[Picture: Decorative chapter heading]
After all the pains that Solon had taken to guard the freedom of the
Athenians, his system had hardly begun to work before his kinsman
Pisistratus, who was also of the line of Codrus, overthrew it. First
this man pretended to have been nearly murdered, and obtained leave to
have a guard of fifty men, armed with clubs; and with these he made
everyone afraid of him, so that he had all the power, and became tyrant
of Athens. He was once driven out, but he found a fine, tall, handsome
woman, a flower-girl, in one of the villages of Attica, dressed her in
helmet and cuirass, like the goddess Pallas, and came into Athens in a
chariot with her, when she presented him to the people as their ruler.
The common people thought she was their goddess, and Pisistratus had
friends among the rich, so he recovered his power, and he did not, on the
whole, use it badly. He made a kind law, decreeing that a citizen who
had been maimed in battle should be provided for by the State, and he was
the first Greek to found a library, and collect books--namely,
manuscripts upon the sheets of the rind of the Egyptian paper-rush, or
else upon skins. He was also the first person to collect and arrange the
poems of Homer. Everybody seems to have known some part by heart, but
they were in separate songs, and Pisistratus first had them written down
and put in order, after which no Greek was thought an educated man unless
he thoroughly knew the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.
Pisistratus ruled for thirty-three years, and made the Athenians content,
and when he died his sons Hippias and Hipparchus ruled much as he had
done, and gave no cause for complaint. One thing they did was to set up
mile-stones all over the roads of Attica, each with a bust of Mercury on
the top, and a wise proverb carved below the number of the miles. But
they grew proud and insolent, and one day a damsel of high family was
rudely sent away from a solemn religious procession, because Hipparchus
had a quarrel with her brother Harmodius. This only made Harmodius vow
vengeance, and, together with his friend Aristogeiton, he made a plot
with other youths for surrounding the two brothers at a great festival,
when everyone carried myrtle-boughs, as well as their swords and shields.
The conspirators had daggers hidden in the myrtle, and succeeded in
killing Hipparchus, but Harmodius was killed on the spot, and
Aristogeiton was taken and tortured to make him reveal his other
accomplices, and so was a girl named Leoena, who was known to have been
in their secrets; but she bore all the pain without a word, and when it
was over she was found to have bitten off her tongue, that she might not
betray her friends. Hippias kept up his rule for a few years longer, but
he found all going against him, and that the people were bent on having
Solon's system back; so, fearing for his life, he sent away his wife and
children, and soon followed them to Asia, B.C. 510. This--which is
called the Expulsion of the Pisistratids--was viewed by the Athenians as
the beginning of their freedom. They paid yearly honours to the memory
of the murderers Harmodius and Aristogeiton; and as Leoena means a
lioness, they honoured that brave woman's constancy with the statue of a
lioness without a tongue.
Hippias wandered about for some time, and ended by going to the court of
the king of Persia. Cyrus was now dead, after having established a great
empire, which spread from the Persian Gulf to the shore of the
Mediterranean, and had Babylon for one of its capitals. When Croesus was
conquered, almost all the Greek colonies along the coast of Asia Minor
likewise fell to the "Great King," as his subjects called him. The
Persians adored the sun and fire as emblems of the great God, and thought
the king himself had something of divinity in his person, and therefore,
like most Eastern kings, he had entire power over his people for life or
death; they were all his slaves, and the only thing he could not do was
to change his own decrees.
[Picture: Shores of the Persian Gulf]
After the Asian coast, the isles of the AEgean stood next in the way of
the Persian. In the little isle of Samos lived a king called Polycrates,
who had always been wealthy and prosperous. His friend Amasis, king of
Egypt, told him that the gods were always jealous of the fortunate, and
that, if he wished to avert some terrible disaster, he had better give up
something very precious. Upon this Polycrates took off his beautiful
signet ring and threw it into the sea; but a few days later a large fish
was brought as a present to the king, and when it was cut up the ring was
found in its stomach, and restored to Polycrates. Upon this Amasis
renounced his friendship, declaring that, as the gods threw back his
offering, something dreadful was before him. The foreboding came sadly
true, for the Persian satrap, or governor, of Sardis, being envious of
Polycrates, declared that the Ionian was under the Great King's
displeasure, and invited him to Sardis to clear himself. Polycrates set
off, but was seized as soon as he landed in Asia, and hung upon a cross.
