During Solon’s absence on a tour of travel a renewal of factions
followed and their struggles ended in the seizure of power by
Pisistratus, in the year 560 B. C. He was one of the class of rulers
called “Tyrants” by the Greeks, who held power in Greek states during
this and the preceding century.
The Greek Tyrants were aristocratic adventurers who took advantage of
their position and of special circumstances to make themselves masters
of the government in their respective states.
It is to Pisistratus, however, that the world owes the preservation in
their present form of the poems of Homer, which he caused to be
collected and edited in a complete written text. He was succeeded by his
sons Hippias and Hipparchus, as joint rulers; but the severity of
Hippias (after the murder of Hipparchus) caused his expulsion by the
people, and the end of the despotism at Athens, 510 B. C.