tions. The commons had expected that the land
would be equally divided, the nobles that the old
system was going to be restored. He took neither
course, but thwarted both their aims, and instead of
conspiring with either party and perpetuating his
dictatorship as he might have done, chose to brave
their common animosity and save his country by
salutary legislation.
12. These facts are attested by all historians and
mentioned by Solon in his poems :
" I made the commons strong enough to be safe
from oppression. Office I neither wrested from
them nor put into their hands. The powerful and
rich I also fenced against spoliation. Over both
orders I threw an ample shield, nor suffered either
to trample on the other's right."
Elsewhere discussing the proper treatment of the
masses he says :
"The commonalty will be readiest to obey its
rulers when neither over-loosely nor over-tightly
reined. High diet engenders pride when riches
fill the coffers of men whose souls want even
balance."
16 ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS
Other verses mention the party who wanted a
redistribution of the land :
" Those who cherished visions of downright
'plunder and hoped to win large booty, thinking
my smooth words the temporizing mask of rough
intentions, hoped idly then, and now with angry
eyes scowl askance upon me as deadly foes, but
all unjustly. My promises with heaven's help were
kept, else I had acted like a brigand, nor did I
long to play the tyrant's part, nor yearn to see the
fat fields of my fatherland parcelled equally between
the noble and the base."
Other verses describe the abject poverty of the
commons, and mention the slaves whom his dis-
burdening ordinance emancipated :
"... I call to bear her testimony to my plea the
mighty mother of Kronos and the Olympian deities,
a witness unimpeachable, dark-vestured earth, in
many of whose fields I overthrew the mortgage
pillars, 1 a goddess then in bondage, now dis-
enthralled. To Athens, their holy fatherland, I
gave back many citizens ; some sold into slavery
by just or unjust doom, some forced and poverty-
1 This shows, in correction of chapter iv., that there were
plenty of small proprietors, though their lands were deeply
mortgaged. If it were not so, it would be strange that there
is no explanation how the evil, the monopoly of the soil, was
remedied, as it appears to have been.
ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS 17
stricken exiles, whose tongue had forgotten the trick
of forming Attic sounds through many wanderings,
others at home in shameful bondage trembling at
the humours of a lord before I gave them freedom.
These exploits in part by force, in part by per-
suasion I accomplished, and kept my promise, and ,
wrote on tablets equal laws for high and low, and |
formulas fit for every controversy. If the rod of! I
absolute power which I held had been wielded by ' /
the unwise or ambitious, he would have dissolved
society. If I had willed what either of the antag-
onists demanded . . . this land had been widowed
of many habitants. But I confronted mischief from ,
every quarter, turning swiftly like a wolf assailed by /
many hounds."
In other verses he rebukes both classes of com-
plainants :
" The commons, if a true tale may be told, never in
their wildest dreams foresaw their present ease. If
I had left them as they were, the great and strong
would praise and make love to me."
" Another man," says he, " placed in rny position
would not have held the factions, nor reposed until
he had churned the butter from the milk; but I
made myself a wall between two armed hosts."
13. Such were the motives that induced him to
spend some years in foreign travel. After his
C
18 ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS
departure, though the agitation had not subsided,
four years passed without disorder. The fifth year
after his legislation (590 B.C.) discord prevented the
appointment of an archon ; and the same thing
happened again five years after (586 B.C.). Sub-
sequently, after a similar interval 582 B.C.), Damasias
being elected archon continued two years in office,
till he was deposed by violence ; after which, in
view of their dissensions, they resolved to elect ten
archons, five from the Eupatridai, three from the
Agroikoi or rustics, two from the Demiourgoi or
artisans ; and they held office during the year
(580 B.C.) after the expulsion of Damasias. It is
clear that the archonship was at that time the
highest magistracy, for this was always the subject
of their quarrels. The state was still out of joint
in all its members : some were aggrieved at the
abolition of debts, which had reduced them to
poverty ; others were unreconciled to the constitu-
tional changes which had diminished their power;
others were inflamed by rival ambitions. They
; rformed three parties : the Shore, led by Megakles
Ithe Alkmaionid, were considered to advocate a tem-
"pered constitution; the Plain, led by Lukourgos,
lx,were oligarchical; the Mountain were led by
\ Peisistratos, supposed to be a strong partisan of
v democracy. The last party found allies in those
ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS 19
who were ruined by the abolition of debts and
joined them under the promptings of poverty; and
all those whose citizenship was questionable and who
joined them from fear ; who indeed had good grounds
for their apprehension, for after the overthrow of
the tyranny the list of citizens was severely sifted, 1
because many persons were supposed to be enjoying
the rights of citizens without due qualification.
