erty those institutions were
intended to confer. If the disorders of the republic led to the
ascendency of Pisistratus, so the ascendency of Pisistratus paved the
way for the renewal of the republic. As Cromwell was the
representative of the very sentiments he appeared to subvert--as
Napoleon in his own person incorporated the principles of the
revolution of France, so the tyranny of Pisistratus concentrated and
imbodied the elements of that democracy he rather wielded than
overthrew.

X. At home, time and tranquillity cemented the new laws; poetry set
before the emulation of the Athenians its noblest monument in the
epics of Homer; and tragedy put forth its first unmellowed fruits in
the rude recitations of Thespis (B. C. 535). [234] Pisistratus sought
also to counterbalance the growing passion for commerce by peculiar
attention to agriculture, in which it is not unlikely that he was
considerably influenced by early prepossessions, for his party had
been the mountaineers attached to rural pursuits, and his adversaries
the coastmen engaged in traffic. As a politician of great sagacity,
he might also have been aware, that a people accustomed to
agricultural employments are ever less inclined to democratic
institutions than one addicted to commerce and manufactures; and if he
were the author of a law, which at all events he more rigidly
enforced, requiring every citizen to give an account of his mode of
livelihood, and affixing punishments to idleness, he could not have
taken wiser precautions against such seditions as are begot by poverty
upon indolence, or under a juster plea have established the
superintendence of a concealed police. We learn from Aristotle that
his policy consisted much in subjecting and humbling the pediaei, or
wealthy nobles of the lowlands. But his very affection to agriculture
must have tended to strengthen an aristocracy, and his humility to the
Areopagus was a proof of his desire to conciliate the least democratic
of the Athenian courts. He probably, therefore, acted only against
such individual chiefs as had incurred his resentment, or as menaced
his power; nor can we perceive in his measures the systematic and
deliberate policy, common with other Greek tyrants, to break up an
aristocracy and create a middle class.

XI. Abroad, the ambition of Pisistratus, though not extensive, was
successful. There was a town on the Hellespont called Sigeum, which
had long been a subject of contes