Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/65

 ATHENS BEFORE SOLON. 49 nual, but put into commission and distributed among nine persons and these nine archons, annually changed, continue throughout all the historical period, interrupted only by the few intervals of political disturbance and foreign compression. Down to Kleidi- kus and Hippomenes (714 B. c.), the dignity of archon had con- tinued to belong exclusively to the Medontidee or descendants of Medon and Kodrus :' at that period it was thrown open to all the Eupatrids, or order of nobility in the state. Such is the series of names by which we step down from the level of legend to that of history. All our historical knowledge of Athens is confined to the period of the annual archons ; which series of eponymous archons, from Kreon downwards, is perfectly trustworthy.- Above 683 B. c., the Attic antiquaries have provided us with a string of names, which we must take as we find them, without being able either to warrant the whole or to separate the false from the true. There is no reason to doubt the general fact, that Athens, like so many other communities ot Greece, was in its primitive times governed by an hereditary line of kings, and that it passed from that form of government into a commonwealth, first oligarchical, afterwards democratical. We are in no condition to determine the civil classification and political constitution of Attica, even at the period of the archon- ship of Ki'eon, G83 B. c., when authentic Athenian chronology first commences, much less can we pretend to any knowledge of the anterior centuries. Great political changes were intro- duced first by Solon (about 594 B. c.), next by Kleisthenes (509 B. c.), afterwards by Aristeides, Perikles, and Ephialtes, between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars : so that the old ante-Solon^ ian, nay, even the real Solonian, polity was thus put more and more out of date and out of knowledge. But all the informa- tion which we possess respecting that old polity, is derived from authors who lived after all or most of these great changes, and 1 Pausan. i, 3, 2; Suidas, 'liriropeviif ; Diogcninn. Centur. Proverb, iii, 1. 8 See Boeckh on the Parian Marble, in Corp. Inscrip. Groec. part 12, Met. 6, pp. 307, 3iO, 332. From the beginning of the reign of Medon son of Kodrus, to the first annual archon Kreon, the Parian Marble computes 407 years, 887. VOL. iii. 3 4or