Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/183

ATTEMPT TO PUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT. io6 Five Hundred and place the whole government in the hands of three hundred adherents of the chief whose cause he espoused. But now was seen the spirit infused into the people by their new constitution. At the time of the first usurpation of Peisistratus, the Senate of that day had not only not resisted, but even lent them- selves to the scheme. But the new Senate of Kleisthenes resolutely refused to submit to dissolution, and the citizens manifested them- selves in a way at once so hostile and so determined, that Kleom- enes and Isagoras were altogether baffled. They were compelled to retire into the acropolis and stand upon the defensive ; and this symptom of weakness was the signal for a general rising of the Athenians, who besieged the Spartan king on the holy rock. Pie had evidently come without any expectation of finding, or any means of overpowering, resistance ; for at the end of two days his provisions were exhausted, and he was forced to capitu- late. He and his Lacedaemonians, as well as Isagoras, were allowed to retire to Sparta ; but the Athenians of the party cap- tured along with him were imprisoned, condemned, 1 and executed by the people. Kleisthenes, with the seven hundred exiled families, was im- mediately recalled, and his new constitution materially strength- ened by this first success. Yet the prospect of renewed Spartan attack was sufficiently serious to induce him to send envoys to Artaphernes, the Persian satrap at Sardis, soliciting the admis- sion of Athens into the Persian alliance : he probably feared the intrigues of the expelled Hippias in the same quarter. Arta- phernes, having first informed himself who the Athenians were, and where they dwelt, replied that, if they chose to send earth and water to the king of Persia, they might be received as allies, but upon no other condition. Such were the feelings of alarm under which the envoys had quitted Athens, that they went the length of promising this unqualified token of submission. But their countrymen, on their return, disavowed them with scorn and indignation. 2 It was at this time that the first connection began between Athens and the little Boeotian town of Plataea, situated on the 1 Herodot. v, 70-- 72 : compare SchoL ad Aristophan. Lysistr. 274. Herodot. v, 73