taken to prevent confession: this figure was placed in the porch of the citadel, where it kept its station for many generations.

Pisistratus and his sons maintained their usurpation during a period of sixty-eight years, including those of Pisistratus's secessions from Athens: had Hippias shared the fate of his brother, their annals would have been unstained by any other act of violence or injustice, except that of reviving a regal authority, which by gradual revolutions had been finally abolished. The measures of Hippias during the time he reigned alone, which scarce exceeded three years, blasted the merits of his predecessors, and embittered the minds of the Athenians against his family to the latest posterity.

Clisthenes and Isagoras, two rich and leading citizens, finding themselves unsafe under his government, left Athens and took shelter amongst the Phocians. They were in fact no less ambitious than himself, turbulent partisans, and though they proved the instruments of extricating their country from his tyranny, they were no more actuated by a pure love of liberty, as a general principle, than Harmodius and his accomplice were, when they assassinated Hipparchus.

The state of Lacedæmon both in point of resource and of its alliances, was at this time in condition to assume a leading share in the affairs of Greece, and it was the first object of Clisthenes and Isagoras to engage the Lacedæmonians in their party for the emancipation of Athens; to carry this point with a people so jealous of the Athenian greatness, required some engine of persuasion more powerful than philanthropy or the dictates of common justice; the Temple of Delphi opened a resource to them, and by a seasonable bribe to the

Pythia, they engaged her to give such responses to her Lacedæmonian clients on all occasions, as should work upon their superstition to accord to their wishes.

The plot succeeded, and an expedition was set on foot for the expulsion of Hippias, sanctified by the authority of Apollo, but it miscarried; the ef fort was repeated, and when things were in that doubtful posture as seemed to menace a second disappointment, chance produced the unexpected success. Hippias and his adherents, foreseeing that the capital would be invested, sent their women and children to a place of better security, and the whole party fell into the hands of the enemy. Such hostages brought on a treaty, and the parent consented to renounce his power for the redemption of his children; Hippias upon this retired from Athens to the court of his kinsman Hegesistratus, in the city of Sigeum, in the Troade on the Asiatic coast.

NUMBER CXXX.

CLISTHENES and Isagoras had now effected a com plete revolution in favour of liberty, but being men of ambitious spirit and of equal pretensions, the state was soon thrown into fresh convulsion by their factions. Clisthenes made his court to the people, Isagoras again had recourse to the Laceda monians.

Lacedæmon, always disposed to control the growing consequence of her neighbours, and sensible of the bad policy of her late measures, had opened her eyes to the folly of expelling Hippias upon the forged responses of the Pythia, of whose corruption and false dealing she had now the proofs: she complied with the requisitions of Isagoras so far as re lated to her interference at large, but in the mode of that interference she by no means met his wishes, for it was immediately resolved to invite Hippias into Sparta, where he was publicly acknowledged and received, and a herald sent to Athens with a haughty message to Clisthenes and his party. The Athenians, intimidated and divided, threw themselves upon new and desperate resources, sending an embassy, or rather petition, to the Persian satrap Artaphernes, brother of the reigning king Darius, and governor of Lydia.

The Persian had not at this time ever heard the name of Athens, and peremptorily demanded hʊmage; the ambassadors yielded to the demand, but the state revoked it at their return with indignation; for the Corinthians had in the mean time taken measures very favourable to their interests, by separating from the Lacedæmonian alliance, and protesting strongly against the proposal of restoring Hippias; their opposition seems to have been founded in principle, having lately experienced a tyranny of the same sort in their own persons, and they carried their point by compelling Hippias to return in despair to Sigeum, from whence he betook himself to Lampsacus, where he began to cabal in the court of antides the tyrant, who was in great favour with the Persian monarch. By this channel Hippias introduced himself to Darius, and with all the inveteracy of an exiled sovereign, not abated

by age or length of absence, became a principal instrument for promoting his expedition into Greece, which concluded in the memorable battle of Marathon, at which he was present, twenty years after his expulsion.

It was fortunate for the liberties of Athens, that when she sent her embassy to Artaphernes, he required as an indispensable condition of his aid that Hippias should be re-established in his tyranny. A more dangerous step could not have been resolved upon than this of inviting the assistance of the Persian, and in this applauded æra of liberty it is curious to remark such an instance of debasement, as this embassy into Lydia: the memory however of past oppression was yet too fresh and poignant to suffer the Athenians to submit to the condition required, and nothing remained but to prepare themselves to face the resentment of this mighty power: with this view they gave a favourable reception to Aristogaras the Milesian, who was canvassing the several states of Greece to send supplies to the Ionians, then on the point of falling under the dominion of Persia: Lacedæmon had refused to listen to him, and peremptorily dismissed him out of their territory: From Athens he obtained the succours he solicited, in twenty gallics well manned and appointed the Athenian forces, after some successful operations, suffered a defeat by sea, and the breach with Persia became incurable. Before the storm broke immediately upon Athens, the Persian armies were employed against the frontier colonies and islands of Greece with uninterrupted success: they defeated the Phoenician fleet and reduced Cyprus; many cities on the Hellespontic coast were added to their empire; in the confines of the Troade several places were taken; impressions were made upon

Ionia and Æolia by the forces of Artamenes and Otanes, and in further process of the war the rich and beautiful city of Miletus was besieged and taken, and the inhabitants of both sexes removed into the Persian territories, and colonised upon new lands: the isles of Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos shared the same fate, and not a city in Ionia, that had been involved in the defection, but was subjećted in its turn in the Hellespont and Propontis every thing on the European shore was reduced, together with the important station of Chalcedon; the like success followed their arms in the Thracian Chersonesus. These operations were succeeded by the next year's campaign under the conduct of Mardonius, the son of a sister of Darius, a young and inexperienced general; and the check, which the power of Persia received this year by the wreck and dispersion of their fleet off the coast of Macedonia, under Mount Athos, in the Singitic bay, afforded the first seasonable respite from the ill fortune of the

var.

At length the formidable torrent, which had so long threatened Athens at a distance, seemed ready to burst upon her, and surely a more unequal contest never occupied the attention of mankind. Mardonius, who had been so unsuccessful in his first campaign, was now superseded, and the vast army of Persia was put under the joint command of Datis a Mede, and the younger Artaphernes, nephew to king Darius and son to the Prefect of Lydia. These commanders pursued a different route by sea from what Mardonius had taken, avoiding the unlucky coast of Macedonia, and falling upon Euboea in the neighbourhood of Attica by a strait course through the Ægean sea. Having reduced the city of Carystus, they laid siege to Eritria the capital