus, his conquests, of course, fell in with the rest of his dominions. These colonies, however, had not yet lost all memory of the liberty they had formerly enjoyed; and they therefore seized every opportunity of delivering themselves from the Persian yoke, and recovering their ancient independence. In this they were now encouraged by Histiæus, the governor, or tyrant, as he was called, of Miletus; for all the Persian governors of these provinces were by the Greeks called tyrants. This man, having rendered his fidelity suspected at the Persian court, had no other way of providing for his own safety, than by exciting the Ionians to a revolt. By his direction, therefore, Aristagoras, his deputy, first applied to the Lacedæmonians for assistance; and failing of success in that quarter, he next had recourse to the Athenians, where he met with a more favourable reception. The Athenians were at this time inflamed with the highest resentment against the Persian monarch, on account of his haughty mandate with regard to the restoration of Hippias; and they therefore supplied the Ionians with twenty ships, to which the Eretrians and Euboeans added five more.