[242] Thucyd. vi, 55. ὡς ὅ τε βωμὸς σημαίνει, καὶ ἡ στήλη περὶ τῆς τῶν τυράννων ἀδικίας, ἡ ἐν τῇ Ἀθηναίων ἀκροπόλει σταθεῖσα.
Dr. Thirlwall, after mentioning the departure of Hippias, proceeds as follows: “After his departure many severe measures were taken against his adherents, who appear to have been for a long time afterwards a formidable party. They were punished or repressed, some by death, others by exile or by the loss of their political privileges. The family of the tyrants was condemned to perpetual banishment, and appears to have been excepted from the most comprehensive decrees of amnesty passed in later times.” (Hist. of Gr. ch. xi, vol. ii, p. 81.)
I cannot but think that Dr. Thirlwall has here been misled by insufficient authority. He refers to the oration of Andokidês de Mysteriis, sects. 106 and 78 (sect. 106 coincides in part with ch. 18, in the ed. of Dobree). An attentive reading of it will show that it is utterly unworthy of credit in regard to matters anterior to the speaker by one generation or more. The orators often permit themselves great license in speaking of past facts, but Andokidês in this chapter passes the bounds even of rhetorical license. First, he states something not bearing the least analogy to the narrative of Herodotus as to the circumstances preceding the expulsion of the Peisistratids, and indeed tacitly setting aside that narrative; next, he actually jumbles together the two capital and distinct exploits of Athens,—the battle of Marathon and the repulse of Xerxês ten years after it. I state this latter charge in the words of Sluiter and Valckenaer, before I consider the former charge: “Verissime ad hæc verba notat Valckenaerius—Confundere videtur Andocidês diversissima; Persica sub Miltiade et Dario et victoriam Marathoniam (v, 14)—quæque evenere sub Themistocle, Xerxis gesta. Hic urbem incendio delevit, non ille (v, 20). Nihil magis manifestum est, quam diversa ab oratore confundi.” (Sluiter, Lection. Andocideæ, p. 147.)
The criticism of these commentators is perfectly borne out by the words of the orator, which are too long to find a place here. But immediately prior to those words he expresses himself as follows, and this is the passage which serves as Dr. Thirlwall’s authority: Οἱ γὰρ πατέρες οἱ ὑμέτεροι, γενομένων τῇ πόλει κακῶν μεγάλων, ὅτε οἱ τύραννοι εἶχον τὴν πόλιν, ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἔφυγε, νικήσαντες μαχόμενοι τοὺς τυράννους ἐπὶ Παλληνίῳ, στρατηγοῦντος Λεωγόρου τοῦ προπάππου τοῦ ἐμοῦ, καὶ Χαρίου οὗ ἐκεῖνος τὴν θυγατέρα εἶχεν ἐξ ἧς ὁ ἡμέτερος ἦν πάππος, κατελθόντες εἰς τὴν πατρίδα τοὺς μὲν ἀπέκτειναν, τῶν δὲ φυγὴν κατέγνωσαν, τοὺς δὲ μένειν ἐν τῇ πόλει ἐάσαντες ἠτίμωσαν.
Both Sluiter (Lect. And. p. 8) and Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. p. 80) refer this alleged victory of Leogoras and the Athenian demus to the action described by Herodotus (v, 64) as having been fought by Kleomenês of Sparta against the Thessalian cavalry. But the two events have not a single circumstance in common, except that each is a victory over the Peisistratidæ or their allies: nor could they well be the same event, described in different terms, seeing that Kleomenês, marching from Sparta to Athens, could not have fought the Thessalians at Pallênê, which lay on the road from Marathon to Athens. Pallênê was the place where Peisistratus, advancing from Marathon to Athens, on occasion of his second restoration, gained his complete victory over the opposing party, and marched on afterwards to Athens without farther resistance (Herodot. i, 63).