The names of these parties were derived from the
regions which they cultivated.
14. An ardent democrat by reputation, and covered
with distinction in the Megarian war (565 B.C.),,
Peisistratos gave himself a wound, made the people
believe it was inflicted by the adverse faction, ob-
tained the grant of a body-guard on the motion of
Aristion, and by the aid of these mace-bearers, as
they were called, overpowered the government and
seized the Acropolis in the thirty-second year from
Solon's legislation in the archonship of Komeas
(560 B.C.). It is related that when Peisistratos
asked for a body-guard Solon, opposing the measure,
said he was wiser than some of his countrymen and
1 Apparently with less unpleasant consequences than were
apprehended, for Aristotle elsewhere relates that, after the
expulsion of the usurpers, Kleisthenes converted many
metoikoi, both of the foreigner and freedman class, into citizens..
Politics iii., 1.
C2
20 ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS
"braver than others ; wiser than those who could not
see that Peisistratos meant to make himself tyrant,
braver than those who saw it, and held their tongues.
As he found his words fell on deaf ears, he piled his
arms before his door and said he had done all that
a, weak old man could do to save his country, and
called upon others to do their duty likewise. His
exhortations were ineffectual, and Peisistratos once
master of the state behaved more like a statesman
than a tyrant. Before, however, he had established
his power on a secure basis, he was overthrown by a
combined effort of Hegakles and Lukourgos in the
sixth year after he had seized the sceptre and
the archonship of Hegesias (555 B.C.). Five years
after, on getting worsted by the antagonist faction,
,/^Megakles again opened negotiations, and having
made Peisistratos promise to marry his daughter,
restored him to the throne of Athens by a device
that shows the extreme credulity of primitive times.
After disseminating a rumour that the goddess
Athena herself was restoring Peisistratos, he found
a beautiful woman named Phue, an Athenian, accord-
ing to Herodotos, of the Paianian deme, a Thracian,
according to others, by profession a florist, residing at
Coluttos ; dressed her in the habiliments of the
goddess, and conducted her with Peisistratos to
Athens. Peisistratos drove into the town in a
ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS 21
chariot, the woman stood by his side as a warrior
beside a charioteer, and the people of the city
received them with adoration and stupefaction.
15. Such was the manner of the first restoration.
After a second expulsion, which took place seven
years after his return, his second domination being
shortened by his refusal to cohabit with the daughter
of Megakles, which exposed him to the hostility of
both factions, and ended in his flight from Athens,
he at first formed a settlement in the Thermaian bay
at Rhaikelos, but afterwards left it for the region of
Pangaios. Hence, having procured funds and hired
soldiers, he proceeded to Eretria, and, eleven years-
after his flight, began operating for the recovery of
his throne, in which he was assisted by many allies,,
and in particular by Lugdamis of Naxos and the
knights that ruled Eretria. Victorious in the field
of Pallene, he re-entered Athens, disarmed the
citizens, and, having established his power on a
strong foundation, sailed to Naxos, where he made
Lugdamis ruler. His disarmament of the Athenians
was accomplished by a stratagem. Reviewing the
army in the Anakeion or grove of Kastor and
Pollux, he began to harangue the troops in a rather
feeble voice, and on their saying they could not hear
him, he asked them to move up the hill nearer the
porch of the Acropolis, where he could make them
22 ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS
hear better ; and while he proceeded with his oration
his satellites seized their arms and locked them in
the rooms near the Theseion. On receiving their
report that the work was done, he finished his
harangue before he told his audience what had
happened to their arms, and begged them not to be
astonished or frightened, but to go and mind their
private business, and leave him to superintend affairs
of state.
