moderation set by their father. But a personal wrong done by Hipparchos led, it is said, to a conspiracy by which Aristogeiton and his friend Harmodios hoped to overthrow their despotism. These men with a few partisans determined to await the greater Panathenaic festival, being sure that on seeing the blow struck the main body of the citizens would hasten to join them. When the day came and the conspirators drew near to their work, they were astonished to see one of their number talking familiarly with Hippias, and then, supposing that their design was betrayed, determined that at least the man who had injured them should die. They found Hipparchos near the temple of the daughters of Leos, and there they killed him. Aristogeiton for the moment escaped; but Harmodios was slain on the spot by the guards of the murdered man. Tidings of the disaster were soon brought to Hippias, who was at the Kerameikos. With great presence of mind, he simply commanded the hoplites who with shields and spears were to take part in the procession to lay down their arms and go to a certain spot. The command was obeyed under the notion that their general had something to say to them; and the arms being seized by the mercenaries, all citizens found with daggers were set aside as sharing in the conspiracy.

The death of Hipparchos and the circumstances which led to it warned Hippias that yet more disasters might be in store for him, and that he would do well to provide betimes against the evil day. His thoughts turned to the Persian king whose power after the fall of the Lydian monarchy had been extended to the shores of the Hellespont, and to whom the Athenian settlement at Sigeion had thus become tributary. In Sigeion then he thought that he might have a safe refuge, and in the Lampsakene despot he found a friend through whom he gained personal access to the Persian king.

While Hippias was thus guarding himself against possible disasters, the intrigues of the Alkmaionids were preparing the way for the expulsion which he dreaded. The Amphiktyonic Council had determined that the temple of Delphoi, which had been accidentally burnt, should be restored at the cost of three hundred talents, about 115,000l. of our money, one fourth portion of this to be contributed by the Delphians themselves. When at length the money was gathered together, the Alkmaionids

who took the contract executed the work with greater sumptuousness than the contract specified, and thus won for themselves the gratitude of the Delphians, which was heightened by further gifts bestowed on the condition that to all Spartans who might consult the oracle the answer should be returned by the Pythia or priestess, 'Athens must be set free.' Wearied out by the repetition of this command, the Spartans sent an army which landed at Phaleron, only to be defeated by Hippias, who had been forewarned of their coming.

The attempt was, however, repeated on a larger scale under the Spartan king Kleomenes, who shut up Hippias within the Pelasgic wall. But he had no idea of a permanent blockade, and the besieged were well provided with food. A few days more would have seen the departure of the Spartan force, when an accident brought the matter to an issue. The children of Hippias were taken in the attempt to smuggle them out of the country. The tables were effectually turned, and for the recovery of his children Hippias agreed to leave Attica within five days. Thus, after the lapse of fifty years from the establishment of the first tyranny of Peisistratos, the last despot of his house betook himself to the refuge which he had prepared on the banks of the Scamandros; and a pillar on the Akropolis set forth for the execration of future ages the evil deeds of the dynasty and the names of all its members.

CHAPTER XII.

THE REFORMS OF KLEISTHENES.

THE outward forms of the Solonian constitution underwent, we are told, little or no change under the dynasty of Peisistratos. By that constitution, which made property the title to citizenship, and insured to the poorest the right of voting in the Ekklesia, or general assembly, a shock had been given to the religious sentiment which invested the Eupatrids with an incommunicable dignity. But Solon had not interfered with the religious constitution of the tribes, phratriai, and houses; and all that the main body of the people had to do was to elect the archons and the senate from the members of the patrician

tribes, and exercise a feeble judicial power on magistrates going out of office.

With the expulsion of Hippias the Solonian laws, nominally at least, resumed their force. But the first fact which comes before us is a renewal of the strife which it was the object of the Solonian constitution to put down-the contending parties being the Alkmaionid Kleisthenes, who was popularly credited with the corruption of the Delphian priestess, and Isagoras the son of Tisandros. The causes of the quarrel between them are not specified; but when we read that the defeated Kleisthenes took the people into partnership, or rather made common cause with the Demos, and that his first act was to substitute new tribes in place of the old, we feel that the contest went to the very foundations of social order and government.

