Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/396

 378 m&lOKY OF GREECE. with far inferior ascendency, employed in the same honorable task : the Athenian people often stood in need of such correction, but unfortunately did not always find statesmen, at once friendly and commanding, to administer it. These two attributes, then, belonged to the Athenian democ- racy ; first, their sentiments of every kind were manifested loudly and openly ; next, their sentiments tended to a pitch of great present intensity. Of course, therefore, when they changed, the change of sentiment stood prominent, and forced itself upon every one's notice, being a transition from one strong sentiment past to another strong sentiment present. 1 And it was because such alterations, when they did take place, stood out so palpably to remark, that the Athenian people have drawn upon themselves* the imputation of fickleness : for it is not at all true, I repeat, that changes of sentiment were more frequently produced in them by frivolous or insufficient causes, than changes of senti- ment in other governments. CHAPTER XXXVII. IONIC PHILOSOPHERS.- PYTHAGORAS. -KROTON AND SYBARIS. THE history of the powerful Grecian cities in Italy and Sicily, between the accession of Peisistratus and the battle of Marathon, is for the most part unknown to us. Phalaris, despot of Agri- gentum in Sicily, made for himself an unenviable name during this obscure interval. His reign seems to coincide in time with the earlier part of the rule of Peisistratus (about 560-540 B. c.), 1 Such swing of the mind, from one intense feeling to another, is ahvays deprecated by the Greek moralists, from the earliest to the latest : even I)emokritus, in the fifth century B.C., admonishes against it, Ai e/c Awv 6iaaTT}fj.arui> KiveofjLevai TUV i/n^div ovre evaradeec eialv, OVTS (Democriti Fragmenta, lib. iii, p, 1C8, ed. Mollach ap. Stobaeum, Florileg 140.)