16. Such were the circumstances of the seizure of
absolute pow r er by Peisistratos, and the revolutions
which his rule experienced. His administration, as
before- mentioned, was temperate, and showed the
statesman rather than the tyrant. His criminal
laws were humane and mild, and recognized the
circumstances that extenuate crime. He advanced
capital to poor cultivators, enabling them to devote
themselves unintermittently to rural occupations.
Herein his motive was twofold : to disseminate the
population about the country aw r ay from the metro-
polis ; and by moderate well-being and absorption in
agriculture to extinguish in them the wish and the
leisure to influence public affairs. Moreover, his
I
revenue depended on the due cultivation of the
land, for he levied a tax of the tenth of the produce
Accordingly he instituted local judges for the denies
and used to go in person on circuit through the land
ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS 23
to inspect its condition, and to judge in civil suits
in order to prevent the necessity of their flocking to
the metropolis and neglecting agriculture. It was I x
on one of these itinerant circuits that Peisistratos
is said to have had his adventure with the cultivator
of a farm on Humettos, called afterwards the un-
taxed field. He saw a man working on the face of
a rock with a pickaxe, and wondering that it was
worth his while, sent his attendant to ask what crop
it was that the soil produced. Lots of toil and
trouble, was the answer, and of this toil and trouble
Peisistratos pockets a tenth. The peasant did
not know to whom he was speaking ; but Peisis-
tratos, pleased with his industry and humour,
granted the land immunity from all taxation. The
commons had an easy time in all respects during
his reign, for he was pacific in policy, and avoided
quarrelling with his neighbours ; which caused the
saying that the tyranny of Peisistratos was a return
of the golden age and reign of Kronos. Afterwards
the insurrection against his sons produced a much
harsher despotism. The ascendency of Peisistratos
was chiefly due to his democratic and philanthropic
spirit. In all his acts he respected the law and
assumed no privilege as ruler. On one occasion he
was summoned before the Areopagus on a charge
of murder, and made appearance to stand his trial,
24 ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS
but the prosecutor was frightened and made default.
This was the cause that prolonged his reign and the
reason why, when expelled, he had not much diffi-
culty in recovering his throne. His usurpation had
the assent of the majority both of the nobles and
the commons. The former he conciliated by social
intercourse, the latter by pecuniary aid ; and nature
had endowed him with the arts of charming all
ranks of society. Even in Athens at that epoch
the laws against attempts at tyranny were far from
truculent ; and the one that most directly applies
was in these terms : This is ancient Athenian
law : If any one attempt to overthrow the govern-
ment and make himself tyrant, or help another to
make himself tyrant, he and his house shall be
^deprived of the franchise.
17. Peisistratos retained his power to an advanced
age, and died a natural death of some infirmity in
the archonship of Philoneos (527 B.C.), thirty-three
years after he first became ruler, of which he spent
nineteen at the helm of state and fourteen in exile.
It is an absurd fable that in his youth he was beloved
by Solon and commanded in the war with Megara
for the possession of Salamis (about 600 B.C.). Their
age at those periods refutes this, if from the length of
their lives and the date of their death we calculate
the date of their birth. After the death of Peisis-
ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS 25
tratos his sons kept possession of supreme power, and
pursued their father's policy. He had two by his
first wife, Hippias and Hipparchos, and two by his
Argive wife, lophon and Hegesistratos, surnamed
Thessalos. For Peisistratos married Timonassa,
daughter of Gorgilos, a noble Argive, and widow of
the Ambraciot Archinos, one of the Kupselid clan.
This alliance was the origin of his friendly relations
with Argos, and procured him the assistance of 1000
Argives, brought to his aid at the battle of Pallene
by his son Hegesistratos. Some say he married
Timonassa during his first exile, others during his
first tenure of power.
18. The age which they had attained and the
positions which they held enabled Hippias and
Hipparchos to secure the succession to the sover-
eignty ; but Hippias being the elder, and by natural
character a statesman, always occupied with high
and serious interests, exercised the functions of
government. Hipparchos was youthful in spirit
and devoted to the god of love and the muses, and it 1
was at his invitation that Anakreon and Simonides ""
and other poets visited the Attic court. Thessalos,
much their junior, was overbearing and profligate/
and this was the origin of all the catastrophes that
ensued. He conceived a passion for Harmodios, and
because his intimacy was repudiated was filled with
26 ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS
resentment, which he manifested on several occasions.
