Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/217

ASIATIC DORIANS. 201 introduce any constitutional changes, nor provide any new formal securities for public liberty and good government : J which illus- trates the remark previously made, that Solon in doing this was beyond his age, and struck out new lights for his successors, since on the score of personal disinterestedness Pittakus and he arc equally unimpeachable. What was the condition of Mitylene afterwards, we have no authorities to tell us. Pittakus is said, if the chronological computers of a later age can be trusted, to have died in the 52d Olympiad (B. c. 572-568). Both he and Solon are numbered among the Seven Wise Men of Greece, respecting whom something will be said in a future chapter. The various anecdotes current about him are little better than uncertified exemplifications of a spirit of equal and generous civism: but his songs and his elegiac compositions were familiar to literary Gre ks in the age of Plato. CHAPTER XV. ASIATIC DORIANS. THE islands of Rhodes, KOs, Syme, Nisyros, Kasus, and pathus, are represented in the Homeric Catalogue as furnishing troops to the Grecian armament before Troy. Historical Rhodes, and historical Kos, are occupied by Dorians, the former with its three separate cities of Lindus, Jalysus, and Kameirus. Two other Dorian cities, both on the adjacent continent, are joined with these four so as to constitute an amphiktyony on the Triopian promontory or south-western corner of Asia Minor, thus con- stituting an hexapolis, including Halikarnassus, Knidus, Kos, Lindas, Jalysus, and Kameirus. Knidus was situated on the Btrue it literally, as if PitUikus had been accustomed to take bodily exercise at the hand-mill. 1 Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 9. eyevero de Kal Htrra/cdf vo/iuv Aqpioipydf, nW oi TH} i-flar. 9*