[Sidenote: Exceptional position of Athens.]
Of all the tyrants of the seventh and sixth centuries none are so well
known to us as those who reigned at Athens. No other city has left us so
clear a picture of the state of things not only during the tyranny but
also immediately before and after it. Solon lived to see Peisistratus
make himself supreme. Herodotus, born a Persian subject about 484 B.C.,
must have had opportunities of questioning first-hand authorities on the
later years of the Athenian tyranny, while his younger contemporary
Thucydides was in a particularly favoured position for getting
information on this subject through his relationship with the Philaidae,
of whose rivalry with the Peisistratidae there will be occasion to speak
later in this chapter[180].
This comparative abundance of information is the reason why Athens has
been made the starting-point of this enquiry. But even so our knowledge
is meagre enough. And there is a special reason for using it with
caution. So far in the history of the world there has been only one
Athens. The developments that took place in the city during the first
two centuries of the democracy are without parallel. Can we be certain
that Athens was not already unique in the period immediately preceding?
One point in which the Athenian tyranny was exceptional meets us at the
first glance. [Sidenote: Athens before the establishment of the
tyranny.] With the single exception of Samos, all the other famous
tyrannies of the earlier type, at least in the Aegean area, arose in the
seventh century. But apart from this fact it will be found that the
tyranny at Athens in the sixth century followed the same course as it
appears to have done at places like Corinth and Argos, Sardis and
Miletus in the seventh. The more highly developed an organism is, the
longer it takes to reach maturity. This is perhaps the reason why Athens
in the sixth century appears in some respects to be a hundred years
behind some of the cities whom she was destined so completely to
eclipse.
Athens was not exclusively commercial. Her large territory made her
partly agricultural. To this fact may be due her failure to compete
commercially in the seventh century with cities like Aegina and
Corinth[181]. Hence too the late rise of the tyranny. It appears only
when the commercial and industrial element had got the upper hand. There
was indeed the attempt of Cylon, who conspired to make himself tyrant
within a generation of the first appearance of tyranny on the mainland
of Greece[182]. But Cylon failed because, though wealthy (ὀλυμπιονίκης)
and influential (δυνατός), he could not possibly, in the Athens of his
day, be the leader of any dominant organized commercial activity. He was
merely an ambitious member of the aristocracy (τῶν πάλαι εὐγενής),
connected with the great band of merchant princes only by marriage[183].
The attempt and its result are both what might have been expected from
the position of Athens at the time.
Soon after Cylon’s attempt Athens began to rival Corinth in the pottery
trade, and the influence of the rich city merchants and exporters
doubtless increased. But even in pottery the great vogue of Attic ware
was still to come, and Solon’s measures for encouraging the growth of
olives and the export of olive oil also belong to this period[184]: the
importance of the landed aristocracy who owned the olive yards must have
increased almost equally. No merchant therefore attempted by means of
the wealth that he had amassed or the labour that he employed to seize
the tyranny. The landed aristocracy were also wealthy and they too
employed much labour, and it so happened that the best part of the Attic
plain, where lay their estates, was situated round the city, as Cylon
discovered to his cost when he seized the Acropolis. Tyranny was almost
impossible.
The leading man at Athens was not a mere millionaire, as in the more
exclusively trading states. Solon had indeed some experience of
trade[185], but he was essentially a politician with a gift for finance,
not a financier or merchant with political ambitions. He became not a
tyrant but a lawgiver.
[Sidenote: Peisistratus makes himself tyrant by organizing a new party.]
Solon tried to provide for the difficulties that he saw resulting from
the existence of two evenly matched parties, the landowners of the plain
and the traders of the coast. The tyranny arose from the political
organization of a new interest by Peisistratus, who, to quote the exact
words of Herodotus:
While the coast men of Athens and those of the plain were at
strife ... having formed designs on (καταφρονήσας) the tyranny,
proceeded to raise (ἤγειρε) a third faction[186].
Some ancient writers represent Peisistratus as owing his tyranny to his
gifts as an orator or demagogue[187]. Reasons are given in Chapter I for
not accepting this view, and also for not believing that it was mainly
as a successful soldier that Peisistratus secured the throne[188]. It
was as founder and leader of the “third faction” of Herodotus that
Peisistratus made himself tyrant, and he seems largely to have built up
his influence with them by rendering them aid, doubtless financial[189].
To understand the position of Peisistratus and to ascertain the basis of
his power it is obviously of the first importance that we should know
who precisely were the men who made up this third faction. Unfortunately
this question cannot be answered directly from the information that has
come down to us. So before sifting the evidence that bears on it, it
will be well to examine some later and better known phases of the
tyrant’s career.
[Sidenote: How Peisistratus “rooted” his power.]
After the tyrant had first established himself he is reported to have
been twice banished and twice restored. After his second restoration “he
proceeded to root his tyranny with many mercenaries, and with revenues
of money, of which part was gathered from the home country, part from
the river Strymon[190].”
The Strymon (Struma) flows through the famous mining district which was
afterwards annexed by Philip of Macedon, and brought him his enormous
wealth. It is scarcely conceivable that Peisistratus’ revenues from this
region came from any other source than the mines[191]. Hence Guiraud, in
his interesting but sober account of ancient Greek industry, has already
been led to suggest that Peisistratus’ Attic revenues were derived from
a similar source, and that he worked the mines of Laurium[192].
[Sidenote: How he secured his second restoration.]
Peisistratus was not using revenues from mines for the first time in his
career, when he proceeded to “root his tyranny” in the manner just
described. He had already used the same means to compass his second
restoration. When driven from Athens for the second time he had
“proceeded to the parts round Pangaion, where he made money, and having
hired soldiers he went back to Eretria, and in the eleventh year made
his first attempt to recover his position by force[193].” Herodotus
appears to think that all the period of exile was spent at Eretria; but
he too states it to have been spent in collecting money (ἕως ... τὰ
χρήματα ἤγειρε). The result was that “he now held the tyranny
securely[194].” Mt Pangaion is the name of the great mining district to
the East of the lower Strymon. The mention of it confirms the view that
Peisistratus had a personal connexion with the Thracian mines. Eretria,
on the West coast of Euboea, is an obvious place from which to swoop
down on East Attica, but on the other hand in Euboea too there were
mining districts[195], and Eretria had a settlement just to the East of
Mount Pangaion, if Svoronos is right in his very plausible
identification of the modern Kavalla with the “Skabala: a place of the
Eretrians” of Stephanus Byzantinus[196].
