Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/108

Rh second &quot;Kekropidse,&quot; in ths third &quot;Athenians,&quot; in the fourth &quot;lonians.&quot; The extensive series of rock-dwellings found on the south and south-west of the Acropolis are, by the ingenious and probable conjecture of E. Curtius, connected with the first of these periods. This primitive Pelasgic settlement was the Rock-town (Kpavaai) its inhabitants were Kranaoi, the dwellers in the rocks. The second period was one in which the Acropolis became the seat of a small number of nobles, and of a princely family claiming descent from ths earth-born Cecrops. The cita del becomes the centre of religious and political life ; beneath it dwell Pelasgic bondmen, who work for the Cacropidie as the Cyclopes worked for the Perseiclaa at Argos. The city of the Cecropidse no longer of the Kranaoi becomes the head of the twelve cities among which the Attic land was divided. As the leading families are drawn towards the Cecropid city, rivalries ensue, which are mythically represented by the strife of rival gods on the Acropolis. Ze 1 ^, the Pelasgic god, has priority of possession. But his honours are disputed by Poseidon, the deity of the Thracians settled on the gulf of Salamis, and of their priestly clan, the Eumolpidct?. The third claimant is Athena, the divinity of a race possessing a higher culture, the giver of the olive to the land. The final victory falls to Atheua. But Zeus keeps the place of honour as protector of the whole community, Polieus ; and Athena shares her sanctuary with Poseidon. The mythical Erechtheus, representing at once the ancient Poseidon and the nursling of Athena, is the symbol of the victory and the conciliation. This is the third period of Herodotus ; &quot;Erechtheus having succeeded to power,&quot; the Cecropid^e become Athenians. The fourth and last period is that in which Ionian settlers press forward from their earlier seat on the bay of Marathon, and establish themselves not without opposition on the banks of the Ilissus. The wor ship of the Ionian Apollo takes its place beside that of Zeus and Athena. The Ionic settlement on the Ilissus was in cluded in an enlarged Athens, and the close of the epoch was marked by that union (a-vvouaa) of Attica into a single state which Attic tradition ascribed to the hero king Theseus.

The light soil of Attica had protected it from such wholesale changes of population as had passed over Thessaly, Bœotia, and ths Peloponnesus. In contrast with the occupiers of those lands the Attic population claimed to be indigenous ; and the claim was true in this sense that the basis of tha population was an element which had been there from prehistoric times. On ths other hand the maritime advantages of Attica had been sufficient to attract foreign immigrants. Thus in Attica no one type of life and character prevailed to the sam3 extent as^the Dorian in the Peloponnesus or the ^Eolian in Boeotirt. The Ionian element was tempered by others older than itself. This fact is the key to that equable and harmonious development which so remarkably distinguished the Attic people alike in culture and in politics. The institutions which are found existing in Attica in the 7th century B.C. may be regarded as dating from the age which tradition called that of Theseus, the age, namely, in which the loose canton- system of Attica was knit together into a single state. The Jlasses. inhabitants of Attica form three classes, the Eupatridic or nobles ; the Geomori, free husbandmen ; and the Demiurgi, or handicraftsmen. The government was wholly in the hands of the Eupatridae, who alone were citizens in the proper sense. The Eupatrid order was divided into four tribes, called after the sons of Ion, Geleon, Hoples, jEgicoreus, Argadeus. Each tribe contained three plira- triai or clans, and each clan thirty gene or houses. The members of each clan were united by the worship of an heroic ancestor, and all the clans were bound together by the common worship of Zeus Herkeios and Apollo Patrous.

The transition from monarchy to oligarchy was more gradual at Athens than it seems to have been elsewhere. First, the priestly office of the king was taken away ; and, as the old name basil ens implied religious as well as civil authority, he was henceforth called simply the ruler, archon. But tlv3 office of archon was still held for life, and was hereditary. The second step was to appoint the archon for ten years only. The third and last step was to divide the old regal power among nine archons appointed annually (633 B.C.). The first archon, called Eponymos, because his name marked the date of official documents, had a general supervision of affairs, and in particular re presented the state as the guardian of orphans and minors; the second archon was high priest (basileus); the third was commander-in-chief (polemarch) ; the remaining six were the custodians of the laws (&quot; thesmothetse &quot;). After this reform, two events are the chief landmarks of Attic history before Solon. The first is the legislation of Draco, the second is the revolution of Cylon. Hitherto the Eupatridae had been the depositaries and sole interpreters of an un written law. Draco, himself a Eupatrid, was now com missioned, not to frame a new code, but to write down the laws as they existed in oral tradition. To a later age the laws of Draco became a proverb of severity ; but their severity was that of the rude age from which they had come down, not of the man who was employed to tabulate them. By this code (020 B.C.), and by the establishment of a court of fifty-one judges (e&amp;lt;eVai) in capital cases, the people were so far secured against abuse of the judicial office. But the existence of serious popular discontent a few years later is shown by the attempt of Cylon (G12 B.C.). Stimulated by the example of his father-in-law, Theagenes, the tyrant of Megara, he resolved to seize the supreme power at Athens. Promises of relief and of a new agrarian law gained him adherents among the distressed classes; but when he had succeeded in seizing the Acropolis, he found himself disappointed of popular support and surrounded by the troops of the archons. He escaped. His partisans surrendered, on the promise of the archon Megacles that their lives should be spared; but, when they had left the altars, they were cut down. The &quot; Cylonian crime &quot; was denounced by the people as having brought a pollution upon the city, and the punishment of the whole clan of the Alcmreonida) to which Megacles belonged was de manded as an expiation. The Eupatridae refused to yield, until Solon, one of their order, prevailed on the Alcmaionidrc to stand a trial before three hundred of their peers. They were found guilty of sacrilege, and were banished.

Solon was now to come forward as the umpire of still graver issues. The influence of his ardent and lofty nature on the people is expressed in the legend that his recitation of his elegy, &quot; Salamis,&quot; fired them to strike the blow by which &quot;the fair island&quot; was won back from the Megarians. The part which he had taken in the Alcmoeonid affair was well fitted to make him trusted both by the nobles and by the people. His legislation had a twofold scope. In the first place he aimed at giving immediate relief to a class whose plight was desperate. As there was little money in the land, those in whose hands it was had been able to force up the rate of interest as they pleased. The small farmers (geomori) were being crushed out of existence by a load of debt, mortgaging their farms to their creditors, who, in default of land, could even sell the debtor as a slave. Solon depreciated the value of the silver drachma by 27 per cent., so that a debt of 100 old drachmas could be paid with 73 ; debts to the state were cancelled altogether. In a fine iambic fragment, Solon calls as witness of his work &quot; the greatest of Olympian deities, the black earth, wherefrom I took up of yore the pillars that had been set in many a place,&quot; these (opoi) being the stones 