Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/103

Rh looked back to as the real founder of Athenian democracy. He crosses the page of Greek history in this transaction and disappears.

Under this changed constitution Athens rapidly increased in activity and importance. Though as yet she was inferior as a sea-power to both Ægina or Corinth, we find her appealed to a few years later by the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor as, next to Sparta, the strongest and most authoritative state in Greece. She had not shown as yet many signs of that literary and artistic supremacy which afterwards marked her out above all other states. As yet the art of oratory was undeveloped, and those who desired to persuade the people resorted rather to poetry, as we have seen that Solon did. Her supremacy in the dramatic art, indeed, was foreshadowed by the im-