About the tyrant’s first restoration there is only a story in Herodotus
which the historian himself describes as a “very silly business.” Its
consideration is best left over till we have dealt with his original
seizure of the throne. If for this earlier stage of his career the
evidence is less specific, we must not be surprised. Like Augustus,
Peisistratus was careful, especially at first, to observe the outward
forms of the constitution which he overthrew, so that the realities of
the situation would not be patent to everybody[197].
[Sidenote: The “Hillmen” through whom Peisistratus made himself tyrant]
The party through which Peisistratus made himself tyrant is called by
Herodotus the Ὑπεράκριοι[198]. The Aristotelian _Constitution of Athens_
calls them the Διάκριοι[199], Plutarch sometimes Διακριεῖς sometimes
Ἔπακροι[200]. The English terminology is equally fluctuating. Hill,
Mountain, and Upland have all been used.
Modern historians have mostly explained the party as made up of small
farmers, agricultural labourers, herdsmen and the like, and have
generally assigned them to one special district, the mountainous region
of North and North-east Attica[201]. But this view, as shown below in
detail in an appendix[202], is based on a misunderstanding of the texts
that are quoted in its support, and is at variance with all the ancient
evidence, whether as regards the political propensities of agricultural
labourers or the state of cultivation of the Attic mountains. It takes
no account of the facts just brought forward as to how the tyrant
regained and maintained his power.
[Sidenote: were probably the miners of the Laurium district]
In a paper that I published in 1906[203] these facts were made the basis
of a new explanation of the Hillmen of Peisistratus. According to the
view there put forward the most important section of Peisistratus’
followers were the miners who worked the famous silver mines of South
Attica, and it was as leader of this mining population that Peisistratus
raised himself to the tyranny. At the time this view was little more
than a conjecture, topographically dubious. Of the only two places,
Plotheia and Semachidai, known to have been situated in the Hill
Country, Plotheia had been shown by tombstones to lie somewhere between
Marathon and Kephisia[204], and as this fact seemed to confirm the
theory of an exclusively Northern Hill Country, Semachidai, for the site
of which as within the limits of the three trittyes of its tribe no
evidence was available, was placed up in the North in the inland
trittys. But that this location was wrong is made practically certain by
the discovery of an inscription, published in 1910 by the Greek scholar
Oikonomos, that bears directly on the point. [Sidenote: which was
certainly part of the Hill Country] It dates from 349–8 B.C. and defines
the position of various mining concessions. One of them is described as
near Laurium and bordered on the South by the road leading past Rhagon
to Laurium and the Semacheion[205].
The Semacheion is convincingly explained by Oikonomos as the shrine of
Semachos, who gave his name to the deme Semachidai[206]. From this fact
he proceeds quite logically to argue that we must decide on a more
Southerly position for that deme than those proposed by Milchhoefer and
Loeper[207], “since the mine to the South of which Semachidai lay, was
situated in the neighbourhood of Laurium[208].” Semachidai belonged to
the tribe Antiochis[209]. In the electoral organization of Cleisthenes
the coast trittys of the tribe Antiochis occupied the Western part of
the mining district, including the villages of Amphitrope (Metropisi),
Besa, and Anaphlystus. Thus Oikonomos’ conclusions are confirmed by the
fact that his Semacheion falls within the borders of Antiochis. But
whereas technically this mining district formed the coast trittys of the
tribe, we have the evidence of Philochorus, writing early in the third
century B.C., that it was spoken of as part of the Epakria or hill
country[210].
How suitable this name was may be illustrated from the Semacheion
inscription itself, in which the sites of mining claims are three times
defined by reference to a ridge or hill crest (λόφος)[211].
As seen from _C.I.A._ II. 570, the Epakria of 400 B.C. was a religious
organization[212], apparently with only a local political significance.
[Sidenote: and probably the Hill Country _par excellence_.] This fact
makes it probable that the name was already ancient, and that Plutarch
and the _Lexicon Seguerianum_ were right in equating it with Diakria and
Hyperakria[213]. There is indeed the possibility of a confusion of
names. But on the other hand the names suggest a common origin. They are
all compounds of ἄκρον. It is curious that nobody in recent times seems
to have asked what was the ordinary connotation of ἄκρον to the Athenian
of antiquity[214]. There seems little doubt as to what it was.
In Attica the ἄκρον _par excellence_ was Sunium. Already in the
_Odyssey_ Sunium is the ἄκρον Ἀθηνῶν[215]. The same phrase reappears in
Aristophanes[216]. Strabo refers to Sunium as τὸ τῆς Ἀττικῆς ἄκρον[217].
Some early scholars recognized this fact. Palmerius explained the
Diakrioi as the people living between the two capes, Sunium and
Cynosura, and the Hyperakrioi as those who dwelt beyond Sunium, “beyond”
being used presumably from the point of view of those coming by sea from
Athens[218]. Albertus held that the Diakrioi were so called because they
lived “in promontoriis Atticae[219].”
Plato indeed in the _Critias_[220] speaks of Πάρνηθος τῶν ἄκρων; but for
the Athenians the peaks of Parnes are ἄκρα with a local qualification,
not simply τὸ ἄκρον or τὰ ἄκρα; just as we in England speak of the peaks
of Snowdon or Skiddaw, but apply the word unqualified to the heights of
Derbyshire. The unqualified expression applied to the Northern heights
of Attica was “the land of the mountain (ἡ ὀρεινή)[221],” not “the land
of the ἄκρον.” The name Diakria appears therefore to be derived
geographically not from Mount Parnes but from Cape Sunium[222].
Herodotus, as already noticed, gives the Sunium district another name.
He calls the country between Sunium, Thoricus, and Anaphlystus, _i.e._
the Laurium mining district, by the name of the γουνὸς Σουνιακός[223].
