Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:00:28.174Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Followers of Peisistratus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

James Holladay
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The names and natures of the three parties which struggled for power in early-sixth-century Athens have puzzled scholars both ancient and modern. The paucity and murkiness of the evidence have made progress difficult and the decisive contribution to the solution of the problem most probably lies in the hands of the archaeologists and the epigraphists. In the meantime some scholars have retreated into agnosticism. ‘The reasons for Athens' rejection of the Solonian solution are, except in broadest outline, lost.’ Scepticism is clearly an important tool in the handling of inadequate evidence, but the present article is written in the belief that some clarification of the problem is still possible with the existing evidence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , April 1977 , pp. 40 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1. Forrest, W. G., The Emergence of Greek Democracy (London, 1966), p. 180.Google Scholar

2. The main ancient sources are Hdt. 1.59.3, Ath. Pol. 13.4, and Plut. Solon 13.1, 29.1, 30.1. Herodotus calls the parties οἱ ⋯κ το πεδ⋯ου π⋯ραλοι, and ὑπερ⋯κριοι, and Aristotle πεδιακο⋯, παρ⋯λιοι, and δι⋯κριοι. Plutarch (Solon 13.1) talks as if these parties had existed before Solon's reforms, in fact after the conspiracy of Cylon, but Herodotus attributes the formation of the ὑπερ⋯κριοι to Peisistratus himself after his military success at Nisaea and in the period immediately preceding his first tyranny.

3. A full account of the use of the terms can be found in Hopper, R. J., ABSA 56 (1961), 189 ff.Google Scholar

4. Op. cit. 195 n. 73.

5. Ath. Pol. 13.3 specifically says that it was the cancellation of debts which had caused this group to become poor (γεγ⋯νεναι π⋯νησιν). So it is not possible to say that although the cancellation had helped them they were poor anyway, as Hopper requires. Aristotle's source here seems to express the view of the creditor class complaining that they have been robbed.

6. The Origin of Tyranny (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 38 ff.Google Scholar

7. Kraay, C., The Composition of Greek Silver Coins (Oxford, 1952), p. 33.Google Scholar

8. JHS 77 (1957), 238 ff.Google Scholar, G & R 6 (1959), 46 ff.Google Scholar, and The Growth of the Athenian Economy (London, 1964), pp. 25–7.Google Scholar

9. Hdt. 1.144, Thuc. 1.93.3, Plut. Them. 4.1 –3.

10. Plut. Solon 24.1.

11. A Peisistratus is known from literary sources as archon in 669/8 and the name Miltiades is assigned to 664/3 and 659/8. A recently discovered fragment of the archonlist shows Cypselus, a relative of the family of Cimon and Miltiades, as archon in 597/6; cf Bradeen, D. W., Hesperia 32 (1963), 187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Pace French, JHS 77 (1957), 238.Google Scholar There is no evidence that Megara was an important seapower at this date or that Athens' war with Mytilene was a naval one. Page, D. L., Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford, 1955), 185Google Scholar n. 2 finds the Sigeium war a very puzzling affair. The Salamis campaign is easy to comprehend since the island straddles the frontier and is so close to the mainland at various points that it could be invaded in fishing-boats. On commerce see p. 48.

13. Sealey, R., Historia 9 (1960), 155 ff.Google Scholar, and Hopper, , op. cit.Google Scholar, take this view, though the latter brings Megara into the issue. Andrewes, A., The Greeks (London, 1967), p. 203Google Scholar says: ‘The chief remaining problem was aristocratic faction on a regional basis.’

14. Cf. Lewis, D. M., Historia 12 (1963), 22–40.Google Scholar

15. McFarlane, K. B., Proc. Brit. Acad. 50 (1964), 98Google Scholar observes of the English Wars of the Roses: ‘nor can the belligerents be given any definite geographical limits …. The sides had no frontiers to defend, no large home-grounds where they could only be challenged in force.’

16. Gomme, A. W.The Population of Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries b.c. (Oxford, 1933), p. 37.Google Scholar Plut. Solon 22Google Scholar talks of a rising city population, but Ath. Pol. 16.5Google Scholar, cited by French, The Growth of the Athenian Economy, p. 182Google Scholar n. 19, is not relevant as it refers to visits to the city, not immigration.

