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CHAPTER X.

ATHENS, AND THE SOLONIAN LEGISLATION.

WITH the name of Solon are associated some of the most momentous changes ever made in Athenian or in any other polity; and even for some details in his work we have indisputable evidence in the fragments of his poems which have been preserved to us.

The chief interest of his life centres in the social condition of the Athenian people. If Drakon did something to soften the indiscriminate severity of the court of Areiopagos, no heed, it would seem, was taken of the frightful sufferings of the classes who were excluded from all share in the government. If we confine ourselves to the words of Solon, we have before us the fact that the men who exercised power in the state were guilty of gross injustice and of violent robberies among themselves, while of the poor many were in chains and had been sold away even into foreign slavery. Nay, in the indignant appeal which, after carrying out his reforms, Solon addresses to Gê Melaina, the Black Earth, as a person, he speaks of the land itself as having been in some way inslaved, and as being now by himself set free by the removal of boundaries which had been fixed in many places.

These boundaries were simply the landmarks which, whether in Attica or in Latium, and throughout the Aryan world or even beyond its limits, it was sacrilege to touch. They represented those ancient patriarchal rights which received their whole sanction from religion. That the greater part of the Athenian soil was marked off by these landmarks, is asserted by Solon himself. In other words, the Eupatrids were still the lords of almost all the land; and thus we have on the one side a few heads of families who might in the strictest sense of the term be spoken of as despots, and on the other the dependents who trembled before them but who were suffered to draw their livelihood from the soil on condition of paying a fixed part of the produce to the lord. It can scarcely be doubted that even this fixed payment marks a step forward in the condition of the labourer who had started without even

this poor semblance of right. It was, however, a mere semblance, after all. So long as he could comply with the terms imposed on him, he might remain nominally free; but his real state was not changed. The lord might demand a larger portion of the produce; or a hard season might leave him unable to pay even the sixth part. In either case, he reverted necessarily to the servile state from which he had never been legally set free.

If this be at all a true picture of the condition of Attica in the days of Solon, it was obviously impossible that things could go on indefinitely as they were. One of two results must follow under such circumstances. Either the half-emancipated peasant must become a free owner of the soil, or he must fall back into his original subjection. Here, then, in dealing with grievances which every year must become less and less tolerable, Solon had abundant materials for his Seisachtheia or Relief Act; and the measures which such a state of things would render necessary are precisely those which seem to be indicated by his words. From all lands occupied by cultivators on condition of yielding a portion of the produce he removed the pillars which marked the religious ownership of the Eupatrids, and lightened the burdens of the cultivators by lessening the amount of produce or money which henceforth took the shape of a rent. In other words, a body of free labourers and poor landowners was not so much relieved of a heavy pressure, as for the first time called into being.

But Solon did more than redress existing wrongs. The tribes with their principle of religious association had remained thus far undisturbed; but the greater part of the population was not included in any tribe, and it was clear that if the statesman wished to avail himself of the full powers and resources of the country, it was indispensably necessary to introduce a new classification which should take in all the free inhabitants of the land without reference to affinities of blood and be based wholly on property. The principle thus introduced was termed the timocratic, and its most important political result was that it excluded the poor Eupatrid from offices and honours for which richer citizens now became eligible who could lay no claim to the religious character of the old nobility. A further democratic element was introduced by the law which, while it confined the archonship to members of the richest class, left the

election of the archons to the Heliaia, or general council, which included not merely the men of the first three classes, but, as the Eupatrid would have termed them, the rabble of the fourth class. This law went even further, making the archons at the end of their year of office directly accountable to the public assembly and subject to an impeachment by it in case of misbehaviour.

Such, in the main, seems to have been the great work of Solon, a work accomplished just at a time when attempts like those of Kylon or Peisistratos, if made at that moment, might have crushed for ever the rising freedom of Athens. But Solon himself scarcely more than laid the foundations, and it is a common error which ascribes to him developements of the constitution belonging to a time later even than that of Kleisthenes. The members of the fourth and by far the largest class of citizens could have no further influence on the conduct of affairs than by the check, probably not always very effectual, which they exercised by electing the archons and examining them at the end of the year. Indeed, all that the Solonian reform had done was to exclude from the archonship the poor Eupatrid and to admit to it the non-Eupatrid of the first class, if he belonged to some tribe; but no one who did not possess the religious title could hold office, and thus Solon left the constitution, as he found it, practically oligarchic.