But as in the same sentence he speaks of the ἄκρη of this district, his
allusion is less of a difficulty to regarding this district as the
original Diakria than it is to the orthodox view, which identifies it
with the Paralia (Coast). Especially is this so if we assume that by his
days the name Diakria had spread Northward beyond the mining region, so
that a new name was wanted for the Southern apex of the peninsula. This
assumption is of course only a reversal of the current view, that
extends the name indefinitely Southwards from Parnes.
It has sometimes been forgotten in the discussion of these names that we
are dealing with common nouns that were used by the Greeks with
different connotations at different places and periods like the English
downs or forest[224]. Epakria appears to have been used in more than one
sense even within the limits of Attica[225]. Possibly the name was
applied at large to any region of ἄκρα. If we prefer to assume that it
spread from a single district the balance of probabilities points to the
name having spread Northwards from the district round Sunium.
From yet another point of view the words Diakria, Hyperakria, Epakria
favour the mining interpretation. The inhabitants of El Dorado of Greek
legend, the land of the Golden Fleece, are said to have occupied the
ἄκρα of the Caucasus[226].
[Illustration: Fig. 1. Lophos Loutrou from Daskalio station.]
[Illustration: Fig. 2. On the road from Daskalio station to Plaka.]
[Illustration: Fig. 3. Kamaresa.]
[Illustration: Fig. 4. Kitsovouno from Kamaresa.]
Views in the Laurium mining district.
The ἄκρα of the Caucasus are of course not capes but peaks. Trinakria on
the other hand is the land of the three capes. It is important to
remember that the word ἄκρον has no equivalent in English. It means peak
or height as well as cape or headland. To attempt to keep these two
meanings separate is to commit a mental mistranslation. Though Sunium is
the ἄκρον _par excellence_, the whole Σουνιακὸς γουνός abounds in ἄκρα,
or as the inscriptions call them, λόφοι (crests, ridges)[227]. Bursian
describes the hills of Laurium (Lauriongebirge) as a continuous mountain
chain, and includes it with Parnes, Brilessos, and Hymettos among the
main ridges (grössere Gebirgszüge) of Attica[228]. The writer has spent
some days walking in the mining district. The sea is always near, and
glimpses of it may be had frequently. But it is the hills that dominate
the landscape, not the sea. More particularly is this the case in the
district that was most mined in the sixth century, where the ground
varies in height from 170 m. to 370 m. (550–1200 feet), and lies well
inland[229].
In the light of this probability that the Diakrioi occupied the mining
district of Attica, and of the fact that their name means hill men, it
is interesting to note that the Idaean Dactyls, who “are said to have
been the first miners,” are stated also to have been men of the
mountains[230], and that in German and Welsh the words for miners
(Bergleuten, gwyr y mynyddau) mean literally “hill men.”
The Greek word Diakrioi would have a peculiar appropriateness for
miners. The ἄκρον is precisely the part of a hill that the farmer has
least use for. Miners on the other hand preferred to carry on their
smelting operations on the hill tops, because a better draught is thus
secured[231].
It has been pointed out by Milchhoefer[232] that the mining district is
considerably broken up by the Cleisthenic division of Attica into
trittyes. Milchhoefer’s arrangement of the trittyes in the mining
district has been convincingly simplified by Loeper[233], but Loeper
himself leaves the mines divided between three trittyes of three
different tribes. We may therefore still follow Milchhoefer in thinking
that Cleisthenes took special precautions to break up this district. The
same fact is noticed by Milchhoefer about the district round Plotheia,
the Northern deme already noticed as belonging to the Epakria. Here too
the Russian scholar has simplified, but here too only to a limited
extent. “In a breaking up like this of the old hill country of the
Peisistratids” Milchhoefer sees unmistakable signs of “measures directed
against the Peisistratids.” Now that we have as good reason for seeing
Peisistratan hill country round Laurium as round Plotheia, we must
either reject Milchhoefer altogether, or, more probably, see in both
districts centres of Peisistratan influence, of which the Southernmost
was the more important. Mining operations in antiquity were conducted on
a large scale. Forty thousand workers were employed in mines near
Carthagena[234].
Athenaeus[235] speaks of tens of thousands of chained slaves as working
in the Laurium mines and losing their lives in an unsuccessful revolt at
the time of the second slave war in Sicily (103–99 B.C.). Of the 20,000
who deserted to Decelea when it was occupied by the Spartans in 413 B.C.
it is not unlikely that large numbers were miners from Laurium[236].
But what was the state of the Laurium district in the days of
Peisistratus?
[Sidenote: The mines were almost certainly in full work at this period,]
The mines of Laurium do not appear in history till 484 B.C.[237], when
Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to devote the profits from them to
the building of a navy. The _Constitution of Athens_ speaks of a
discovery of mines in that year. This however is probably rather loose
language. The writer’s words are “on the discovery of the mines at
Maronea.” The “discovery” of 484 B.C. was of the mines in this
particular part of the Laurium district, or rather, in all probability,
of an extraordinarily rich vein in this particular part. “The
disposition of the strata” (at Maronea) “is such that the richest are
not those that could be first reached.... Some centuries of search and
effort were therefore necessary in order to suspect their existence and
to reach their level” (_i.e._ of the rich veins “discovered” in
484)[238].
[Illustration: Fig. 5. Corinthian terra cotta tablet depicting a miner
at work.]
Plutarch says that before this time the Athenians were in the habit of
distributing the Laurium revenues among themselves, and that
Themistocles had the courage to persuade them to give the habit up[239].
This agrees with Xenophon where he declares that “no one even attempts
to say from what period people have tried to work them[240].” The mines
of Lydia, Cyprus, and Spain all appear to have been developed in the
seventh century B.C.[241]. The Siphnian mines were at full work about
525 B.C.[242]. Mining operations are depicted on several Corinthian clay
tablets, that cannot be later than the early part of the sixth
century[243]. One of them is here reproduced (fig. 5).
Herodotus says nothing about the date of discovery of the Attic mines in
his account of the proceedings of 484 B.C.[244]. It would not be like
him to keep silence about an epoch-making discovery, or even a
phenomenal “rush,” if any had occurred just at this time. Elsewhere he
tells us that the Siphnians were already distributing among themselves
the money from their mines about the year 525 B.C.[245].
