Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/141

Rh P I S P I S 131 murder, he appeared in court like a private citizen to answer the charge, which, however, the accuser did not venture to press. But before he had time to establish himself firmly on the throne, he was expelled by a coalition of the Plain and Coast parties (perhaps in 555). l His property was confiscated and sold by auction. But after five or six years Megacles, unable to make head against the party of the Plain, proposed to Pisistratus to secure his recall on condition that Pisistratus should marry his daughter Coesyra, Pisistratus agreed, and his return was effected by a stratagem. A tall and beautiful woman, Phya by name, was dressed as the goddess Athene, and drove into Athens on a chariot with Pisistratus at her side, while heralds proclaimed that Athene herself was bringing back Pisistratus. Thus restored, Pisistratus fulfilled his part of the bargain by marrying Co3syra ; but by his former marriage he had already sons approaching manhood (Hippias and Hipparchus), and he treated his young wife so slightingly that Megacles, feeling himself affronted, made peace with his adversaries, and the united parties once more compelled Pisistratus to quit Athens (perhaps in 549). But he did not renounce his designs on the tyranny. The contributions which he received from various cities, especially Thebes, enabled him to hire a body of Argive mercenaries, with which he landed at Marathon in the eleventh year after his expulsion (perhaps in 538). His partisans flocked to him, and he defeated the Athenians at Pallene, and repossessed himself of the tyranny, which he thenceforward held till his death. He now placed his power on a securer basis by keeping a body of mercenaries in his pay, and levying a tax of a tenth or a twentieth on the produce of the soil. A further revenue accrued to him from the Thracian mines, and probably from the silver mines of Laurium, and the harbour and market dues. He now developed his plans for the exten sion of the naval empire of Athens in the ^Egean. The island of Naxos was conquered by him, and handed over to Lygdamis, a native of the island, who had zealously supported the restoration of Pisistratus with men and money. In Naxos Pisistratus deposited the hostages he exacted from those of his enemies who chose to re main at Athens. In Sigeum on the Hellespont, which he conquered from the Mytilenians, he established as tyrant Hegesistratus, his son by an Argive wife, whom he had married in his second exile. The European side of the Hellespont was already in Athenian hands, Miltiades having established an Athenian colony on the Thracian Chersonese during the first tyranny, and with the consent of Pisistratus. Athens thus commanded the straits through which passed the corn trade of the Black Sea. Pisistratus further raised the reputation of Athens by purifying the sacred island of Delos ; all the graves within sight of the temple of Apollo were opened and the dead removed to another part of the island. His rule was as wise and beneficent at home as it was glorious abroad. He encouraged agriculture by lending the poorer peasants cattle and seed, and he paid special attention to the culti vation of the olive. He enacted or enforced a law against idleness, and he required that the state should maintain its disabled soldiers. Under his rule and that of his sons Attica was intersected by high roads, which, converging to the capital, helped to unite the country and thus to abolish 1 Out of the thirty-three years which elapsed between Pisistratus s first usurpation and his death in 527 B.C., we know (from Aristotle, Pol., v. p. 1315 b) that he reigned during seventeen. He was twice de posed and banished, and his second exile lasted between ten and eleven years (Herod., i. 62) ; hence his first must have lasted between five and six. But we cannot fix with certainty the dates of these two exiles. Duncker (with whom Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, ii. p. 254, and Stein on Herod., i. 64, nearly agree) places the first in 555-550, and the second in 549-538 (see his G esch. d. Altcrthums, vi. p. 454 sq.). local feuds and factions. To the tyrants Athens further owed those subterranean channels in the rock which still supply it with drinking water from the hills Pisistratus also adorned Athens with splendid public buildings. The temple of the Pythian Apollo was his work; and he began, but did not finish, the great temple of Zeus, the remaining columns of which still astonish the beholder. Modern authorities 2 further ascribe to him the old Parthenon on the Acropolis, which was afterwards burned by the Persians and replaced by the Parthenon of Pericles. The Lyceum was attributed to him by Theopompus, but to Pericles by the better authority of Philochorus. He caused the Panathenaic festival to be celebrated every fourth year with unusual magnificence. The well-known story that Pisistratus was the first to collect and publish the poems of Homer in their present form rests on the authority of late writers (Cicero being the earliest), and seems to be sufficiently disproved by the silence of all earlier authorities (see HOMER). The state ment of Aulus Gellius that Pisistratus was the, first to establish a public library at Athens is perhaps equally void of foundation. The tyrant seems to have been merciful and amiable to the last. It is not recorded of him that he ever put an enemy to death, and the easy good humour with which he submitted to affronts offered to himself and his family reminds us of Caesar. Solon s description of him appears to have been justified that apart from his ambi tion there was not a better-disposed man at Athens than Pisistratus. He died at an advanced age in 527, and was succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus (the Pisistratidaj), who continued to rule Athens in the same moderate and beneficent spirit. (j. G. FR.) PISTACHIO NUT, see NUT, vol. xvii. p. 665. The pistachio nut is the species named in Gen. xliii. 11 (Heb. E^PS, Ar. l&amp;gt;otin) as forming part of the present which Joseph s brethren took with them from Canaan, and in Egypt it is still often placed along with sweetmeats and the like in presents of courtesy. The nut is used in various ways ; but the simplest plan is to boil it with salt. PISTOIA, or PISTOJA, a well- walled ancient city, 21 miles north-west of Florence, on a slight eminence near the Ombrone, one of the tributaries of the Arno; it now contains about 12,500 inhabitants. The chief manufac ture of the place is iron-working, especially fire-arms. 3 It is on the site of the Roman Pistoria, of which little trace remains. During the Middle Ages Pistoia was at times a dangerous enemy to Florence, and the scene of constant conflicts between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines : it was there that, in the year 1300, the great party struggle took place which resulted in the creation of the Bianchi and Neri factions (see Dante, Infer., xxiv., 1. 121 to end). In the early development of architec ture and sculpture Pistoia played a very important part ; these arts, as they existed in Tuscany before the time of Niccola Pisano, can perhaps be better studied in Pistoia than anywhere else ; nor is the city less rich in the later works produced by the school of sculptors founded by Niccola. In the 14th century Pistoia possessed a number of the most skilful artists in silver work, a wonderful specimen of whose powers exists now in the cathedral, the great silver altar and frontal of St James, originally made for the high altar, but now placed in a chapel on the south side (see METAL WORK, vol. xvi. p. 65, fig. 4). The cathedral is partly of the 12th century, but rebuilt by one of the Pisani, and inside sadly modernized in the worst 2 Curtius and Duncker in their histories of Greece ; see also Wachsiuuth, Die Stadt Athen ini Altcrthum, vol. i. p. 502. 3 The word &quot;pistol&quot; is derived (apparently through pistohsc, a dagger, dagger and pistol being both small arms) from Pistoia, where that weapon was largely manufactured in the Middle Ages.