It need not be concluded that the patriotism of the Athenians, in which Solon had once confided, was extinct because they thus submitted to a tyranny. Many of their laws, established at the expense of the nobility, had soon begun to excite resistance and sedition amongst the higher classes; and it was because the lower orders, as yet unable to defend their privileges, as yet, indeed, unable to appreciate them, threw their support on the side of the family which pretended to assume their cause, that Pisistratus and his sons acquired popularity and supreme authority. It is not worth while to repeat the common details concerning the excellence of their rule,168 the labors they encouraged, the festivals they celebrated, or the intellectual pursuits they supported with really generous magnificence; the mere mention will suffice to explain the contented submission of the higher and the lower classes. Solon, we remember, opposed and lamented the tyranny; and it may still appear to be true, that the dominion, thus closely following the legislation, was the reason that the formation of freedom in Athens was long hindered and effectually changed.169

The most important passages in the history of Gre

168 See Thucyd., VI. 54.

169 See Solon's lines in Diod. Sic., Reliq., IX. 21. Walter Savage Landor has hit the truth in one of his Imaginary Conversations. Pisistratus says to Solon,-"I intend to exert the authority that is

conferred on me by the people in the maintenance of your laws, knowing no better." And Solon replies,— "Better there may be, but you will make worse necessary." Works, Vol. II. p. 187.

cian freedom have been sketched in the preceding pages; the most interesting, perhaps, and certainly the most numerous, remain untold. The efforts we have witnessed in the force of Hercules, the adventure of Jason, the science of Esculapius, and the piety of Æacus, were individual; those which established the order of Minos and the union of Theseus were in part only individual, because in part national; while in the unwritten laws of Lycurgus, and above all, in the written laws of Solon, we have the wider efforts that betoken the preparation and the exercise of national liberty. Here, if we may, we are to count the fruits thus sown, thus watered, and thus approaching their maturity.

In the times succeeding to the war with Troy, when the various races of Greece were breaking from their former territories and their old associations, as if to begin afresh upon a new period of existence, many different migrations took place to the islands of the Ægean, and, farther on, to Asia. One, headed by Æolians, and bearing their name, crossed to Lesbos and the neighbouring Asian shore; another, chiefly of Ionians, commanded by some of the sons of the Athenian Codrus, settled in Delos and Samos, as well as in other islands, and upon the coast to the south of the Eolians; and still a third, of Dorians and their fellow-adventurers, took possession of Rhodes, perhaps of Crete, and the neighbouring parts of the continent below the colonies of the Ionians.170

170 The Æolic migration began in A. C. 1068, the Ionic in 988, and the Doric at about the same

period. Clinton, Fast. Hell., Vol. I. pp. 79 (note), 103 et seq., 107 et seq., 123, 140.

But though thus closely situated on a foreign soil, neither race appears to have had any immediate connection with the others; nor is it certain that the different settlements of the same origin were ever united by other institutions besides their common festivals, with the single exception of the Greeks in Lycia, who had, in part, at least, migrated at a much remoter period. The same beauty of climate and of country, the same separation of men and of laws, which marked the mother land, belonged to her various offspring, in their habitations among or beyond the waters. But other influences reached them from the East, towards which they had removed; quickening their intellectual powers, yet leaving them, in the course of years, enfeebled and unfitted for the higher progress to which their countrymen arrived in the homes of their fathers. The names of Homer, a native, in all probability, either of Chios or of Smyrna, both Ionian, and Thales, born and living in Miletus, another Ionian city, are at the beginning and the end of the line of light that marks the era of freedom in the countries to which they belong. After centuries of prosperity, during which the colonies became great cities, parents of other colonies, themselves, while luxury and knowledge outstripped the industry that once and more happily had been before them, the arms of Cræsus, king of Lydia, compelled "the Greeks of Asia," as their first historian writes with bitter terseness, "to the payment of tribute." 171

171 A. C. 560. Herod., I. 27.

Croesus, himself, was, not long after, overcome by Cyrus, the Persian conqueror, to whom the Ionians and the Eolians, as they were still called, sent embassies to obtain the same terms of submission as those which the Lydian had allowed. Cyrus, however, vexed that they, or rather the Ionians, had just before refused his invitation to throw off their allegiance to Croesus, gave a threatening answer 172 to their present proposals, and made a league with the Milesians alone. The others sent to Sparta for assistance, but the Spartans only returned a message to Cyrus, which obtained no favor with the conqueror,173 who, departing, himself, soon after, to his more important conquests, left the reduction of the Ionians to the Median noble Harpagus,' 174 in whom he reposed especial confidence.

Harpagus first advanced against Phocæa, a city inhabited by a commercial and a comparatively laborious people, from whom, as if he knew their bravery to be above the indolence of their countrymen, he demanded the mere recognition of their subjection to his master. They asked a day for deliberation, and Harpagus, though suspecting their designs, withdrew his forces, for that length of time, from before the walls. He was no sooner gone, than the Phocæans, embarking wives and children, sacred treasures, and as many things as they were able to move on board

172 A. C. 546 The answer was couched in a fable, which Herodotus repeats, I. 141. 173 The king said he had no fear of men who met to deceive one

another in their market-places, — referring to their assemblies. Herod., I. 153.

174 Herod., I. 162.

their ships, set sail for Chios. There they determined to make for Corsica; but before departing for ever from the homes in which they could be no longer free, they sailed back to Phocæa, in order, probably, to begin their voyage with the usual rites that were to be celebrated only before their own altars. Landing there, they slew the Persian garrison in possession of the empty city, and then started anew, with solemn oaths that they would none of them return. More than half their number were faithless, and stayed behind; the rest, however, kept on unflinching to their distant haven. The example of the Phocæans was followed by their neighbours of Teos, who all departed to Thrace, where they settled at Abdera, on the shore of their own Ægean. But these were the only Ionians who, as Herodotus says, could not bear with servitude; 175 and though the rest resisted yet a little while, on the continent and in the islands, their fall beneath the Persian dominion was scarcely delayed. Many then joined Harpagus in his march against the states of the South; where the Lycians, after being overcome, near Xanthus, by the much superior numbers of the enemy, retreated into the town, and then into its citadel, to light, with their own hands, the flames which consumed their treasures and their families, while they themselves perished in battle with their conquerors. 176 In such agonies as these, the love of liberty breathed its last amongst the Greeks of Asia Minor.

175 Herod., I. 169.

176 These events happened be

tween A. C. 544 and 539. They are described by Herod., I. 162-177.