Modern writers have been inclined to talk of the great “rush” of
484[246]. But against the silence of Herodotus they can set only the
reference in the _Constitution of Athens_ to the “discovery” at Maronea,
which has been discussed already. What made the great impression at this
time was probably not so much the output as the employment of the output
on the building of a fleet. That surely is the point of the contemporary
allusion in the _Persae_ of Aeschylus. The chorus of Persian elders
tells the Persian queen about the Athenians’
Fount of silver, treasure of the land[247]
just after mentioning the prowess of the Athenian troops, and just
before explaining the weapons that they use.
The idea proposed in 484 by Themistocles was not original. Seven years
earlier the Thasians had used the revenues from their mines to build a
fleet against the Persians[248]. It was doubtless the success of the
Athenian fleet in a supreme crisis that caused the Athenians to remember
with such pride this triumph of the voluntary system.
There can therefore be no question that the mines were worked in the
sixth century[249]. But if we are to understand the position of the
leader of the mining interests at that period, we must learn something
about the conditions and position of the miners.
[Sidenote: and the miners free men, good material for a political
faction.]
The leaders of the Plain and Coast had a powerful body of citizens
behind their backs. The mines on the other hand, at least from the time
of Xenophon, were worked almost exclusively by slaves[250].
In the fourth century very occasionally poor citizens worked their own
allotments[251]. Skilled work like smelting seems always to have been
done by free men. The tombstone of “Atotes the miner,” carved in letters
of the second half of the fourth century, declares that he was a
Paphlagonian “of the root of Pylaimenes, who fell slain by the hand of
Achilles,” and boasts of his unrivalled skill[252]. But there is no
recorded instance of a citizen working in a mine for wages[253]. This
however does not prove that they did not do so in the days of
Peisistratus, when, as pointed out in the introductory chapter, the
conditions of labour must have been very different from what they became
in the fifth and fourth centuries, and industrial slavery had scarcely
yet begun. A fragment of Solon suggests that it was quite usual in his
days for citizens to work with their own hands, though whether for pay
or on their own account is not stated and no particular occupations are
specified[254].
About ten years after Solon’s legislation the Athenians are found
resolving “on account of their factions to elect ten archons, five from
the nobility (Eupatridai), three from the farmers (agroikoi), two from
the craftsmen (demiourgoi)[255].” The equation of these three groups of
archons with the three factions of the Plain, Coast, and Hill is more
than doubtful[256]. The farmers _par excellence_ are naturally located
in the plain: also it is doubtful whether Peisistratus had already
“raised the third faction” twenty years before he became tyrant, and
over fifty before his death. The two different sets of names point in
themselves to two different groupings of the population. Solon’s
quadruple division into pentekosiomedimnoi, hippeis, zeugitai, and
thetes proves a certain fluidity and tendency to cross grouping. But in
any case the two craftsman magistrates prove that craftsmen or artizans
were already an important element in the free population.
In this matter of free labour in an industry such as mining, fifth
century Phrygia is perhaps a better guide than the Attica of Nikias or
Demosthenes as to the state of things in Attica during the sixth
century. In Phrygia a generation after the Samian tyrant Polycrates, who
died about 522 B.C., Pythes was working mines with citizen labour[257].
Even in Athens in the early days of Pericles the earlier conditions seem
still to have prevailed. “Each trade τέχνη had its body of (free)
labourers organized (τὸν θητικὸν ὄχλον συντεταγμένον)” to carry out the
great public works that were financed from the Delian treasury. A long
list of the trades thus organized ends with miners[258].
Considering the evidence already adduced for equating the sixth century
miners at Laurium with the presumably free Diakrioi, may we not use the
notices already quoted about the latter as being of impure race and a
mob of hirelings[259], and infer that in the sixth century the mines of
Laurium were worked by free men, partly of foreign extraction and mainly
working for hire?
This is of course conjecture. But it produces for the first time a
picture of the Diakrioi that harmonizes with the notices in question.
Alien shepherds and alien small farmers are most unlikely in
autochthonous Attica.
Outlander miners on the other hand have always been familiar, wherever
there have been mines to work. When mining operations were resumed at
Laurium some thirty years ago, the immediate result was a very mixed
population, the local supply of labour being supplemented from France,
Italy, and Turkey. One of the ancient gold mines near Philippi bore the
significant name of the asylum[260]. In the Laurium district itself in
ancient times the people of at least one deme, Potamioi, were famous for
their readiness to admit foreigners to citizenship[261]. Potamioi is
placed by Loeper right in the centre of the mining district, well away
from the sea[262], and very near the probable site of Maronea[263]. A
member of the deme Semachidai is found sharing a tombstone with two
strangers from Sinope[264]. We have just had occasion to notice a
Paphlagonian miner, though of a later date, and we shall see in a moment
that in the sixth century the mines of Laurium were worked in close
connexion with those of Thrace. There are no records of specific
Thracians employed in the Attic mines during the sixth century. We only
know that just after the Persians conquered Thrace, at the close of the
reign of Hippias, there was a large Greek element in the mining
population near the Strymon[265]. But in the fifth century we have a
famous case of a Thracian mine-owner settling in Athens in the person of
Thucydides, whose father was a Thracian, and whose Thracian mines
probably lost him his command in the Athenian navy, and turned a
second-rate admiral into the greatest of historians[266]. Nikias hired
out a thousand hands whom he owned in the mines to Sosias the
Thracian[267].
This ends our examination of the various steps by which Peisistratus
made himself tyrant, effected his second restoration, and finally rooted
his power. In all three cases the evidence points to the conclusion that
the secret of the tyrant’s power was his control of mines either in
Attica or Thrace. To complete the enquiry it is necessary now to examine
the accounts of his first restoration. As observed already, this event
is recorded only in anecdotal form. As independent evidence it would
hardly be worth considering. All that is here claimed for it is that it
can be so interpreted as to corroborate the conclusions already reached.
