Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/381

 rnAl. VII. THE PLEBS ENTER THE CITY. 375 to sustain Peisisti*atus; the rich, seeing this, fled in dis- order." Thus one of the first acts of the popular as- sembly recently established was to enable a man to become master of his country. But it does not appear that the reign of Peisistratus offeied any check to the development of the destinies of Athens. Its principal eflfect, on the contrary, was to guarantee this great social and political reform, which had just taken place, against a reaction. The Eupatrids never regained their lost power. The people showed themselves little desirous of re- covering their liberty. Twice a coalition of the great and the rich overthrew Peisistratus; twice he returned to power, and his sons governed Athens after him. The intervention of the Laceda3monian army was re- quired in Attica to put an end to this family's rule. The ancient aristocracy had for a moment the hope of profiting by the fall of Peisistratus, and regaining its privileges. They not only failed of this, but re- ceived a still ruder blow. Cleisthenes, who belonged to this class, but who was of a family which it had covered with opprobrium, and had seemed to reject for three generations, found the surest means of taking away the little of its power that still remained. Solon> in changing the constitution, had retained the old reli- gious organization of Athenian society. The population remained divided into two or three hundred gentes, into twelve phratries, and four tribes. In each one of these groups there were, as in the preceding period, an hereditary worship, a priest, who was a Eupatrid, and a chiefi who was the same as the priest. All this was a relic of the past, which disappeared slowly. Through this the traditions, the usages, the rules, the distinc- tions that existed in the old social state, were perpetu<