Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/120

 102 HISTORY OF GREECE. CHAPTER XXX. AX AFFAIRS DURING THE GOVERNMENT OF PEISISTRATUS AND HIS SONS AT ATHENS. WE now arrive at what may be called the second period of Grecian history, beginning with the rule of Peisistratus at Athens and of Croesus in Lydia. It has been already stated that Peisistratus made himself despot of Athens in 560 B.C. : he died in 527 B.C., and was suc- ceeded by his son Hippias, who was deposed and expelled in 510 B.C., thus making an entire space of fifty years between the first exaltation of the father and the final expulsion of the son. These chronological points are settled on good evidence : but the thirty-three years covered by the reign of Peisistratus are inter- rupted by two periods of exile, one of them lasting not less than ten years, the other, five years. And the exact place of the years of exile, being nowhere laid down upon authority, has been differently determined by the conjectures of chronologers. 1 Partly from this half-known chronology, partly from a very scanty collection of facts, the history of the half-century now before us can only be given very imperfectly : nor can we won- der at our ignorance, when we find that even among the Athe- nians themselves, only a century afterwards, statements the most incorrect and contradictory respecting the Peisistratids were in circulation, as Thucydides distinctly, and somewhat reproachfully, acquaints us. More than thirty years had now elapsed since the poinulga- tion of the Solonian constitution, whereby the annual senate of Four Hundred had been created, and the public assembly (pre- ceded in its action as well as aided and regulated by this senate) invested with a power of exacting responsibility from the magis- 1 Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fast. Hellen. vol. ii, Appendix, c. 2, p. 201 ) hai Btated and discussed the different opinions on the chronology of Ins and Ins sons.