Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/48

 36 EARLY PEOPLES AND EMPIRES the commons, and Athens underwent the usual fate. A clever politician named Pisistratus succeeded in making himself despot or Tyrant. He was a ruler of great ability, and Athens prospered under his sway. He encouraged art and literature, and it was in his time that the two great Homeric Epics were edited by scholars into the form which they have retained ever since. All educated Greeks knew their Homer almost as Britons know their Bible; but before the time of Pisistratus there was, so to speak, no authorised version. But, however prosperous Athens might be, political liberty and government by a despot cannot exist together j and the Athenian passion for political liberty was strong. When Pisistratus died, his son Hippias succeeded in retaining the despotism, with the support of his brother The Tyrants Hipparchus. Hipparchus was assassinated, on expelled from account of a purely personal quarrel, by Harmodius Athens. an( j Aristogiton, who were subsequently honoured very undeservedly as the liberators of their country. It was not, in fact, till some years later that the Athenians succeeded in expelling Hippias in 510 B.C. The constitution of Solon was restored in a modified form by Cleisthenes. Hippias himself took refuge in Asia Minor, where he intrigued to obtain help in recovering the despotism. Six years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, three other kings having ascended the throne during this interval, Nabonidus 3. Rise of became King of Babylon. Nabonidus was an Persia. enthusiastic antiquary and scholar, to whom historians are considerably indebted ; but he left the care of his empire to his son Belshazzar, who is spoken of in the Bible as if he had been actually king. About the same time Astyages ascended the Median throne, and Croesus was King of Lydia. Now there appeared in Persia a great captain named Cyrus, who claimed, probably without justification, that he belonged to the royal family of Media. Romantic legends cling about the story of his birth and up- bringing, and all tradition presents him as of an heroic character, the ideal of a chivalrous warrior. Certainly he must have been a man of great qualities. At any rate, Cyrus, with the help