Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete

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[ Pollux.

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[ Aeschines in Timarch.

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[ Each member was paid (as in England once, as in America at this day) a moderate sum (one drachma) for his maintenance, and at the termination of his trust, peculiar integrity was rewarded with money from the public treasury.

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[ When there were ten tribes, each tribe presided thirty-five days, or five weeks; when the number was afterward increased to twelve, the period of the presidency was one month.

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[ Atimos means rather unhonoured than dishonoured. He to whom, in its milder degree, the word was applied, was rather withdrawn (as it were) from honour than branded with disgrace. By rapid degrees, however, the word ceased to convey its original meaning; it was applied to offences so ordinary and common, that it sunk into a mere legal term.

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[ The more heinous of the triple offences, termed eisangelia.

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[ This was a subsequent law; an obolus, or one penny farthing, was the first payment; it was afterward increased to three oboli, or threepence three farthings.

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[ Sometimes, also, the assembly was held in the Pnyx, afterward so celebrated: latterly, also (especially in bad weather), in the temple of Bacchus;—on extraordinary occasions, in whatever place was deemed most convenient or capacious.

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[ Plato de Legibus.

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[ Plutarch assures us that Solon issued a decree that his laws were to remain in force a hundred years: an assertion which modern writers have rejected as incompatible with their constant revision. It was not, however, so contradictory a decree as it seems at first glance—for one of the laws not to be altered was this power of amending and revising the laws. And, therefore, the enactment in dispute would only imply that the constitution was not to be altered except through the constitutional channel which Solon had appointed.

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[ See Fast. Hell., vol. ii., 276.

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[ Including, as I before observed, that law which provided for any constitutional change in a constitutional manner.

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[ “Et Croesum quem vox justi facunda Solonis Respicere ad longae jussit spatia ultima vitae.” Juv., Sat. x., s. 273.

The story of the interview and conversation between Croesus and Solon is supported by so many concurrent authorities, that we cannot but feel grateful to the modern learning, which has removed the only objection to it in an apparent contradiction of dates. If, as contended for by Larcher, still more ably by Wesseling, and since by Mr. Clinton, we agree that Croesus reigned jointly with his father Alyattes, the difficulty vanishes at once.

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[ Plutarch gives two accounts of the recovery of Salamis by Solon; one of them, which is also preferred by Aelian (var. c. xix., lib. vii.), I have adopted and described in my narrative of that expedition: the second I now give, but refer to Pisistratus, not Solon: in support of which opinion I am indebted to Mr. Clinton for the suggestion of two authorities. Aeneas Tacticus, in his Treatise on Sieges, chap. iv., and Frontinus de Stratagem., lib. iv., cap. vii.—Justin also favours the claim of Pisistratus to this stratagem, lib. xi., c. viii.

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[ The most sanguine hope indeed that Cicero seems to have formed with respect to the conduct of Cesar, was that he might deserve the title of the Pisistratus of Rome.

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[ If we may, in this anecdote, accord to Plutarch (de Vit. Sol.) and Aelian (Var. lib. viii., c. xvi.) a belief which I see no reason for withholding.

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[ His own verses, rather than the narrative of Plutarch, are the evidence of Solon’s conduct on the usurpation of Pisistratus.

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[ This historian fixes the date of Solon’s visit to Croesus and to Cyprus (on which island he asserts him to have died), not during his absence of ten years, but during the final exile for which he contends.

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[ Herod., l. i., c. 49.

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[ The procession of the goddess of Reason in the first French revolution solves the difficulty that perplexed Herodotus.

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[ Mr. Mitford considers this story as below the credit of history. He gives no sufficient reason against its reception, and would doubtless have been less skeptical had he known more of the social habits of that time, or possessed more intimate acquaintance with human nature generally.

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[ Upon which points, of men and money, Mr. Mitford, who is anxious to redeem the character of Pisistratus from the stain of tyranny, is dishonestly prevaricating. Quoting Herodotus, who especially insists upon these undue sources of aid, in the following words—‘Errixose taen tyrannida, epikouroisi te polloisi kai chraematon synodoisi, ton men, autothen, ton de, apo Strumanos potamou synionton: this candid historian merely says, “A particular interest with the ruling parties in several neighbouring states, especially Thebes and Argos, and a wise and liberal use of a very great private property, were the resources in which besides he mostly relied.” Why he thus slurs over the fact of the auxiliary forces will easily be perceived. He wishes us to understand that the third tyranny of Pisistratus, being wholesome, was also acceptable to the Athenians, and not, as it in a great measure was, supported by borrowed treasure and foreign swords.

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[ Who, according to Plutarch, first appeared at the return of Solon; but the proper date for his exhibitions is ascertained (Fast. Hell., vol. ii., p. 11) several years after Solon’s death.

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[ These two wars, divided by so great an interval of time,—the one terminated by Periander of Corinth, the other undertaken by Pisistratus,—are, with the usual blundering of Mr. Mitford, jumbled together into the same event. He places Alcaeus in the war following the conquest of Sigeum by Pisistratus. Poor Alcaeus! the poet flourished Olym. 42 (611 B. C.); the third tyranny of Pisistratus may date somewhere about 537 B. C., so that Alcaeus, had he been alive in the time ascribed by Mr. Mitford to his warlike exhibitions, would have been (supposing him to be born twenty-six years before the date of his celebrity in 611) just a hundred years old—a fitting age to commence the warrior! The fact is, Mr. Mitford adopted the rather confused account of Herodotus, without taking the ordinary pains to ascertain dates, which to every one else the very names of Periander and Alcaeus would have suggested.

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