By an accident which had occurred in the year 548 B. C.,[235] the Delphian temple was set on fire and burnt. To repair this grave loss was an object of solicitude to all Greece; but the outlay required was exceedingly heavy, and it appears to have been long before the money could be collected. The Amphiktyons decreed that one-fourth of the cost should be borne by the Delphians themselves, who found themselves so heavily taxed by this assessment, that they sent envoys throughout all Greece to collect subscriptions in aid, and received, among other donations, from the Greek settlers in Egypt twenty minæ, besides a large present of alum from the Egyptian king Amasis: their munificent benefactor Crœsus fell a victim to the Persians in 546 B. C., so that his treasure was no longer open to them. The total sum required was three hundred talents (equal probably to about one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds sterling),[236]—a prodigious amount to be collected from the dispersed Grecian cities, who acknowledged no common sovereign authority, and among whom the proportion reasonable to ask from each was so difficult to determine with satisfaction to all parties. At length, however, the money was collected, and the Amphiktyons were in a situation to make a contract for the building of the temple. The Alkmæônids, who had been in exile ever since the third and final acquisition of power by Peisistratus, took the contract; and in executing it, they not only performed the work in the best manner, but even went much beyond the terms stipulated; employing Parian marble for the frontage, where the material prescribed to them was coarse stone.[237] As was before remarked in the case of Peisistratus when he was in banishment, we are surprised to find exiles whose property had been confiscated so amply furnished with money,—unless we are to suppose that Kleisthenês the Alkmæônid, grandson of the Sikyonian Kleisthenês,[238] inherited through his mother wealth independent of Attica, and deposited it in the temple of the Samian Hêrê. But the fact is unquestionable, and they gained signal reputation throughout the Hellenic world for their liberal performance of so important an enterprise. That the erection took considerable time, we cannot doubt. It seems to have been finished, as far as we can conjecture, about a year or two after the death of Hipparchus,—512 B. C.,—more than thirty years after the conflagration.

To the Delphians, especially, the rebuilding of their temple on so superior a scale was the most essential of all services, and their gratitude towards the Alkmæônids was proportionally great. Partly through such a feeling, partly through pecuniary presents, Kleisthenês was thus enabled to work the oracle for political purposes, and to call forth the powerful arm of Sparta against Hippias. Whenever any Spartan presented himself to consult the oracle, either on private or public business, the answer of the priestess was always in one strain, “Athens must be liberated.” The constant repetition of this mandate at length extorted from the piety of the Lacedæmonians a reluctant compliance. Reverence for the god overcame their strong feeling of friendship towards the Peisistratids, and Anchimolius son of Aster was despatched by sea to Athens, at the head of a Spartan force to expel them. On landing at Phalêrum, however, he found them already forewarned and prepared, as well as farther strengthened by one thousand horse specially demanded from their allies in Thessaly. Upon the plain of Phalêrum, this latter force was found peculiarly effective, so that the division of Anchimolius was driven back to their ships with great loss and he himself slain.[239] The defeated armament had probably been small, and its repulse only provoked the Lacedæmonians to send a larger, under the command of their king Kleomenês in person, who on this occasion marched into Attica by land. On reaching the plain of Athens, he was assailed by the Thessalian horse, but repelled them in so gallant a style, that they at once rode off and returned to their native country; abandoning their allies with a faithlessness not unfrequent in the Thessalian character. Kleomenês marched on to Athens without farther resistance, and found himself, together with the Alkmæônids and the malcontent Athenians generally, in possession of the town. At that time there was no fortification except around the acropolis, into which Hippias retired with his mercenaries and the citizens most faithful to him; having taken care to provision it well beforehand, so that it was not less secure against famine than against assault. He might have defied the besieging force, which was noway prepared for a long blockade; but, not altogether confiding in his position, he tried to send his children by stealth out of the country; and in this proceeding the children were taken prisoners. To procure their restoration, Hippias consented to all that was demanded of him, and withdrew from Attica to Sigeium in the Troad within the space of five days.

Thus fell the Peisistratid dynasty in 510 B. C., fifty years after the first usurpation of its founder.[240] It was put down through the aid of foreigners,[241] and those foreigners, too, wishing well to it in their hearts, though hostile from a mistaken feeling of divine injunction. Yet both the circumstances of its fall, and the course of events which followed, conspire to show that it possessed few attached friends in the country, and that the expulsion of Hippias was welcomed unanimously by the vast majority of Athenians. His family and chief partisans would accompany him into exile,—probably as a matter of course, without requiring any formal sentence of condemnation; and an altar was erected in the acropolis, with a column hard by, commemorating both the past iniquity of the dethroned dynasty, and the names of all its members.[242]

CHAPTER XXXI.
GRECIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE EXPULSION OF THE PEISISTRATIDS. — REVOLUTION OF KLEISTHENES AND ESTABLISHMENT OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS.

With Hippias disappeared the mercenary Thracian garrison, upon which he and his father before him had leaned for defence as well as for enforcement of authority; and Kleomenês with his Lacedæmonian forces retired also, after staying only long enough to establish a personal friendship, productive subsequently of important consequences, between the Spartan king and the Athenian Isagoras. The Athenians were thus left to themselves, without any foreign interference to constrain them in their political arrangements.