[Sidenote: The strange story of Peisistratus’ first restoration]
According to the story Peisistratus persuaded the Athenians to take him
back by dressing up a stately woman named Phye to personate Athena and
order his recall[268]. It is generally agreed that this story will not
do as it stands. Various attempts have been made to explain it
away[269], but all of them are equally unconvincing. Perhaps the reason
is that all alike are based on some single unessential detail of the
story. None of them interprets it in the light of the better known parts
of the tyrant’s career, and more particularly of the matter of fact
accounts of his second restoration. Beloch indeed, like the Russian
Hirschensohn, believes that there was only one restoration, with which
the Phye story and the account of Peisistratus’ return from the Thracian
mining district are both to be connected[270]. He notes that the cause
of banishment is the same in both cases; that the chronology is
suspiciously symmetrical; that Polyaenus combines incidents from the two
restorations; and that Eusebius[271] and Jerome[272] both make
Peisistratus begin his second reign about the time that Herodotus begins
his third, while neither of them mentions a third reign at all. Note too
that corresponding to Phye in the first restoration we have in the
second a “sacred procession” from the temple of Athena Pallenis
conducted by an Acarnanian soothsayer[273].
These points are not convincing. Similar improbabilities, and
repetitions and chronological symmetries can often be discovered in
narratives of the most unquestionable authenticity[274]. The fact that
Polyaenus combines the two accounts proves nothing, unless we assume him
to be incapable of confusing two similar events. Further, Beloch is
forced to make the marriage of Peisistratus with Megacles’ daughter
precede his first exile, since he sees that the childlessness of the
marriage led to the breach with the Coast[275]. In this he goes dead
against the tradition on a point where there is no reason to suspect it.
What Beloch’s arguments do emphasize is the fact that the situations
during Peisistratus’ two periods of exile were in some ways very
similar. The sameness of the two situations may in fact be the reason
why so little has been remembered about the earlier. It raises the
question whether the tyrant mined and coined during his first exile.
There is no certainty that he did either, but the probability is that he
did both. As regards Thrace we know that Miltiades, probably with
Peisistratus’ permission and approval[276], had settled in the Gallipoli
peninsula soon after the tyranny was first established at Athens[277].
Thrace is the one region that we can be sure that the tyrant must have
considered as a possible place of exile. [Sidenote: is connected by
Babelon with the Athena-head coins of Athens] As regards the coinage it
has been suggested on the high authority of Babelon[278], that the
famous series with the owl on one side, and the head of Athena on the
other (fig. 6), which remained for centuries the coin types of the city,
was actually started to commemorate the help that the tyrant claimed to
have received from his patron goddess at the time of his first
restoration.
[Illustration: Fig. 6. Coin of Athens with Athena and owl.]
The evidence is not conclusive. The arguments for and against this date
are based on a few literary references that are too vague to be of much
use, on points of style and technique from which it is notoriously
dangerous to draw conclusions, on a comparison of the coin and pottery
statistics from Naukratis which it is no less dangerous to use as
evidence, on a hoard found in 1886 among the pre-Persian remains on the
Athenian Acropolis which, as far as the circumstances of the find are
concerned, may have been lost or deposited there long before the
catastrophe, and only establish a _terminus ante quem_ that nobody would
think of disputing, and on certain alliance coins (Athens-Lampsacus,
Athens-Sparta?, Athens and the Thracian Chersonese)[279]. These last
look more promising at first sight, but only the Athens-Lampsacus coins
can be dated with any certainty, and they, unfortunately, are very
small, and may have been struck under difficulties, so that it is not
easy to be sure of their chronological position in the Athenian series.
We are driven back therefore on to the impressions of experts, most of
whom agree with Babelon that the owl-Athena series cannot begin either
much before or much after 550 B.C.[280]. That is to say that this double
type was certainly in vogue when the tyrant secured his second
restoration by means of his Thracian silver[281], and “rooted his
tyranny” in revenues derived “partly from the river Strymon, partly from
home.”
[Sidenote: nicknamed (probably just about this time) girl, virgin,
Pallas.]
Pieces with the double type were sometimes colloquially called girls
(κόραι), sometimes virgins (παρθένοι), sometimes by the virgin goddess’
own name of Pallas (Παλλάδες)[282]. Sometimes they got their nickname
from the reverse type, and were called owls[283]. “Virgin” is used by
Euripides, “girl” by Hyperides, “Pallas” by Eubulus, “owl” by
Aristophanes. “Owl” is said by the Aristophanes Scholiast to have been
applied to the tetradrachms; the “girl” of Hyperides is some smaller
coin[284]. In the fifth and fourth centuries therefore the bird name,
and the virgin goddess names seem to have been used side by side, like
our sovereign and crown, to indicate two different denominations. When
the names were first used is nowhere stated. The most likely time for a
type to give rise to a nickname is when the type itself is still a
novelty. If this holds good for the coins of Athens, the nicknames
Pallas, virgin, and girl go back to the time of Peisistratus. The owl
had already appeared on earlier issues, stamped on the reverse with a
simple incuse[285], and would therefore at this time attract less
attention than the Athena head.
Is it possible that we have here the clue to the Phye story? The details
about her being dressed up in full armour and placed in a chariot are
not the essence of the story: they all appear in Herodotus in quite a
different setting, as part of the ritual of the worship of Athena in
North Africa by Lake Tritonis[286]. It can hardly be doubted that one of
these passages is plagiarized from the other, and it is scarcely less
certain that Phye is indebted to the ritual of Lake Tritonis and not
_vice versa_.
[Sidenote: Was the Athena who restored Peisistratus the lady of the
coins?]
The kernel of the Phye story lies in the tradition that Peisistratus was
restored by a woman, “as Herodotus says, from the deme of the Paianians,
but as some say, a Thracian flower girl from the deme of Kollytos[287].”
In fact Phye, the human goddess four cubits high, said by some to come
from Attica, and by others from Thrace, who brought Peisistratus back to
Athens for the first time, bears a suspicious likeness to the coins
called sometimes girls and sometimes goddesses, derived some from
Attica, and some from Thrace, with which Peisistratus secured his second
return, and finally established his power.