Amasis himself died just as the Persians were coming to attack Egypt,
which Cyrus' son Cambyses entirely conquered, and added to the Persian
empire; but Cambyses shortly after lost his senses and died, and there
was an unsettled time before a very able and spirited king named Darius
obtained the crown, and married Cyrus' daughter Atossa. Among the
prisoners made at Samos there was a physician named Democedes, who was
taken to Susa, Darius' capital. He longed to get home, and tried not to
show how good a doctor he was; but the king one day hurt his foot, and,
when all the Persian doctors failed to cure him, he sent for Democedes,
who still pretended to be no wiser, until torture was threatened, and he
was forced to try his skill. Darius recovered, made him great gifts, and
sent him to attend his wives; but Democedes still pined for home, and
managed to persuade Atossa to beg the king to give her Spartan and
Athenian slaves, and to tell him some great undertaking was expected from
him. The doctor's hope in this was that he should be sent as a spy to
Greece, before the war, and should make his escape; but it was a bad way
of showing love to his country. Hippias was at Susa too, trying to stir
up Darius to attack Athens, and restore him as a tributary king; and
there was also Histiaeus, a Greek, who had been tyrant of Miletus, and
who longed to get home. All the Ionian Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor
hated the Persian rule, and Histiaeus hoped that if they revolted he
should be wanted there, so he sent a letter to his friend Aristagoras, at
Miletus, in a most curious way. He had the head of a trusty slave
shaved, then, with a red-hot pin, wrote his advice to rise against the
Persians, and, when the hair was grown again, sent the man as a present
to Aristagoras, with orders to tell him to shave his head.
Aristagoras read the letter, and went to Sparta to try to get the help of
the kings in attacking Persia. He took with him a brass plate, engraven
with a map of the world, according to the notions of the time, where it
looked quite easy to march to Susa, and win the great Eastern empire. At
first Cleomenes, the most spirited of the kings, was inclined to listen,
but when he found that this easy march would take three months he changed
his mind, and thought it beyond Spartan powers. Aristagoras went
secretly to his house, and tried to bribe him, at least, to help the
Ionians in their rising; but while higher and higher offers were being
made, Gorgo, the little daughter of Cleomenes, only eight years old, saw
by their looks that something was wrong, and cried out, "Go away, father;
this stranger will do you harm." Cleomenes took it as the voice of an
oracle, and left the stranger to himself.
He then went to Athens, and the Athenians, being Ionians themselves,
listened more willingly, and promised to aid their brethren in freeing
themselves. Together, the Athenians and a large body of Ephesians,
Milesians, and other Ionians, attacked Sardis. The Persian satrap
Artaphernes threw himself into the citadel; but the town, which was built
chiefly of wicker-work, that the houses might not be easily thrown down
by earthquakes, caught fire, and was totally burnt. The Athenians could
not stay in the flaming streets, and had to give back, and the whole
Persian force of the province came up and drove them out. Darius was
furious when he heard of the burning of Sardis, and, for fear he should
forget his revenge, ordered that a slave should mention the name of
Athens every day to him as he sat down to dinner. Histiaeus, however,
succeeded in his plan, for Darius believed him when he said the uproar
could only have broken out in his absence, and let him go home to try to
put it down.
He was not very well received by Artaphernes, who was sure he was at the
bottom of the revolt. "Aristagoras put on the shoe," he said, "but it
was of your stitching."
Aristagoras had been killed, and Histiaeus, fleeing to the Ionians,
remained with them till they were entirely beaten, and he surrendered to
the Persians, by whom he was crucified, while the Ionians were entirely
crushed, and saw their fairest children carried off to be slaves in the
palace at Susa. Darius had longed after Greek slaves ever since he had
seen a fine handsome girl walking along, upright, with a pitcher of water
on her head, the bridle of a horse she was leading over her arm, and her
hands busy with a distaff. He did not know that such grand people are
never found in enslaved, oppressed countries, like his own, and he wanted
to have them all under his power, so he began to raise his forces from
all parts of his empire, for the conquest of what seemed to him the
insolent little cities of Greece, and Hippias, now an old man, undertook
to show him the way to Athens, and to betray his country. The battle was
between the East and West--between a despot ruling mere slaves, and free,
thoughtful cities, full of evil indeed, and making many mistakes, but
brave and resolute, and really feeling for their hearths and homes.
[Picture: Armour]