When the sister of Hannodios was chosen to cany
the sacred basket on her head at the Panathenaic
procession, Thessalos caused her to lose the office by
accusing her brother of effeminacy. This exasperated
Harmodios and Aristogeiton, and led them to conspire
with a small band of associates to assassinate the
usurpers. When the Panathenaic festival had begun,
as they were waylaying Hippias with hostile inten-
tions on the Acropolis, where he was performing the
initiatory sacrifice while the procession was mar-
shalled by Hipparchos, they saw one of the conspira-
tors in close conversation with Hippias. Thinking
he was betraying the plot and resolving to attempt
something before they were arrested, they hurried
down from the citadel, began the attack before their
accomplices were ready, and slew Hipparchos, who
was directing the procession by the Leokoreion.
Thus they ruined their chances of success : Har-
modios was slain on the spot by the body-guards, and
Aristogeiton was afterwards captured and subjected
to a long course of torture. Under torture he in-
formed against many persons of illustrious birth who
were friends of the tyrants. For at first they could
get no clue to the conspirators, and the story that
Hippias marched the members of the procession to a
distance from their arms, and then detected the con-
ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS 27
spirators by the daggers they carried, is a fiction ; for
marching under arms was not then the custom, but
was introduced afterwards in the times of the re- /
public. In accusing the despots' friends, as demo-
cratic-minded writers say, Aristogeiton intended to
make the tyrants guilty of foul and unholy murder
by putting to death persons who were their own
friends and innocent of crime ; as others say, he made
no false charges, but betrayed persons who were
really guilty. At last, finding himself unable, do
what he might, to goad them to put him out of his
torment, he promised to betray many others, and
made Hippias grasp his right hand by way of pledge,
and then poured all his scorn upon him for grasping
the hand of his brother's murderer, and so infuriated
Hippias that, losing all self-control, he drew his
sword and killed him.
19. These events exacerbated the despotism.
Desire to avenge his brother and memory of the
many whom he had put to death or driven into exile
infused into the mind of Hippias suspicion and bit-
terness against all the world. About the fourth year
after the death of Hipparchos the dangers of the
metropolis induced him to fortify Mounuchia, in-
tending to make it his residence. While engaged
on this work he was driven from his throne by
Kleomenes, the Laced amonian king, in obedience to
28 ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS
Delphic oracles, which persistently commanded the
Lakonians to aid in liberating Athens. Of this
pressure from Delphi the following is the explana-
tion : The exiles under the leadership of the
Alkmaionids could not by their unaided efforts
recover their native land, but met with constant
disaster. Not to mention other misadventures,
Leipsudrion, on the flank of Mount Parnes, which
they fortified, and where their garrison was joined by
partisans from Athens, fell by storm into the hands
of the tyrants, a catastrophe commemorated in one
of their drinking songs : " Woe, woe is me, Leipsu-
drion, betrayer of thy friends ! What gallants fell
beneath thy walls, the foremost in the fray and
noblest of the land, who proved that day of what
sires they came ! " Unsuccessful in all their other
enterprises, they contracted to rebuild the temple at
Delphi, and with lavish expenditure of their ample
revenues performed the work with greater magnifi-
cence than the specifications stipulated, in reward
for which they were helped by the Delphic
priestess in obtaining military aid from Sparta.
Whenever the Lacedemonians consulted the oracle
she enjoined them to aid in the deliverance of Athens,
and at length induced them to undertake the task.
although they were united by bonds of hospitality
with the Peisistratidai. A second and equally potent
ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS 29
motive for the enterprise was their jealousy of the
friendship of the Peisistratidai with Argos. First
they sent Anchimolos by sea, and on his defeat and
death, which were due to the arrival of Kineas the
Thessalian to reinforce the tyrants with 1000 cavalry,
they were highly exasperated, and despatched Kleo-
menes the king with more powerful forces by the
mainland. He defeated the Thessalian cavalry who
attempted to hinder his passage of the frontier, shut
up Hippias in the Pelasgic fortress or old Acropolis,
and besieged him there in concert with the Athenians.
While the siege proceeded, the children of the Peisis-
tratidai, attempting a secret exit, were captured.