Assume for the moment that they were indeed identical, and it is easy to
see how the Phye story may have arisen. Peisistratus certainly claimed
to rule by the grace of Athena. Everyone is agreed in inferring from the
Phye story that he attributed his restoration to the intervention of the
goddess. After the citizens had fulfilled Solon’s prophecy, and
“consented to ruin their great city, induced by money[288],” what more
natural than that one of the tyrant’s opponents should sarcastically
agree that it was indeed Athena who had restored Peisistratus: on which
another might comment that it was not the virgin goddess of Athens who
had restored the tyrant, but an alien being of quite a different order,
a Thracian flower girl. [Sidenote: cp. (i) details in the story that
suggest a derivation from the coins,] The name of flower girl
(στεφανόπωλις) is never applied to Athenian drachmae. If we accepted
Head’s early dating for the Athena type, and assumed a Peisistratan date
for certain Athenian coins[289] where the goddess has had her hair done
by a κεροπλάστης[290] in corkscrew curls (fig. 7_a_) that suggest an
early date[291], and wears the garland (στέφανος) of olive leaves (fig.
7_a_, _b_) that appears regularly on coins of the fifth century, we
might find in flower girl (lit. garland seller, στεφανόπωλις) an
allusion to this detail. The garland seller may often have advertised
her garlands by wearing one herself[292].
[Illustration: Fig. 7. Athenian coins: the wreath on the head of
Athena.]
Numismatists however are now unanimous in making the earliest στέφανοι
on Athenian coins later than Peisistratus[293]. To describe the coins as
flower girls would however be natural enough on the simple supposition
that Athenian flower girls had no high moral reputation[294], and
further perhaps that the business was in the hands of Thracians, just as
that of organ-grinding in England is in the hands of Italians. Or
conceivably στεφανόπωλις on our present hypothesis is to be explained by
reference to the phrase δραχμαὶ (τοῦ) Στεφανηφόρου (drachmae of the
garland bearer)[295], applied at Athens to coins fresh from the mint,
such as must have been put into circulation in large quantities when
Peisistratus returned after his money-making in the districts round Mt
Pangaion.
How readily to the Greek the garland suggested the flower girl is seen
from an explanation in the _Lexicon Seguerianum_ of a certain
“garland-bearing hero (στεφανηφόρος ἥρως).” It runs: “Either because the
hero is so called, or by way of nickname, because he had many garlands
round him, _or because garlands were sold near him_[296].” The coins
themselves, especially when the garland was the new feature, may
possibly have been sometimes called garland bearers (στεφανηφόροι), as
is shown to be possible by the analogy of such descriptive coin names as
“chest bearer (κιστοφόρος)[297]” and “harp bearer (κιθαρηφόρος)[298].”
[Sidenote: (ii) attested instances of _Jeu de mot_ on coin types,]
Such bitter jesting is quite in keeping with the Greek language; the
Greeks were particularly fond of attributing appropriate life and action
to types of living things that figured on their coins[299].
[Illustration: Fig. 8. Persian “archer.”]
The best known instance of a play on such a nickname is that of
Agesilaus of Sparta, who complained that he had been driven out of Asia
by thirty thousand of the Great King’s archers, a colloquial name for
the Persian gold stater or Daric (fig. 8), derived from its type[300].
In Athens itself we find Euripides, in a fragment of the _Sciron_,
playing on the double meaning of “virgin,” as also on that of “pony”
(πῶλος), the colloquial name of the Corinthian drachma, that bore on one
side the image of the winged steed Pegasus:
Some you will secure if you offer a pony,
others with a pair of horses, while others are brought
on four horses, all of silver; and they love
the maidens from Athens when you bring plenty of them.
The reverse type of the Athenian drachma is punned upon by Aristophanes,
who speaks of the owls of Laurium nesting in the purses of the Athenians
and hatching small change[301]. In 404 B.C., during the final operations
against Athens, Gylippus, the hero of the siege of Syracuse,
misappropriated a large amount of Athenian coin, and hid it under the
tiles of his roof. The theft was revealed by a servant, who informed the
ephors that “there were many owls nesting under the tiles[302].”
These examples are enough to show that there is nothing improbable in
the suggestion that the Phye story grew out of a remark made by the
tyrant’s enemies about his silver drachmae. Our explanation is of course
pure conjecture, and even at that it has one weak point. The statement
that Phye was a Thracian, so essential to our interpretation, does not
appear in Herodotus, according to whom she came from the Paianian deme
in Attica[303].
Can this omission be accounted for?
There is an anecdote told by Herodotus in quite another connexion[304]
which suggests that it can.
[Sidenote: (iii) the story of the dressed-up woman]
In the days just after King Darius had made his conquests in Thrace
(about 512 B.C.), there lived on the banks of the Strymon two brothers
named Pigres and Mantyes, who wished to become tyrants of the land in
which they lived. To carry out this aim “they went to Sardis, taking
with them their sister, who was tall and handsome.” Then waiting till
Darius was sitting in state before the city, having dressed up their
sister as well as they possibly could, they sent her for water with a
pitcher on her head and leading a horse with her hand and spinning flax.
She was noticed by the king, but the result was that he sent an
expedition to her country, and deported her people to Asia.
The Strymon and Pangaion mines are at this period, before the expansion
of Macedonia, naturally described as Thracian[305]. But in the days of
King Darius, who began his reign about five years after the death of
Peisistratus, part of the country round Mt Pangaion[306], and part of
the banks of the Strymon[307] were occupied by another race called
Paionians. It was to this latter race that Pigres and Mantyes belonged.
[Sidenote: who caused Hippias to lose his throne] They failed to secure
the tyranny that they sought; but the expedition sent by Darius to
deport the Paionians to Asia probably caused Hippias to lose his.
[Sidenote: as a result of losing his Paionian (Thracian) possessions.]
It can scarcely be an accident that the tyranny at Athens ended almost
immediately after the removal of one of its two roots, the mines of the
country of the Thracians and Paionians[308].
Thus we find the restoration of the tyranny at Athens and its abolition
both ascribed to the dressing up of a tall handsome woman[309]. It is
hardly conceivable that both these events were brought about by the same
“primitive and excessively simple” means. The Paionian dressing up has
every appearance of being the original[310].