17. Hdt. 1.62.1.

18. Forrest, , op. cit., pp. 177–8.Google Scholar

19. Ath Pol. 12.1, 12.3.Google Scholar

20. Ath. Pol. 6.4, 11.2Google Scholar, and, especially, Solon's own poem in 12.3. The creation by Solon of a probouleutic council of 400 is linked by Plut. Solon 19.1 with the bold mood of the people–no doubt owing to his fear that a majority of the assembly might vote for the division of the land if it had the right of completely free discussion. See n. 34.

21. Arist.Pol. 1266b 16.

22. Forrest, , op. cit., p. 177.Google ScholarHignett, C., A History of the Athenian Constitution (Oxford, 1952), pp. 317Google Scholar ff., used this time gap as one of his arguments for downdating Solon's reforms (as opposed to his archonship) to c. 570. But it seems possible to explain the gap, and the other arguments for lowering the date do not seem irresistible. See Appendix.

23. Cf. n. 16 and, for the rise in the number of potters in the Cerameicus during the sixth century, p. 48.

24. Cf. Davies, J. K., Athenian Propertied Families (Oxford, 1971), pp. 48 and 212–13.Google Scholar

25. Webster, T. B. L., Potter and Patron in Classical Athens (London, 1972), p. 2.Google Scholar On the small scale of the early pottery industry, cf. Cook, R. M., Jahrb. der Deutsch. Arch. Inst. (1959), 119.Google Scholar

26. 6.108.5 where she helps Athens against Thebes, 5.75.1 and 5.92 where she helps Athens against Sparta, and 6.89.1 where she helps Athens against Aegina. When Athens became a great maritime power, Corinth became her enemy and the friend of Aegina.

27. It takes about ten years from planting. In Roman times this was the period of tax rebate granted to farmers who planted new olives: cf. White, K. D., Roman Farming (London, 1970), pp. 391 and 519 n. 19.Google Scholar

28. Forrest, , op. cit., pp. 177–8.Google Scholar ‘Common sense would suggest some sort of link’ (viz. between economic expansion and the rise of Peisistratus). Also ‘the successful must be stronger than the failures and it is to them we look for effective discontent.’ But the problem is why the successful and stronger were so ineffective in keeping Peisistratus in power.

29. Ath. Pol. 16.2, 4–6, Dover, K. J. in Gomme, , Hist. Comm. iv (Oxford, 1970), 329–30Google Scholar, suggests that the use of the word δεκ⋯τη by Ath. Pol. does not necessarily conflict with Thucydides' statement that it was one-twentieth if the word is there used in the general sense of ‘tithe’.

30. It is not easy to believe that Peisistratus did confiscate and redistribute the lands of the rich on any large scale. There is not a shred of evidence for him doing so. and it is difficult to see how all trace of it should have disappeared. Nor is it easy to reconcile such an action with the willingness of aristocrats to cooperate with the regime until the murder of Hipparchus changed their position.

31. Andrewes, A., The Greek Tyrants (London, 1956), p. 104Google Scholar: ‘Peisistratus' two failures to establish a tyranny and his eventual triumph organised from abroad do not look like the career of a social revolutionary leader.’

32. See n. 34.

33. Ath. Pol. 7.3–4.Google Scholar

34. The presence of the thetes in an assembly which is now to have effective power (as shown by the voting of the bodyguard to Peisistratus) needed to be offset by the control of the agenda by some more responsible group. This is the Council of 400, a second anchor of the ship of state (along with the Areopagus) alluded to in Plut. Solon 19.1–2. The idea of a probouleutic council is not too democratic, as feared by Hignett, , op. cit., p. 92Google Scholar, but quite the reverse, as have been most probouleutic bodies in political history. Its failure to stop the vote of the bodyguard to Peisistratus was due to his direct approach to the assembly. As he was aiming at a coup d'état, he did not put his self-inflicted wound on the agenda. We should not infer from this the non-existence of the Council, any more than the non-existence of the Areopagus, on which was laid the duty of guarding the laws.

35. French, , JHS 80 (1960), 191.Google Scholar

36. Ath. Pol. 15.4.Google Scholar

37. 6.56.2, 58.2.

38. Ibid. 18.4.

39. Gomme, Hist. Comm. iv. 336.Google Scholar

40. When Thucydides (1.17) observes that the early Greek tyrants achieved little of importance in war and sought to preserve their power by cautious policy, he need not be taken to mean that they were frightened of revolt from within, but of military failures. Against this Arist. Pol. 1313b10 describes tyrants as war mongers but they would, of course, need to be successful.

41. Cf. Thuc. 6.54.5.

42. This argument has been recently revived by some scholars, including Markianos, S. S., Historia 23 (1974), 1 ff.Google Scholar