It has been mentioned in the preceding chapter, that the Peisistratids had for the most part respected the forms of the Solonian constitution: the nine archons, and the probouleutic or preconsidering Senate of Four Hundred (both annually changed), still continued to subsist, together with occasional meetings of the people,—or rather of such portion of the people as was comprised in the gentes, phratries, and four Ionic tribes. The timocratic classification of Solon (or quadruple scale of income and admeasurement of political franchises according to it) also continued to subsist,—but all within the tether and subservient to the purposes of the ruling family, who always kept one of their number as real master, among the chief administrators, and always retained possession of the acropolis as well as of the mercenary force.

That overawing pressure being now removed by the expulsion of Hippias, the enslaved forms became at once endued with freedom and reality. There appeared again, what Attica had not known for thirty years, declared political parties, and pronounced opposition between two men as leaders,—on one side, Isagoras son of Tisander, a person of illustrious descent,—on the other, Kleisthenês the Alkmæônid, not less illustrious, and possessing at this moment a claim on the gratitude of his countrymen as the most persevering as well as the most effective foe of the dethroned despots. In what manner such opposition was carried on we are not told. It would seem to have been not altogether pacific; but at any rate, Kleisthenês had the worst of it, and in consequence of this defeat, says the historian, “he took into partnership the people, who had been before excluded from everything.”[243] His partnership with the people gave birth to the Athenian democracy: it was a real and important revolution.

The political franchise, or the character of an Athenian citizen, both before and since Solon, had been confined to the primitive four Ionic tribes, each of which was an aggregate of so many close corporations or quasi-families,—the gentes and the phratries. None of the residents in Attica, therefore, except those included in some gens or phratry, had any part in the political franchise. Such non-privileged residents were probably at all times numerous, and became more and more so by means of fresh settlers: moreover, they tended most to multiply in Athens and Peiræus, where emigrants would commonly establish themselves. Kleisthenês broke down the existing wall of privilege, and imparted the political franchise to the excluded mass. But this could not be done by enrolling them in new gentes or phratries, created in addition to the old; for the gentile tie was founded upon old faith and feeling, which, in the existing state of the Greek mind, could not be suddenly conjured up as a bond of union for comparative strangers: it could only be done by disconnecting the franchise altogether from the Ionic tribes as well as from the gentes which constituted them, and by redistributing the population into new tribes with a character and purpose exclusively political. Accordingly, Kleisthenês abolished the four Ionic tribes, and created in their place ten new tribes founded upon a different principle, independent of the gentes and phratries. Each of his new tribes comprised a certain number of demes or cantons, with the enrolled proprietors and residents in each of them. The demes taken altogether included the entire surface of Attica, so that the Kleisthenean constitution admitted to the political franchise all the free native Athenians; and not merely these, but also many Metics, and even some of the superior order of slaves.[244] Putting out of sight the general body of slaves, and regarding only the free inhabitants, it was in point of fact a scheme approaching to universal suffrage, both political and judicial.

The slight and cursory manner in which Herodotus announces this memorable revolution tends to make us overlook its real importance. He dwells chiefly on the alteration in the number and names of the tribes: Kleisthenês, he says, despised the Ionians so much, that he would not tolerate the continuance in Attica of the four tribes which prevailed in the Ionic cities,[245] deriving their names from the four sons of Ion,—just as his grandfather, the Sikyonian Kleisthenês, hating the Dorians, had degraded and nicknamed the three Dorian tribes at Sikyôn. Such is the representation of Herodotus, who seems himself to have entertained some contempt for the Ionians,[246] and therefore to have suspected a similar feeling where it had no real existence. But the scope of Kleisthenês was something far more extensive: he abolished the four ancient tribes, not because they were Ionic, but because they had become incommensurate with the existing condition of the Attic people, and because such abolition procured both for himself and for his political scheme new as well as hearty allies. And indeed, if we study the circumstances of the case, we shall see very obvious reasons to suggest the proceeding. For more than thirty years—an entire generation—the old constitution had been a mere empty formality, working only in subservience to the reigning dynasty, and stripped of all real controlling power. We may be very sure, therefore, that both the Senate of Four Hundred and the popular assembly, divested of that free speech which imparted to them not only all their value but all their charm, had come to be of little public estimation, and were probably attended only by a few partisans; and thus the difference between qualified citizens and men not so qualified,—between members of the four old tribes, and men not members,—became during this period practically effaced. This, in fact, was the only species of good which a Grecian despotism ever seems to have done: it confounded the privileged and the non-privileged under one coercive authority common to both, so that the distinction between the two was not easy to revive when the despotism passed away. As soon as Hippias was expelled, the senate and the public assembly regained their efficiency. But had they been continued on the old footing, including none except members of the four tribes, these tribes would have been reinvested with a privilege which in reality they had so long lost, that its revival would have seemed an odious novelty, and the remaining population would probably not have submitted to it. If, in addition, we consider the political excitement of the moment,—the restoration of one body of men from exile, and the departure of another body into exile,—the outpouring of long-suppressed hatred, partly against these very forms, by the corruption of which the despot had reigned,—we shall see that prudence as well as patriotism dictated the adoption of an enlarged scheme of government. Kleisthenês had learned some wisdom during his long exile; and as he probably continued, for some time after the introduction of his new constitution, to be the chief adviser of his countrymen, we may consider their extraordinary success as a testimony to his prudence and skill not less than to their courage and unanimity.