If, then, we compare the statement given by Andokidês of the preceding circumstances, whereby the dynasty of the Peisistratids was put down, with that given by Herodotus, we shall see that the two are radically different; we cannot blend them together, but must make our election between them. Not less different are the representations of the two as to the circumstances which immediately ensued on the fall of Hippias: they would scarcely appear to relate to the same event. That “the adherents of the Peisistratidæ were punished or repressed, some by death, others by exile, or by the loss of their political privileges,” which is the assertion of Andokidês and Dr. Thirlwall, is not only not stated by Herodotus, but is highly improbable, if we accept the facts which he does state; for he tells us that Hippias capitulated and agreed to retire while possessing ample means of resistance,—simply from regard to the safety of his children. It is not to be supposed that he would leave his intimate partisans exposed to danger; such of them as felt themselves obnoxious would naturally retire along with him; and if this be what is meant by “many persons condemned to exile,” here is no reason to call it in question. But there is little probability that any one was put to death, and still less probability that any were punished by the loss of their political privileges. Within a year afterwards came the comprehensive constitution of Kleisthenês, to be described in the [following chapter], and I consider it eminently unlikely that there were a considerable class of residents in Attica left out of this constitution, under the category of partisans of Peisistratus: indeed, the fact cannot be so, if it be true that the very first person banished under the Kleisthenean ostracism was a person named Hipparchus, a kinsman of Peisistratus (Androtion, Fr. 5, ed. Didot; Harpokration, v. Ἵππαρχος); and this latter circumstance depends upon evidence better than that of Andokidês. That there were a party in Attica attached to the Peisistratids, I do not doubt; but that they were “a powerful party,” (as Dr. Thirlwall imagines,) I see nothing to show; and the extraordinary vigor and unanimity of the Athenian people under the Kleisthenean constitution will go far to prove that such could not have been the case.
I will add another reason to evince how completely Andokidês misconceives the history of Athens between 510-480 B. C. He says that when the Peisistratids were put down, many of their partisans were banished, many others allowed to stay at home with the loss of their political privileges; but that afterwards, when the overwhelming dangers of the Persian invasion supervened, the people passed a vote to restore the exiles and to remove the existing disfranchisements at home. He would thus have us believe that the exiled partisans of the Peisistratids were all restored, and the disfranchised partisans of the Peisistratids all enfranchised, just at the moment of the Persian invasion, and with the view of enabling Athens better to repel that grave danger. This is nothing less than a glaring mistake; for the first Persian invasion was undertaken with the express view of restoring Hippias, and with the presence of Hippias himself at Marathon; while the second Persian invasion was also brought on in part by the instigation of his family. Persons who had remained in exile or in a state of disfranchisement down to that time, in consequence of their attachment to the Peisistratids, could not in common prudence be called into action at the moment of peril, to help in repelling Hippias himself. It is very true that the exiles and the disfranchised were readmitted, shortly before the invasion of Xerxês, and under the then pressing calamities of the state. But these persons were not philo-Peisistratids; they were a number gradually accumulated from the sentences of exile and (atimy or) disfranchisement every year passed at Athens,—for these were punishments applied by the Athenian law to various crimes and public omissions,—the persons so sentenced were not politically disaffected, and their aid would then be of use in defending the state against a foreign enemy.
In regard to “the exception of the family of Peisistratus from the most comprehensive decrees of amnesty passed in later times,” I will also remark that, in the decree of amnesty, there is no mention of them by name, nor any special exception made against them: among a list of various categories excepted, those are named “who have been condemned to death or exile either as murderers or as despots,” (ἢ σφαγεῦσιν ἢ τυράννοις, Andokid. c. 13.) It is by no means certain that the descendants of Peisistratus would be comprised in this exception, which mentions only the person himself condemned; but even if this were otherwise, the exception is a mere continuance of similar words of exception in the old Solonian law, anterior to Peisistratus; and, therefore, affords no indication of particular feeling against the Peisistratids.
Andokidês is a useful authority for the politics of Athens in his own time (between 420-390 B. C.), but in regard to the previous history of Athens between 510-480 B. C., his assertions are so loose, confused, and unscrupulous, that he is a witness of no value. The mere circumstance noted by Valckenaer, that he has confounded together Marathon and Salamis, would be sufficient to show this; but when we add to such genuine ignorance his mention of his two great-grandfathers in prominent and victorious leadership, which it is hardly credible that they could ever have occupied,—when we recollect that the facts which he alleges to have preceded and accompanied the expulsion of the Peisistratids are not only at variance with those stated by Herodotus, but so contrived as to found a factitious analogy for the cause which he is himself pleading,—we shall hardly be able to acquit him of something worse than ignorance in his deposition.
[243] Herodot. v, 66-69 ἑσσούμενος δὲ ὁ Κλεισθένης τὸν δῆμον προσεταιρίζεται—ὡς γὰρ δὴ τὸν Ἀθηναίων δῆμον, πρότερον ἀπωσμένον πάντων, τότε πρὸς τὴν ἑωϋτοῦ μοίρην προσεθήκατο, etc.