The History of Greece from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Hellenistic Age. John Bagnell Bury
whom Solon had done little, and many discontented men, who, formerly rich, had been impoverished by Solon’s measure of cancelling old debts. With this party at his back, Pisistratus aimed at no less a thing than grasping the supreme power for himself. One day he appeared in the agora, wounded, he said, by a foul attack of his political foes—his foes because he was a friend of the people; and he showed wounds which he bore. In the Assembly, packed by the Hillsmen, a bodyguard of fifty clubsmen was voted to him on the proposal of Aristion. We have a monument, which we may associate with the author of this memorable act, in a sepulchral slab discovered near Brauron, on which is finely wrought in very low relief the portrait of “Aristion” standing armed by his tombstone; and it is hardly too bold to recognise in this contemporary sculpture the friend of Pisistratus, when we remember that the home of the Pisistratid family was at Brauron. Having secured his bodyguard—the first step in the tyrant’s progress—Pisistratus seized the acropolis, and made himself master of the state.
It was the fate of Solon to live long enough to see the establishment of the tyranny which he dreaded. We know not what part he had taken in the troubled world of politics since his return to Athens. The story was invented that he called upon the citizens to arm themselves against the tyrant, but called in vain; and that then, laying his arms outside the threshold of his house, he cried, “I have aided, so far as I could, my country and the constitution, and I appeal to others to do likewise”. Nor has the story that he refused to live under a tyranny and sought refuge with his Cyprian friend the king of Soli, any good foundation. We know only that in his later years he enjoyed the pleasures of wine and love, and that he survived but a short time the seizure of the tyranny by Pisistratus, who at least treated the old man with respect.
The discord of parties had smoothed the way for the schemes of Pisistratus; but his success led in turn to the union of the two other parties, the Plain and the Coast, against him, and at the end of about five years they succeeded in driving him out. But new disunion followed, and Megacles the leader of the Coast seems to have quarrelled not only with the Plain but with his own party. At all events, he sought a reconciliation with Pisistratus and undertook to help him back to the tyranny on condition that the tyrant wedded his daughter. The legend is that the partisans of Pisistratus found in Paeania, an Attic village, a woman of loftier than common stature, whom they arrayed in the guise of the goddess Athena. Her name was Phye. Then heralds, on a certain day, entered Athens, crying that Pallas herself was leading back Pisistratus. Presently a car arrived bearing the tyrant and Phye; and the trick deceived all the common folk.
But the coalition of Pisistratus with Megacles was not more abiding than that of Megacles with Lycurgus. By a former wife Pisistratus had two sons—Hippias and Hipparchus; and as he desired to create a dynasty, he feared that, if he had offspring by a second wife, the interests of his older sons might be injured and family dissensions ensue. So, though he went through the form of marriage with the daughter of Megacles, as he had promised, he did not treat her as his wife. Megacles was enraged when the tyrant’s neglect reached his ears; he made common cause with the enemies of Pisistratus and succeeded in driving him out for the second time, perhaps in the same year in which he had been restored.
The second exile lasted for about ten years, and Pisistratus spent it in forming new connexions in Macedonia. On the Thermaic gulf he organised the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of Rhaecelus into some sort of a city-state. He exploited the gold mines of Mount Pangaeus near the Strymon, and formed a force of mercenary soldiers, thus providing himself with money and men to recover his position at Athens. He was supported by Lygdamis, the tyrant of Naxos, and by the friendship of other Greek states, such as Thessaly, which he had cultivated in the days of his power. The aristocracy of Eretrian horsemen were well-disposed to him, and their city was an admirable basis for an attack upon Athens. When he landed at Marathon, his adherents flocked to his standard. The citizens who were loyal to the constitutional government marched forth, and were defeated in battle at Pallene. Resistance was at an end, and once more Pisistratus had the power in his hands. This time he kept it.
The rule of Pisistratus may be described as a constitutional tyranny. He did not stop the wheels of the democracy, but he guided the machine entirely at his own will. The constitution of Solon seems to have been preserved in its essential features, though in some details the lapse of time may have brought modifications. Thus it is possible that even before the first success of Pisistratus the assessment according to measures of corn and oil had been converted into an assessment in money. And as money became cheaper the earlier standards for the division of classes ceased to have the old significance. A man who at the beginning of the sixth century just reached the standard of the first class was passing rich; fifty years later he would be comparatively poor. But it was not to the interest of the tyrant to raise the census for political office. Various measures of policy were adopted by him to protect his position, while he preserved the old forms of government. He managed to exert an influence on the appointment of the archons, so as to secure personal adherents, and one of his own family generally held some office. This involved the suspension or modification of the system of lot introduced by Solon. The tyrant kept up a standing force of paid soldiers—among them, perhaps, Scythian archers, whom we see portrayed on Attic vases of the time. And he kept in his power, as hostages, the children of some noble families which he suspected. Most indeed of his more prominent opponents, including the Alcmaeonids, had left Attica, and the large estates which they abandoned were at his disposal.
These estates gave him the means of solving a problem which Solon had left unsolved, and of satisfying the expectations of a large number of his supporters. He divided the vacant lands into lots and gave them to the labourers who had worked on these and other estates. Thus the way was prepared for the total abolition of the hektemors. They became practically peasant proprietors, and they had to pay only the land-tax, amounting to one-tenth of the produce. The Land was also given to many needy people who idled in the city, land-tax and loans of money to start them. The tax of a tenth, imposed on all estates, formed an important source of the tyrant’s revenue, and it is generally supposed that he introduced it. But this is not probable. We may take it that this land-tax was an older institution which continued under Pisistratus, until either he or his sons were able, through an increase of revenue from other sources, to reduce it to one-twentieth. It has been plausibly suggested that this increase of revenue came from the silver mines of Laurion, which now perhaps began to be more effectively worked. His possessions on the Strymon were another mainstay of the finance of Pisistratus. He exerted himself to improve agriculture, and under his influence the olive, which had long ago found a home in Attica, was planted all over the land.
Under Pisistratus Athens rested from the distractions of party strife, and the old parties gradually disappeared. The mass of discontented hektemors was absorbed in the class of peasant proprietors. Thus the people enjoyed a tranquil period of economical and political development. And as the free forms of the constitution were preserved, the masses, in the Assembly and in the Law-courts, received a training in the routine at least of public affairs, which rendered them fit for the democracy which was to ensue when the tyranny was overthrown.
Abroad it was the consistent policy of Pisistratus to preserve peaceful relations with other states. Aegina indeed was openly the rival of Athens, and humbled Megara could hardly be aught save sullen. But Athens was on friendly terms with both the rival powers of the Peloponnesus, Sparta and Argos; and Thebes, and Thessaly, and the Eretrian knights had helped the tyrant in the days of his adversity. His influence extended to the banks of the Strymon and the coast of Macedonia, as we have already seen; and he had a subservient friend in Lygdamis of Naxos, who, when he was deposed from his tyranny by the Naxian people, was restored by Athenian arms.
It was doubtless with the object of injuring the Megarian trade in Pontic corn, and gaining some counterpoise to Megarian power in the region of the Propontis, that Athens made her first venture in distant seas. It was about forty years before Pisistratus became tyrant that Athens seized the Lesbian fortress of Sigeum on the shore of the Troad at the entrance to the Hellespont. The friendship of Miletus, mother of many Pontic colonies, favoured this enterprise, which however involved Athens in a conflict with Mytilene whose power and settlements extended along the shores of the straits. Mytilene, failing to recover the fortress, built another, the Achilleon, close by, which cut off the Athenians from the sea. It has been already told how the statesman Pittacus