Over the sequel of the career of Solon the mists of oral tradition have gathered thickly. His work as a legislator was done; but there remained the fear that others might destroy it or that he might be induced to impair it himself. He therefore bound the Athenians, we are told, by solemn oaths that for ten years, or, as some said, for a hundred years, they would suffer no change to be made in his laws, and then, to make it impossible that this change should come from himself, he departed on the long pilgrimage which is associated with the names of other legislators as great as himself, though less historical. That he visited Egypt and Kypros (Cyprus) is proved by his own words; but the time of the visit is undetermined, and that he cannot have sojourned with Amasis, seems to be clear from the fact that the reign of Amasis began at least a generation after the legislation of Solon. Not more trustworthy chronologically is the exquisitely beautiful tale which relates the intercourse of Solon with the Lydian king

(Croesus) Kroisos. It is clear that in the belief of Herodotos Solon visited Sardeis not more than six or seven years before the fall of the Lydian monarchy. The death of Atys which marked the turning-point in the unbroken happiness of Kroisos was followed, after two years only, by the war with the Persian Cyrus; and the catastrophe occurred scarcely less than fifty years after the legislation of Solon.

The return of Solon to Athens was not to be followed by new reforms for the benefit of his countrymen. The tide had turned. In the struggle which ensued, Solon, it is said, foresaw that Peisistratos must be the conqueror; but he strɔve in vain to rouse the Athenians to combine against the tyranny with which they were threatened. To no purpose he stood in his armour at the door of his house, and he could but console himself with the thought that he had done his duty, and reply to those who asked on what he relied to save himself from the vengeance of his enemies, On my old age.' Peisistratos, as the story goes, did him no harm; and the man who had done more than any who had gone before him to make his country free died in peace, full of years and with a fame which is the purer for the unselfishness which refused to employ for his own exaltation opportunities greater than any which fell to the lot even of Peisistratos himself.

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CHAPTER XI.

THE TYRANNY OF THE PEISISTRATIDAI.

THE success of Peisistratos is of itself sufficient evidence of the slow growth of the democratic spirit at Athens. He appeared, we are told, as the champion of the Hyperakrians or men of the hills, declaring that he had narrowly escaped from the hands of his enemies who had fallen upon him in the country. Pointing to the wounds, which he had inflicted on himself and on his mules, as attesting the truth of his tale, he prayed the people to grant him a body-guard to protect him against the weapons of the rival factions; and the disguise was finally thrown off when with their help Peisistratos seized the Akropolis, and Megakles with the Alkmaionids fled from the city.

Whatever may be the value of these details, there is no reason to question the general statement of Herodotos that, having thus made himself master of Athens, Peisistratos ruled wisely and well, without introducing a single constitutional change.

But he owed his power to the divisions among the people, and a coalition of the Pediaian and Paralian factions, in other words, of the men belonging to the plains and the sea-coast, was at once followed by his expulsion. But this success served only to renew and whet the strife of these parties, and Megakles, as the head of the Paralians, offered to restore the exiled tyrant on the condition that the latter should marry the daughter of the Alkmaionid chief. The terms were accepted; and to insure the assent and favour of the people, the conspirators, it is said, obtained the services of a tall and beautiful woman of the Paionian tribe, whom they placed in full armour on a chariot, and then made proclamation to the citizens that they should welcome Peisistratos whom Athênê herself was bringing to her own Akropolis. Hastening to the scene, they saw a majestic woman, about six feet high, and taking her at once to be the virgin goddess, gave her worship and received the despot.

But the reconciliation of Megakles with Lykourgos, the head of the so-called Pediaian faction, led to the second expulsion of the tyrant, who, it is said, spent the next ten years chiefly in Eretria, aiding Lygdamis to establish his despotism in Naxos, and in some way or other helping Thebes and other cities.

The story of his restoration implies a singular indifference and inactivity on the part of the Athenians. The invader occupied Marathon without opposition; and when on his moving from that place the Athenians advanced against him, they allowed him to fall upon them while some were dicing, and others sleeping after their morning meal. The sons of the tyrant rode towards Athens, and telling the citizens what had happened, bade them go home. The order was placidly obeyed, and for the third time Peisistratos became master of the Akropolis.

He died tyrant of Athens, three and thirty years, it is said, after the time of his first usurpation. His sons, Hippias and Hipparchos, followed, we are told, the example of sobriety and

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