It is possible that the whole Phye story arose at the time of the
Paionian incident, just as the good stories about some of the bad Roman
emperors must have first had a circulation only after the emperor had
ceased to reign. When Hippias had lost his Thracian and Paionian mines,
and consequently his throne, it might be said with additional point that
the Athena who had restored the father had now deserted the son[311].
If the Paionian story is contemporary, as it well may be without being
either true or original, it accounts for the appearance in the
Peisistratus story of a dressed-up woman. Further we have brought the
story down to a period in the history of Athenian coinage when the
garland may already have made its first appearance on the head of
Athena[312], in which case “Thracian garland seller” becomes an
effective description of the type.
Thus the whole story, as it appears in the Aristotelian _Constitution of
Athens_, has been accounted for. In this, as in the account of
Peisistratus’ second exile, the author of the treatise seems to be
following a better authority than Herodotus. Herodotus’ deviations
appear to be attempts at rationalistic explanation in the best
Herodotean style. From Herodotus’ account of Peisistratus’ second exile
it is plain that he knew nothing of the tyrant’s connexions with Thrace,
of which we are informed in the Aristotelian treatise. According to
Herodotus the whole period of the second exile was spent in Euboea.
Hence the Thracian reference had to be rationalized away. But a fact
mentioned by Herodotus in another connexion[313] points to Hippias
having maintained some sort of position in the North Aegean till the end
of his reign. When in 510 B.C. he was banished, a home was offered him
by the king of Macedon.
Thrace and Paionia might be used indifferently in the original account,
the latter being the more accurate name, the former the more popular.
Herodotus takes Paionian as a corruption of Paianian, and Thracian as a
popular version of Paionian. That Herodotus himself was personally
responsible for the emendation Paianian is made probable by the words of
the _Constitution of Athens_, “as Herodotus says, a Paianian, as some
say, a Thracian.” The Paionians are made by Herodotus[314] to recognize
their own name in the paian or war-cry of their enemies. Only the verb
appears in the anecdote, and that in the form παιωνίζω, but Herodotus
must have been equally familiar with the forms in -α-, παιανίζω, παιάν,
and the anecdote shows how ready he would be to equate Paionian with
Paianian. I am dealing here with pure speculation, but so too has been
every one else who has tried to explain away this “extraordinarily silly
business[315].” The explanation just offered is at least in harmony with
the rest of our knowledge about both Peisistratus and Thrace.
Greeks were certainly capable of misunderstanding a _jeu de mot_ based
on a coin type. Mention has been made already of Aristophanes’
invocation of the “owls of Laurium” to nest in his purse[316]. A
Scholiast on the _Knights_ has turned these owls of silver into real
birds. “The owl,” he says, “is the sacred bird of Athena, that haunts
Laurium in Attica[317].”
[Sidenote: The tyrant Histiaeus and the Thracian mines.]
Whatever the truth of these speculations there is no doubt that the
Greeks of the end of the sixth century were fully alive to the political
possibilities of the Thracian mines. Just after the Persian conquest of
Thrace and Paionia Histiaeus of Miletus, one of the Persian king’s Greek
vassals, almost succeeded in securing from the Great King possession of
Myrcinus, a mining centre in the very district from which Peisistratus
had got so much of his wealth[318]. He was in fact granted the gift by
Darius, who however was persuaded by the far-sighted Megabazus to recall
it. What alarms the Persian statesman is the prospect of an able Greek
like Histiaeus establishing himself in a place where there are silver
mines and forests suitable for ship-timber and a large mixed population.
He prophecies that this population will quickly become the employees of
the new owner and do his bidding day and night[319].
The Myrcinus incident is bound up in the narrative of Herodotus with the
story of Pigres and Mantyes and their efforts to become tyrants of the
Paionians[320]. Herodotus says definitely that Histiaeus did not aim at
establishing a tyranny at Myrcinus[321]. But this statement seems to be
simply an inference from the fact that Histiaeus was already tyrant of
his own city of Miletus. Even if it is correct, the protests of
Megabazus and their effect on Darius, who at once removed Histiaeus to a
sort of honourable captivity in Persia, sufficiently show that according
to Herodotus himself Myrcinus would have made Histiaeus in the eyes of
Darius and Megabazus a different and altogether more dangerous sort of
ruler[322].
It was still comparatively recently that Peisistratus had “rooted” his
power at Athens partly on revenues from the river Strymon. When
Histiaeus’ activities near that river so greatly alarmed the Persians,
it is hard to believe that they were not thinking largely of the
Peisistratids. Thus we have a confirmation of the view that the
Peisistratids’ Thracian revenues had been derived from the silver mines,
and the large mixed population that worked them.
[Sidenote: Labour and commerce under the tyranny.]
When once established Peisistratus certainly set himself to secure
control of a large amount of labour by the public works that he
promoted. Kallirrhoe (the Fair Spring), the best source of the Athenian
water supply, was improved by him into Enneakrounos (the Nine
Fountains)[323]. The building that shelters the actual jets is depicted
on a black figure vase[324]. Like Polycrates and the seventh century
tyrants, he was a great builder; the group of Athena slaying a giant,
excavated on the Acropolis in the eighties of the last century[325],
probably belongs to the temple that he built to Athena[326]; his temple
of the Olympian Zeus was not completed till the time of Hadrian. Like
Periander of Corinth, he severely repressed idleness[327]. To
Aristophanes, writing just a century after the fall of the tyranny, the
Athens of Hippias appeared as a city of labourers[328].
Beloch well insists on the acute commercial instinct of Peisistratus in
getting a footing on the coast of the Hellespont by the seizure of
Sigeium[329]. Hippias not only kept his hold on the town to the last,
and eventually retired there, but actively developed his father’s line
of policy by forming a close personal connexion with the tyrants of
Lampsacus[330], and effecting a reconciliation with the Philaids, his
rivals on the European side of the strait[331].
[Sidenote: Financial troubles of the tyranny before its overthrow.]
