The outlook for the democrats was gloomy. It is not strange if they began to regret the past. The “golden age” of Peisistratos gained in glory from its being far. His tyranny had been more of a blessing than a curse to the mass of the people. The yoke it had laid upon them had been light; and, in return for their submission to it, they had attained to a prosperity they had never before enjoyed.
The present was full of possibilities in great contrast to that past. The reforms of Kleisthenes, that great measure, or series of measures, which had purchased their oblivion of a beneficent tyranny, seemed likely to be undone. The Demos was not bound any longer to forget, if it was like to be robbed of the price of forgetting.
Thus, not unnaturally, the thoughts of a section of the Athenians, headed by the Alkmæonidæ, turned to Hippias. His restoration would be a lesser evil than a return to the old oppressions of the days before Peisistratos.
It is a satisfactorily attested fact in the history of this time that there was “treason” at Athens; in other words, that there was a party in the state which would have welcomed the return of Hippias. Herodotus would have denied it if he could honestly have done so; but he emphatically admits the truth of it.[67]
Apart from the general political circumstances of the time, Hippias and the Peisistratidæ might reckon on the assistance of many old family adherents in Athens.
When it came to a question as to the possible means of bringing about the restoration, neither Hippias nor his adherents had any choice.[68] It could only be accomplished through the instrumentality of the Persian—a dangerous means, perhaps, but the only means; and those who risked the danger were not, before 490, in a position to estimate the full extent of it. The real policy of Persia cannot as yet have been known to the Greeks.
Before proceeding to show in what way these political circumstances affected the strategy of the campaign, it may be well to glance at the general form which the Marathonian tradition took in later days.
Marathon greatly enhanced the reputation of Athens. Nor can there be any doubt that the Athenians were not slow in discovering this. Therefore the process of evolution by which the tradition became a tale of a great national effort would be an eminently natural one. As such the Athenian would present it to those outside the bounds of Attica. The ugly features of the story would certainly be, in so far as possible, suppressed in all editions of it given to the world in general.
Those features would, however, be certain to survive in an edition evolved in the party struggles within Athens itself, and the aristocrat would regard Marathon as excellent material whereon to base an attack on a political opponent.
Aristophanes, nearly three-quarters of a century after the battle, was much more inclined to emphasize its importance as a triumph of aristocracy over democracy, than as a victory of Greek over barbarian. With him the “party” tradition had more weight than the “national.”