It is plain from this passage, and from what little else we know about him, that Pisistratus was one of those tyrants whose personal interest coincided with that of the State. He helped, rather than retarded, the development of the people in well-being, in commerce, in art, and in religion.[1] The words in which Thucydides describes his quality, ἀρετή and ξύνεσις, — a right spirit and an intellectual sanity, — would prove this sufficiently even if we had no other evidence at all.
Pisistratus died in 527 B.C. In the hands of his sons the tyranny gradually degenerated into one of the worst type; and on the expulsion of Hippias, in 510 B.C., the natural result followed — faction and anarchy. The oligarchs lifted up their heads again, and for a moment treachery and intrigue threatened to ruin the growing State. But again Athens found a reasonable man to help her. Cleisthenes, who perhaps began with the idea of making himself tyrant, ended by "taking the people into partnership," and working out more fully the reasonable policy of Solon and Pisistratus. Of the man himself we know little or nothing, but we know at least in outline what was his chief contribution to the development of democracy. When the leaders of the French Revolution wished to undermine the influence of the ancient feudal nobility, they did away with the old division of the country into provinces, in which the local magnates and their privileges were
- ↑ The evidence connecting Pisistratus with the popular Dionysus-worship at Athens will be found stated in Mr. Dyer's Gods in Greece, p. 125, note 3.