This led to a capitulation : in return for the restora-
tion of their children, and permission to remove
what they could of their property in a five days'
interval, the Peisistratidai surrendered the Acropolis
to the Athenians in the archonship of Harpaktides
(511-510 B.C.), after exercising despotic power for a
period of seventeen years from their father's death,
or forty-nine years from the commencement of his
reign.
20. After the expulsion of the usurpers feud
arose between Isagoras son of Tisandros, a partisan
of the fallen dynasty, and Kleisthenes, one of the
Alkmaionid clan. Unable to withstand the con-
federated clubs of his opponents, Kleisthenes called
30 ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS
to his side the populace, to whom he offered sove-
reign power. Isagoras was now worsted in the
contest, and again invoked the aid of Kleomenes,
who was united to him by ties of hospitality, and
persuaded him to banish from Attica the persons
tainted with the Kulonian pollution, a class which
included the Alkmaionids. Then Kleisthenes with
a few others fled the country, and Kleomenes exiled
700 Athenian families as polluted by sacrilege.
Next he tried to dissolve the Senate and make
Isagoras with 300 of his partisans ruler of the
state ; but when the Senate resisted and the com-
mons assembled in its defence, Kleomenes and Isa-
goras had to retreat to the Acropolis. After stand-
ing a siege for two days, Kleomenes with his
soldiers was suffered to depart under a truce, and
Kleisthenes with his confederates was recalled.
Thus the sovereign power fell into the hands
of the commons with Kleisthenes for leader and
champion; for the chief credit of the expulsion
of the usurpers belongs to the Alkmaionids, whose
feuds with them had been incessant. A still earlier
attempt to oust them had been made by Kedon,
who is commemorated in the drinking song : " Fill
our cups, boy, for a toast to Kedon; fill them
full, if the good deserve remembrance in our
wine. '
ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS 3L
21. Such were the reasons the commons had for
trusting Kleisthenes. Leading them and having
their support, in the fourth year after the fall
of the tyranny in the archonship of Isagoras (508
B.C.), he began his reforms by distributing the popu-^
lation into ten tribes instead of four, breaking up
the old groupings in order to extend the possession
of the franchise : whence the advice addressed to
would-be purifiers of the list of the clans not to
mind the ancient tribes. Next he formed the
Senate of 500 instead of 400, taking 50 instead
of 100 from each tribe. In fixing the number of
tribes his reason for rejecting a system of twelve
was to keep his new sections from any coincidence
with the old cleavage into twelve trittues which tri-
sected the former tribes, and thus secure complete
novelty for his rearrangement of the population.
The land as an aggregate of units, called townships
or denies, was divided into thirty sections called
trittues or ridings, which were again united in
three groups, ten trittues being urban, ten inland,,
ten maritime ; and of these trittues three, deter-
mined by lot, went to form a tribe, with the con-
dition that each tribe included one trittus of every
group. 1 Municipal privileges were extended to all
1 If, as Herodotos informs us, eacli tribe contained ten denies,
the trittues must have contained a variable number of denies
32 ARISTOTLE'S CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS
residents in the denie or municipality; and to
prevent novelty of franchise being betrayed by the
foreign sound of a father's name, Kleisthenes insti-
tuted the official style of describing an individual
that prevails in the present day, i.e. by specifying
his derne instead of his father. The forty-eight
naukraries were superseded by 100 denies, and de-
marchs were created with the functions exercised by
the old naukraroi. The denies received their names
either from natural features of the locality or from
their founders, if these were not irrecoverably buried
in oblivion. The organization of clans, phratries,
and priesthoods was allowed to continue unaltered.
The tribes were named after ten heroes solemnly
sanctioned by the Delphic oracle out of one hundred
selected by popular vote. 1
22. These changes made the constitution much
more democratic than it had been after the reforms
some three, some four, some perhaps two. Then a tribe might
be thus composed : an urban trittus of three demes, an inland
trittus of three demes, and a maritime trittus of four demes ;
or thus : an urban trittus of four demes, an inland trittus of
four demes, and a maritime trittus of two demes, and so on.
The demes of one trittus seem to have been contiguous, though
the trittues of one tribe were scattered over different parts of