Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/121

 DESPOTISM OF PEISISTRATUS. 103 trates after their year of office. The seeds of the subsequent democracy had thus been sown, and no doubt the administration of the archons had been practically softened by it ; but nothing in the nature of a democratical sentiment had yet been created. A hundred years hence, we shall find that sentiment unanimous and potent among the enterprising masses of Athens and Peirae- eus, and shall be called upon to listen to loud complaints of the difficulty of dealing with " that angry, waspish, intractable little old man, Demus of Pnyx," so Aristophanes 1 calls the Athe- nian people to their faces, with a freedom which shows that lie at least counted on their good temper. But between 5GO-510 B.C. the people are as passive in respect to political rights and securities as the most strenuous enemy of democracy could desire, and the government is transferred from hand to hand by bargains and cross-changes between two or three powerful men,- at the head of partisans who echo their voices, espouse their personal quarrels, and draw the sword at their command. It was this ancient constitution Athens as it stood before the Athenian democracy which the Macedonian Antipater pro- fessed to restore in 322 B.C., when he caused the majority of the poorer citizens to be excluded altogether from the political fran- chise. 3 By the stratagem recounted in a former chapter, 4 Peisistratua Vcof opyrjv, Kva/tOTpu;;, a/cpu^o/of Tlvvn'iTTtc, 6i>cKO?iov yepovrlov. Aristoph. Equit. 41. 1 need hardly mention that the Pnyx was the place in Avhich the Athe nian public assemblies were held. 2 Plutarch (De Herodot. Malign, c. 15, p. 858) is angry with Herodotus for imparting so petty and personal a character to the dissensions between the Alkmaeonids and Peisistratus ; his severe remarks in that treatise, how- ever, tend almost always to strengthen rather than to weaken the credibility of the historian. 3 Plutarch, Phokion, c. 27, inrsKplvaro tyillav laea&at Tolf 'A^rivaioif Kal $v[tfiaxiav, EKiSoiJfft fisv rot)f r:spl AiipoadEVT] KO! '"f~epid7]v, Tro?iiTVO[ivot( <5 T7jv -iruTptav inrb Tifi.rjiJ.aTog ro/U-a'ai>, dezaftevoif 6e Qpovpav elf TT)V 'M.ovvv^lav, ETI 6e xprifiaTo. TOV TTOAS/IOV KO.I ^rjiilav TrpoaeKTtaacnv. Com- pare Diodor. xviii, 18. Twelve thousand of the poorer citizens were disfranchised by this changp (Plutarch, Phokion, c. 28).
 * See lae preceding volume, ch. xi, p. 155.