[50] The chronology of Orthagoras and his dynasty is perplexing. The commemorative offering of Myron at Olympia is marked for 648 B. C., and this must throw back the beginning of Orthagoras to a period between 680-670. Then we are told by Aristotle that the entire dynasty lasted one hundred years; but it must have lasted, probably, somewhat longer, for the death of Kleisthenês can hardly be placed earlier than 560 B. C. The war against Kirrha (595 B. C.) and the Pythian victory (582 B. C.) fall within his reign: but the marriage of his daughter Agaristê with Megaklês can hardly be put earlier than 570 B. C., if so high; for Kleisthenês the Athenian, the son of that marriage, effected the democratical revolution at Athens in 509 or 508 B. C.: whether the daughter, whom Megaklês gave in marriage to Peisistratus about 554 B. C., was also the offspring of that marriage, as Larcher contends, we do not know.
Megaklês was the son of that Alkmæon who had assisted the deputies sent by Crœsus of Lydia into Greece to consult the different oracles, and whom Crœsus rewarded so liberally as to make his fortune (compare Herod. i, 46; vi, 125): and the marriage of Megaklês was in the next generation after this enrichment of Alkmæon,—μετὰ δὲ, γενεῇ δευτέρῃ ὕστερον (Herod. vi, 126). Now the reign of Crœsus extended from 560-546 B. C. and his deputation to the oracles in Greece appears to have taken place about 556 B. C.; and if this chronology be admitted, the marriage of Megaklês with the daughter of the Sikyonian Kleisthenês cannot have taken place until considerably after 556 B. C. See the long, but not very satisfactory, note of Larcher, ad Herodot. v, 66.
But I shall show grounds for believing, when I recount the interview between Solon and Crœsus, that Herodotus in his conception of events misdates very considerably the reign and proceedings of Crœsus as well as of Peisistratus: this is a conjecture of Niebuhr which I think very just, and which is rendered still more probable by what we find here stated about the succession of the Alkmæonidæ. For it is evident that Herodotus here conceives the adventure between Alkmæon and Crœsus as having occurred one generation (about twenty-five or thirty years) anterior to the marriage between Megaklês and the daughter of Kleisthenês. That adventure will thus stand about 590-585 B. C., which would be about the time of the supposed interview (if real) between Solon and Crœsus, describing the maximum of the power and prosperity of the latter.
[51] Müller, Dorians, book i, 8, 2; Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece, vol. i, ch. x, p. 486, 2d ed.
[52] Herod. vi, 127-131. The locution explained is,—Οὐ φροντὶς Ἱπποκλείδῃ: compare the allusions to it in the Parœmiographi, Zenob. v, 31; Diogenian. vii, 21; Suidas, xi, 45, ed. Schott.
The convocation of the suitors at the invitation of Kleisthenês from all parts of Greece, and the distinctive mark and character of each, is prettily told, as well as the drunken freak whereby Hippokleidês forfeits both the favor of Kleisthenês, and the hand of Agaristê, which he was on the point of obtaining. It seems to be a story framed upon the model of various incidents in the old epic, especially the suitors of Helen.
On one point, however, the author of the story seems to have overlooked both the exigencies of chronology and the historical position and feelings of his hero Kleisthenês. For among the suitors who present themselves at Sikyôn in conformity with the invitation of the latter, one is Leôkêdês, son of Pheidôn the despot of Argos. Now the hostility and vehement antipathy towards Argos, which Herodotus ascribes in another place to the Sikyonian Kleisthenês, renders it all but impossible that the son of any king of Argos could have become a candidate for the hand of Agaristê. I have already recounted the violence which Kleisthenês did to the legendary sentiment of his native town, and the insulting names which he put upon the Sikyonian Dorians,—all under the influence of a strong anti-Argeian feeling. Next, as to chronology: Pheidôn king of Argos lived some time between 760-730; and his son can never have been a candidate for the daughter of Kleisthenês, whose reign falls 600-500 B. C. Chronologers resort here to the usual resource in cases of difficulty: they recognize a second and later Pheidôn, whom they affirm that Herodotus has confounded with the first: or they alter the text of Herodotus, and in place of “son of Pheidôn,” read “descendant of Pheidôn.” But neither of these conjectures rests upon any basis: the text of Herodotus is smooth and clear, and the second Pheidôn is nowhere else authenticated. See Larcher and Wesseling, ad loc.; compare also vol. ii, p. 419, part ii, ch. 4, of this History.
[53] Plutarch, De Herod. Malign. c. 21, p. 859.
[54] Pausan. ii, 4, 9.
[55] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 22; Herodot. v, 92. The tale respecting Kypselus, and his wholesale exaction from the people, contained in the spurious second book of the Œconomica of Aristotle, coincides with the general view of Herodotus (Aristot. Œconom. ii, 2); but I do not trust the statements of this treatise for facts of the sixth or seventh centuries B. C.