Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/36

 20 HISTORY OF oREECE despots by means of official power previously held under an cli< garchy, he names Phalaris, at Agrigentum, and the despots at Miletus and other cities of the Ionic Greeks : of those who raised themselves by becoming demagogues, he specifies Panrctius in the Sicilian town of Leontini, Kypselus at Corinth, and Peisistratus at Athens; 1 of JEsymnetes, or chosen despots, Pittakus of Mity- Icne is the prominent instance. The military and aggressive demagogue, subverting an oligarchy which had degraded and ill- used him, governing as a cruel despot for several years, and at last dethroned and slain, is farther depicted by Dionysius of Hal- ikarnassus, in the history of Aristodemus of the Italian Cuma?.- From the general statement of Thucydides as well as of Aris totle, we learn that the seventh and sixth centuries B. c. were centuries of progress for the Greek cities generally, in wealth, in power, and in population ; and the numerous colonies founded during this period, of which I shall speak in a future chapter, will furnish farther illustration of such progressive tendencies. Now the changes just mentioned in the Grecian governments, imperfectly as we know them, are on the whole decided evidences of advancing citizenship. For the heroic government, with which Grecian communities begin, is the rudest and most infan- tine of all governments ; destitute even of the pretence of sys tern or security, incapable of being in any way foreknown, and depending only upon the accidental variations in the character of the reigning individual, who, in most cases, far from serving as a protection to the poor against the rich and great, was likely to in- dulge his passions in the same unrestrained way as the latter, and with still greater impunity. The despots, who in so many towns succeeded and supplanted this oligarchical government, though they governed on principles usually narrow and selfish, and often oppressively cruel, " taking no thought to use the emphatic words of Thucydides except for their own body and their own family," yet since they were 1 Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 2, 3, 4 ; v, 4, 5. Aristotle refers to one of the songs of Alkaeus as his evidence respecting the elevation of Pittakus : a very suf- ficient proof doubtless, but we may see that he had no other informants, except the poets, about these early times. 'Dionys. Hal. A. R. vii, 2, 12. The reign of Aristacfimus falls atxrat 510 H c.