According to the pseudo-Aristotelian _Oeconomica_, Hippias on one
occasion called in the Attic coinage at a fixed valuation, and then
reissued the same money[332]. Some scholars have tried to explain away
this last statement, and assume a change in the type[333]. But if, as is
natural to suppose, χαρακτήρ in this passage means type, then the Greek
implies that no such change was made. The other actions of Hippias
recorded in the same passage are confiscations of property (front doors,
projecting top stories of houses, etc.), sold again, with no alteration
whatever, to the original owners. Six and Babelon[334] maintain that
χαρακτήρ means denomination, and that Hippias proceeded to give the name
of didrachm to a piece that had been previously a drachm. They quote
with some effect the statement of the Aristotelian _Constitution of
Athens_[335], ἦν ὁ ἀρχαῖος χαρακτὴρ δίδραχμον. Their arguments, though
plausible, are not decisive: but whatever the explanation of these
particular words, the whole passage makes it fairly certain that the
step was an attempt to avert a financial crisis by some desperate
manipulation of the coinage. It points to a serious threat of
approaching insolvency, such as must have been the inevitable result of
the loss of the Thracian mines[336].
[Sidenote: The Alcmaeonid opposition to the house of Peisistratus.]
No aspect of the tyranny at Athens can be adequately examined without
some reference to the remarkable family that from first to last with
only one brief lapse led the opposition to the tyranny[337], and after
its overthrow played the principal part in moulding the destinies of the
democracy. In the earlier part of the sixth century the Alcmaeonidae had
become extremely rich. That is the fact that emerges from the story of
Alcmaeon and the king of Lydia told in Herodotus[338]. They were at the
head of the faction of the shore, and Meyer is probably right when he
says that their “enormous” wealth was due to trade with Lydia[339]. The
fall of Lydia must have meant heavy losses to the family[340]. It is
probably no accident that Peisistratus appears to have “rooted” his
tyranny only after his rivals had suffered this great financial blow.
Nor is it probably a pure coincidence that as the Peisistratids secured
their power by a mixture of commercial enterprise and political
intrigue, so it was by a mixture of political intrigue and commercial
enterprise that they were finally driven out, through the Alcmaeonidae
undertaking the contract for rebuilding the temple at Delphi[341].
This building operation was regarded by the Athenian informant of
Herodotus as an expensive but effective way of purchasing divine
favour[342]. But the Aristotelian _Constitution of Athens_ says
otherwise: “the Alcmaeonidae secured the contract for building the
temple at Delphi, and made a fortune as the result[343].” The two
versions may not be so contradictory as they at first sight appear. A
way of reconciling them is suggested by Philochorus (early third century
B.C.), who makes the Alcmaeonids accept the contract, make their money,
successfully attack the Peisistratids, and then give rich
thank-offerings to the Delphic god[344]. Isocrates and Demosthenes
confirm the statement that Cleisthenes organized the expulsion of the
Peisistratids with money secured from Delphi, but both regard the money
as a loan[345].
But Delphi recalls yet another field of Alcmaeonid activities. According
to the official Delphic records not Solon[346], but Alcmaeon, the
paternal grandfather of the Athenian Cleisthenes, was the Athenian
general in the “sacred” war which early in the sixth century was waged
by the Amphictyons, and particularly Athens and Sicyon, against the
people of the Delphic port of Krisa. The significance of this war is
discussed below in the chapter where Sicyon is dealt with in detail.
Here it is enough to notice that Cleisthenes of Athens was, through his
mother, the grandson of his namesake the tyrant of Sicyon who took so
prominent a part in this “sacred” war. He was probably also his
heir[347]. In the days of Hippias Sicyon seems to have been still under
a tyrant, but not of the house to which Cleisthenes belonged. His name
was Aeschines. Evidence has been adduced by De Gubernatis[348] for
believing that this Aeschines was an ally of Hippias of Athens. As we
shall see below when dealing with Sicyon, his attitude towards Delphi
was a pivotal point in the policy of the Sicyonian Cleisthenes, and in
his later years Sicyon and Delphi became deadly rivals. Athens can
hardly have kept out of the feud. We know little of the course of
events, and the history of recent years shows how idle it would be to
assume that internal revolutions are always reflected in foreign
politics. But we may be sure that both in Athens and Sicyon an
anti-Delphic policy would have its opponents as well as its
supporters[349]. It is quite conceivable that the Athenian Cleisthenes
had once aimed at a union of central Greece with Athens, Sicyon, and
Delphi as the three chief states of the union and Cleisthenes himself as
the chief statesman, controlling the immense treasure of the oracle and
basing on it a tyranny over the two other cities, with Sicyon
controlling the trade of the Peloponnesus and the far West while Athens
did the like for the Northern trade and developed with the Persian
empire those friendly relations which the Alcmaeonidae were still
suspected of favouring at the time of the battle of Marathon. If this is
all speculation it at least recalls the fact that the received accounts
of Cleisthenes are all centred on what he did in Athens in the few years
following the fall of Hippias. That indeed is practically all that is
known about the second founder of the Athenian democracy; but
considering his varied antecedents and his remarkable ancestry it is
well to consider how small a chapter this must have been in what was
probably a long[350] as well as an eventful life. But to return to the
short chapter about which something is known we find that the way
Cleisthenes secured his position against the banished tyrant was by
outbidding him. “He enfranchised many foreigners and slaves and
metics[351].” The Peisistratids had ruled Athens as masters.
Cleisthenes, by the stroke of genius so excellently epitomized by
Herodotus, “took the people into partnership[352].”
It was this memorable partnership that dealt the cause of tyranny at
Athens its final blow. Cimon indeed appears to have tried to make
himself all-powerful in the state by the lavish outlay of his enormous
wealth. But the result was only to cement the partnership between his
Alcmaeonid rival and the people. The army, the navy, and the civil
service became paid professions, or at least paid occupations, and the
state, with Pericles at its head, perhaps the largest and most popular
employer of the free population. Individuals of outstanding wealth were
more and more kept in their political place by having to perform
expensive liturgies. To make a public display of wealth became a
perilous thing; anyone who did so was suspected of aiming at the tyranny
and dealt with by ostracism or other effective means.