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κατεχόμενον καὶ δ. These words have been attacked as unfair; but it must be remembered that they are a description of Athens, as Croesus would hear of it circ. 550 B.C.; as such they are too compressed, but in the main accurate; Athens was ‘held down’ by P., and the fact that it was ‘torn asunder’ gave him his opportunity.
Chilon was ephor at Sparta about 560; Sosicrates said of him πρῶτος εἰσηγήσατο ἐφόρους τοῖς βασιλεῦσι παραζευγνύναι (Diog. Laert. i. 68); this is taken by some (e. g. Niese in P. W. s. v. Chilon) to mean that he established the ephorate; but more probably it only implies that he greatly increased its power. A fragment of a second century author (Rylands Papyri, No. 18) says of him with King Anaxandridas that τυραννίδας κατέλυσαν; it goes on to mention Hippias of Athens and Aeschines of Sicyon, apparently as put down by these two (cf. Plut. de Mal. H. 21, and App. XVI, § 10); but the fragment breaks off suddenly. This tradition may well be true in the main, though the chronology is inaccurate. For his connexion with the Lycurgean discipline cf. c. 65 n. He was reckoned as one of the Seven Sages (cf. 27. 2 n.), and Plut. (Mor. 35 F) says a collection of his pithy sayings was extant. Cf. vii. 235. 2 for his practical wisdom.
τῷ λόγῳ, ‘making himself the champion of the cause of’; λόγος is partly the ‘account’ to be taken of his partisans, partly what could be urged in their favour. Stein thinks there is an implied opposition to ἔργῳ, ‘nominally’ he was for others, really for himself; but this is forced. Myres (A. and C. p. 165) says: ‘the phrase suggests that it was not a district, but a region that was in question—a region above the corn level.’ He adds that any one from the Acropolis in spring can ‘recognize the abrupt change from emerald green to purple and brown, which tells where πεδίον and cornland end, and the goats of the ὑπεράκρια begin’. The rise of these factions was the natural result of the Solonian changes, which had broken down the traditional rule of the Eupatridae. The local divisions, on which the factions were largely based, are reflected in the myth of the four sons of Pandion (Strabo, 392); but no doubt the main struggle was between the old landed aristocracy and the rising mercantile class. The παραλία is the southern half of Attica, the triangle terminating in Sunium, the πεδίον is the south-west of Attica, the basin of the Cephissus and the Thriasian plain. Cf. Thuc. ii. 55. 1 “οἱ Πελοποννήσιοι, ἐπειδὴ ἔτεμον τὸ πεδίον, παρῆλθον ἐς τὴν Πάραλον γῆν καλουμένην μέχρι Λαυρείου”, where the Athenians have their silver mines’. Ure (Origin of the Tyrannis, J. H. S. xxvi. 136) suggests that the Διάκριοι are not local, but are ‘the mining population of Attica’ supporting ‘the great mine-owner, Pisistratus’. But, not to speak of the evidence of Thucydides (u. s.), there is no reason to think that any large section of the Athenian population was employed in the mines at this time, even if free men ever worked there, which is very doubtful; Solon, fr. 13. 49-50, quoted by Ure, refers to manufactures not to mines. H. differs from A. P. 13. 4 in making the third faction later than the rest (it certainly would be organized later); he also gives its name differently, ὑπεράκριοι, not διάκριοι (cf. Plut. Sol. 29 for the latter form). For Megacles cf. the story of Agariste's wooing, vi 126 seq.; for the Alcmaeonid family cf. 60. 2 n.; his great-niece was the mother of Pericles, whose second son was called ‘Paralus’. Lycurgus was an Eteobutad; to this aristocratic faction belonged the Philaidae; cf. vi. 35 seq. for the story of their chief, Miltiades. The faction of Pisistratus was in east and north-east Attica; his own deme, Φιλαΐδαι (Plut. Sol. 10), lay near Brauron some twenty miles south of Marathon; cf. c. 62 for his strength in this region. Near Brauron was discovered the στήλη of an Aristion, who may well be (Bury, pp. 192-3) the man of that name who proposed (A. P. 14. 1) the tyrant's bodyguard.
δῆθεν shows the statement is false; cf. 73. 5. The πολυθρύλητον αἴτημα (Plat. Rep. 566 B) for a bodyguard was the first step to tyranny. στρατηγίῃ. H. probably uses this word in a non-technical sense, but even if he meant it to be technical, it would prove nothing; he is often anachronistic in his constitutional details; cf. vi. 109 n. There is no evidence for the existence of the στρατηγοί before Cleisthenes, except in the more than suspicious ‘Constitution of Draco’ (A. P. 4); if they existed, they were mere subordinates of the Polemarch. For the tyrant owing his rise to distinction in war cf. Ar. Pol. v. 5. 6-8 (1305 A) with Newman's note. For the chronology of the wars with Megara cf. Busolt, ii. 217 seq. Some (e. g. Sayce) have supposed that H. makes here a mistake similar to that as to Croesus and Solon (cf. c. 29 nn.), introducing Pisistratus into a war that really belongs to the previous generation. Others (e. g. Beloch, i. 327) make Pisistratus the conqueror of Salamis, not Solon; but apart from Solon's own poems (frags. 2 and 3) all tradition gives the conquest to the older man. It is more natural therefore to suppose that the Megarian war, victoriously ended by Solon (Plut. Sol. 10), had been renewed during the confusion at Athens that followed his legislation (cf. A. P. 13), or perhaps even before his legislation, as Plutarch (c. 12) definitely states, and that the struggle with Megara was finally ended by Pisistratus; Justin, ii. 8, describes the capture of Nisaea by him, though without naming the town. The inscription discovered in 1884 may perhaps refer to the settlement of Salamis after the conquest by Pisistratus; but others date it at the end of the sixth century (cf. Hicks, pp. 6-7; Busolt, ii. 444 n. 2).
These ‘clubmen’ (κορυνηφόροι), fifty in number (Plut. Sol. 30), were not called by the usual name of a tyrant's guard, δορυφόροι.
ἀκρόπολιν. Cf. Mayor, Juv. x. 307 n., for this first step to tyranny Pisistratus was unlike the usual tyrant (iii. 80. 5), cf. App. XVI. 5. H. forms a just estimate of the home, but not of the foreign (App. XVI. 8) policy of Pisistratus. The τιμαί are the members of the two Councils and the archons; the Pisistratidae αἰεί τινα ἐπεμέλοντο σφῶν αὐτῶν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς εἶναι (Thuc. vi. 54. 6).
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