[81]
Aratus of Sicyon, on the other hand, is justly1
praised. When his city had been kept for fifty
years in the power of its tyrants, he came over
from Argos to Sicyon, secretly entered the city and
took it by surprise; he fell suddenly upon the tyrant
Nicocles, recalled from banishment six hundred
exiles who had been the wealthiest men of the city,
and by his coming made his country free. But he
found great difficulty in the matter of property and
its occupancy; for he considered it most unjust, on
the one hand, that those men should be left in want
whom he had restored and of whose property others
had taken possession; and he thought it hardly fair,
on the other hand, that tenure of fifty years' standing should be disturbed. For in the course of that
long period many of those estates had passed into
innocent hands by right of inheritance, many by
purchase, many by dower. He therefore decided that
it would be wrong either to take the property away
from the present incumbents or to let them keep it
without compensation to its former possessors.
1 Aratus of Sicyon.
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