The Online Library of Liberty

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• Introduction.
• Explanation of Terms For the English Reader.
• The Constitution of Athens.
• Chap. I.: Kylon.
• Chap. II.: The Oligarchical Constitution.
• Chap. III.: Before Draco’s Time.
• Chap. IV.: Draco’s Laws.
• Chap. V.: Civil Dissensions; Solon.
• Chap. VI.: Solon; Charge Against Him.
• Chap. VII.: His Constitution.
• Chap. VIII.: Solon’s Constitution.
• Chap. IX.: How Solon Gave Power to the People.
• Chap. X.: Reforms the Currency, Weights and Measures.
• Chap. XI.: Goes Abroad.
• Chap. XII.: The Testimony of His Own Poems.
• Chap. XIII.: Party Divisions Immediately Following.
• Chap. XIV.: Peisistratus Makes Himself Tyrant; His Exile and Return.
• Chap. XV.: How He Disarmed the People.
• Chap. XVI.: His Government Moderate and Popular.
• Chap. XVII.: Succeeded By His Sons.
• Chap. XVIII.: Harmodius and Aristogeiton.
• Chap. XIX.: Expulsion of the Peisistratidæ.
• Chap. XX.: Isagoras and Kleisthenes.
• Chap. XXI.: The Constitution of Kleisthenes.
• Chap. XXII.: The Times Immediately Following; Ostracism; Building of a Hundred Triremes.
• Chap. XXIII.: Recovery of Power By the Areopagus; Themistokles and Aristides.
• Chap. XXIV.: Athens Lays Claims to the Leadership of Greece.
• Chap. XXV.: Overthrow of the Areopagus By Ephialtes and Themistokles.
• Chap. XXVI.: Growth of the Democracy; Kimon.
• Chap. XXVII.: Perikles.
• Chap. XXVIII.: His Successors; Nikias, Kleon, Thucydides, Theramenes.
• Chap. XXIX.: The Four Hundred; the Proposals of Pythodorus.
• Chap. XXX.: The Constitution As Proposed For the Future.
• Chap. XXXI.: The Constitution As Proposed For the Immediate Present.
• Chap. XXXII.: The Government of the Four Hundred.
• Chap. XXXIII.: It Lasted Four Months, and Was Good.
• Chap. XXXIV.: Arginusæ ægospotami Lysander and Establishment of the Oligarchy.
• Chap. XXXV.: The Thirty and Their Government.
• Chap. XXXVI.: Protests of Theramenes.
• Chap. XXXVII.: Theramenes Put to Death, and the Lacedæmonans Call Ed In.
• Chap. XXXVIII.: End of the Thirty, and Reconciliation of Parties.
• Chap. XXXIX.: Terms of the Reconciliation.
• Chap. Xl.: Its Conclusion; Action of Archinus.
• Chap. Xli.: Recapitulation of the Preceding Changes; the Sovereign Power of the People.
• Chap. Xlii.: Admission to Citizenship; Training of the Ephebi.
• Chap. Xliii.: Election to Offices, By Lot Or Vote.
• Chap. Xliv.: the Council Continued.
• Chap. Xlv.: Deprived of the Power of Putting to Death.
• Chap. Xlvi.: the Council Continued.
• Chap. Xlvii.: the Treasurers of Athena; the Government-sellers.
• Chap. Xlviii.: the Receivers; Auditors.
• Chap. Xlix.: the Council Holds a Muster of the Knights, Etc.
• Chap. L: Surveyors of Temples; City Magistrates.
• Chap. Li.: Clerks of the Market; Inspectors of Weights and Measures, Etc.
• Chap. Lii.: the Eleven; Suits Decided Within a Month.
• Chap. Liii.: Judicial Officers; Arbitrators.
• Chap. Liv.: Surveyors of Roads; Auditors; Secretaries.
• Chap. Lv.: the Archons; How They Are Appointed.
• Chap. Lvi.: the Archon (eponymus); His Duties.
• Chap. Lvii.: the King Archon; His Duties.
• Chap. Lviii: the Commander-in-chief, Polemarch
• Chap. Lix.: the Thesmothetæ; Their Functions.
• Chap. Lx.: the Directors of Games; the Sacred Oil.
• Chap. Lxi.: Election By Vote to All Offices of War Department.
• Chap. Lxii.: Pay Attached to Offices
• Chap. Lxiii.: Appointment of Jurors.

CHAP. XIV.

Peisistratus makes himself tyrant; his exile and return.

Peisistratus, with his character of being a strong partisan of the people and the great reputation that he had made in the war against the Megarians, by covering himself with wounds and then pretending that he had suffered this treatment from the opposite faction, succeeded in persuading the people to give him a body-guard, on the proposal of Aristion. When he had got the club-bearers, as they were called, he rose up with them against the people, and seized the Acropolis in the thirty-second year after the passing of the laws in the archonship of Komeas. The tale goes that Solon, when Peisistratus asked for the guard, spoke against it, and said that he was wiser than some and braver than others; for that he was wiser than all such as did not know that Peisistratus was aiming at absolute power, and braver than such as who, although they knew this, held their peace. When his words availed nothing, taking up his arms before the doors, he said that he had come to the rescue of his country as far as he was able (for he was by this time an exceedingly old man), and called upon everybody else to follow his example. Solon effected nothing at the time by his exhortations. And Peisistratus, after he had possessed himself of the supreme power, administered the state more like a citizen than a tyrant. But as his power was not yet firmly rooted, the parties of Megakles and Lykurgus came to an agreement, and drove him out in the sixth year after his first establishment in the archonship of Hegesias. In the twelfth year after this, Megakles, being harassed by the rival parties, again made proposals to Peisistratus on the condition that he should marry his daughter, and brought him back again in quaint and exceedingly simple fashion. For he first spread a report that Athena was bringing back Peisistratus; then, having found a tall and beautiful woman—as Herodotus says of the deme of the Pæanes, but as some say, a Thracian, a seller of garlands of Kolyttus, whose name was Phye—he dressed her up so as to look like the goddess, and so brought back the tyrant with him. In this way Peisistratus made his entry, riding in a chariot with the woman sitting by his side, and the citizens, doing obeisance, received them in wonderment.