If there be any truth in the accounts which we have received of the Solonian constitution, the fourth class contained practically not only all those whose annual income fell short of 200 drachmas, but all (no matter what their wealth) who were not members of phratriai or tribes. To such men wealth, while it added to their civil burdens, brought no political privileges; and the influx of strangers, allured by Athenian commerce, was constantly increasing the numbers of a class which already contained by far the larger portion of the population. Many of these men would be among the most intelligent and enterprising in the land; and the discontent with which they would regard their exclusion from all civil offices would be a serious and growing danger to the state. Nor could Kleisthenes fail to see that if he wished to put out a fire which was always more than smouldering and might at any time burst into furious flame, he must strike at the root of the religious organization which rendered all true political growth impossible. There was nothing left but to do away with the religious tribes as political units, and to substitute for them a larger number of new tribes divided into cantons taking in the whole body of the Athenian citizens.

Such a change, although it might, as the Kleisthenean proposal did, leave the houses and phratries untouched as religious societies founded on an exclusive worship, would be regarded by the conservative Eupatrid as virtually a death-blow to the old faith. Nothing more is needed to explain the vehement opposition of Isagoras; nor can we well avoid the conclusion

that it was the proposal of this change which roused his antagonism, and that it was not the rivalry of Isagoras which led Kleisthenes to promulgate his scheme as a new method of winning popularity.

While the principle which avoided all unnecessary interference with existing forms left a nominal existence to the Trittyes and Naukrariai, the consultative senate of Four Hundred was done away. In the new council of Five Hundred, to which all citizens were eligible, each of the ten new tribes was represented by fifty senators, who seem now to have been elected by lot.

By the definition of Aristotle those only can be rightly called citizens who exercise in their own persons a judicial as well as a legislative power: and this judicial authority was extended to all the citizens by the constitution of the Heliaia, in which six thousand persons, called Dikastai or jurymen, were elected annually by lot in the proportion of six hundred for each of the ten tribes, one thousand of these being reserved to fill vacancies caused by death or absence among the remaining five thousand, who were sub-divided into ten divisions or decuries, of five hundred each.

In the discharge of their judicial functions each decury was regarded as the collective state, and, like the whole body of Six Thousand, was called the Heliaia. Thus each decision was the decision of the people, and from it there was no appeal.

The law which made all citizens eligible to the archonship dealt the death-blow to the predominance of the Areio pagos. By the Solonian constitution this court remained strictly oligarchical, while during the usurpation of the Peisistratidai the archons by whom its numbers were recruited were necessarily mere creatures of the tyrant; and so long as only the wealthy members of tribes could be elected to the office, the Areiopagos would continue to be the bulwark and garrison of oligarchy. But when its seats began to be filled with archons who had been chosen by lot, the safeguards of its ancient dignity were taken away, and it gradually became merely a respectable assembly of average Athenian citizens.

If these various reforms raised an effectual barrier against the abuse of political power whether by the tribes or the demoi, there remained a more formidable danger from the overweening influence which might be exercised by unscrupulous individual

citizens. If the aliens, or slaves (if any such there were) who had been admitted to citizenship, and the citizens generally of the poorest class who had been declared eligible to high offices, would find their interest in the new order of things, the changes welcomed by them would rouse no feelings but those of indignation and hatred in the minds of the genuine Eupatrid oligarchs. For such men there would be an almost irresistible temptation to subvert the constitution from which they had nothing to expect but constant incroachments on their ancient privileges; and if one like Peisistratos or Isagoras should give the signal for strife, the state could look to the people alone to maintain the law. In other words, the only way to peace and order would lie through civil war, in which there would be everything to encourage the oligarch, and very little to inspirit their opponents. The difficulty was met by an appeal to that sense of the sovereign authority of the people which was soon to make Athens pre-eminent alike among all Hellenic and non-Hellenic states; and it was left to the citizens to decide, once perhaps in each year, by their secret and irresponsible vote, whether for the safety of the whole community one of the citizens should go for a definite period of years into an exile which involved neither loss of property nor civil infamy. But against the abuse even of this power the most jealous precautions were taken. No one could be thus punished by Ostracism, as it was termed, unless at the least 6000 votes, or in other words the votes of one-fourth of the whole body of citizens, were given against him; and it was expressly provided by the Kleisthenean constitution that apart from this secret vote of 6000 citizens no law should be made against any single citizen, unless that same law were made against all Athenian citizens.

It was this constitution, with its free-spoken Ekklesia, its permanent Probouleutic senate, and its new military organization, which Isagoras determined, if it were possible, to overthrow. Feeling that his resources at Athens were inadequate to the task, he appealed to his friend the Spartan king Kleomenes, who availed himself of the old religious terrors inspired by the curse pronounced on the Alkmaionidai for the death of Kylon or his adherents more than a hundred years before. This terror was still so great that Kleisthenes with many Athenian citizens was constrained to leave Athens. After his departure Kleomenes drove out seven hundred families whose names had been