Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/170

 154 HISTORY OF GREECE. after the return of Solon from his long absence. We are here a^aiu introduced to the same oligarchical dissensions as are re- O c ported to have prevailed before the Solonian legislation : the pedieis, or opulent proprietors of the plain round Athens, under Lykurgus ; the parali of the south of Attica, under Megakles : and the diakrii, or mountaineers of the eastern cantons, the poor- est of the three classes, under Peisistratus, are in a state of violent intestine dispute. The account of Plutarch represents Solon as returning to Athens during the height of this sedition. He was treated with respect by all parties, but his recommenda- tions were no longer obeyed, and he was disqualified by age from acting with effect in public. He employed his best efforts to mitigate party animosities, and applied himself particularly to restrain the ambition of Peisistratus, whose ulterior projects he quickly detected. The future greatness of Peisistratus is said to have been first portended by a miracle which happened, even before his birth, to his father Hippokrates at the Olympic games. It was realized, partly by his bravery and conduct, which had been displayed in the capture of Nisaea from the Megarians, 1 partly by his pop- 1 Herodot. i, 59. I record this allusion to Nissea and the Megarian war, because I find it distinctly stated in Herodotus : and because it may possibly refer to some other later war between Athens and Megara than that which is mentioned in Plutarch's Life of Solon as having taken place before the Solonian legislation (that is, before 594 B. c.), and therefore nearly forty years before this movement of Peisistratus to acquire the despotism. Pei- slstratus must then have been so young that he could not with any propriety be said to have " captured Nisaea" (Nurtuav -e el.uv) : moreover, the public reputation, which was found useful to the ambition of Peisistratus in 560 B. c., must have rested upon something more recent than his bravery dis- played about 597 B. c. ; just as the celebrity which enabled Napoleon to play the game of successful ambition on the 18th Bramaire (Nov. 1799) was obtained by victories gained within the preceding five years, and could not have been represented by any historian as resting upon victories gained in the Seven Years' war, between 1756-1763. At the same time, my belief is that the words of Herodotus respecting Peisistratus do really refer to the Megarian war mentioned in Plutarch's Life of Solon, and that Herodotus supposed that Megarian war to have been much more near to the despotism of Peisistratus than it really wns. In the conception of Herodotus, and by what (after Nicbuhr) I venture to call
 * mistake in his chronology, the interval between 600-560 B c. shrinks from