Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/96

68 they might be forced to sell their families into slavery and eventually to become slaves themselves. The debts which Solon wished to wipe out were these land mortgages. His Seisachtheia, or "shaking off of burdens," either entirely removed them or so lightened them by deducting the interest already paid that they quickly disappeared; and, at any rate, the power of the creditor to enslave his debtor was abolished.

These various measures seem to have been established from about B.C. 594 onward, and he made the mistake common to reformers of thinking that he had arrived at finality. Causing magistrates and dicasts to take an oath not to introduce changes for ten years, he went upon his travels to avoid appeals for explanations or new measures. But in fact the contest between the classes was not ended, and Pisistratus, son of Hippocrates—a relation of Solon—about twenty years later took advantage of these quarrels to establish himself as tyrant. He began with the common device of asking for a bodyguard to protect him from the enemies of himself and the people. He was twice expelled—once for five years (B.C. 553-549), and again for ten years (B.C. 547-537). But with these intervals he and his son maintained their government from B.C. 560 to B.C. 510. It is true that he showed himself a reasonable and just ruler, allowing the laws and customs of the city to remain in force, doing much to adorn it, to foster literature, and to strengthen the State. Still it was "tyranny," which the nobles hated worse than a democracy; and though after his second restoration