Pisistratus

So Pisistratus was sovereign of Athens:

These rose with Pisistratus and took the Acropolis;

Megacles was very angry to be dishonored by Pisistratus;

One might find many other things—indeed, simply all that have to do with some work or action—common to philosophers and to orators, that is, to such orators as are not vulgar mongers nor hirelings looking only to money and to private disputes about contracts or such matters, but are deemed worthy to give counsel and make laws in public—just as, I suppose, Pericles and Thucydides did at Athens, and …

So that one might call Lycurgus the daimon of the Lacedaemonians—for at his bidding the Lacedaemonians even now are scourged and camp in the open and go lightly clad, and endure many other hard things that to other men would seem grievous—and Pisistratus the daimon of the Athenians of old.

Or, scattering them in the country, shall we settle them there, as they say the Athenians of old were distributed throughout all Attica, and again later when Peisistratus was tyrant?

for he exacted a tenth from the produce.

but Pisistratus, pleased by his frankness and his industry, made him free of all taxes.

Greatest of all the things mentioned was that he was democratic and humane in character.

For Pisistratus the tyrant had also purified it before;

For when Pisistratus had died at an advanced age in possession of the tyranny, it was not Hipparchus, as the generality suppose, but Hippias, that was eldest of his sons, and obtained the government.

For the commons, knowing by report that the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons had proved galling at last, and, moreover, that it had not even been put down by themselves and Harmodius, but by the Lacedaemonians, were always afraid, and took every thing suspiciously.

to whom, because as a private man fears are set against him, commands are given and continued, and he is fenced about even with bodyguards, as Pisistratus at Athens;

how many before him, in the very flower of Greece, was Pisistratus!

And by the counsel of the Athenian Amphilytus, Pisistratus too established his tyranny, when the man had pointed out the moment for the attack.

For they were kinsmen of Pisistratus and before he came to power were closest to him of all the citizens, but they refused to share his tyranny;

we see the people at war with other polities which fail to please them, overturning them and slaying those at their head, but continuing to enjoy this polity for not less than a thousand years, remaining loyal to it from the time when they received it down to the age of Solon and the tyranny of Pisistratus, who, after he had placed himself at the head of the people and done much harm to the city a …

I mean my and your fellow-citizen, Pisistratus’s son Hipparchus, of Philaidae, who was the eldest and wisest of Pisistratus’s sons, and who, among the many goodly proofs of wisdom that he showed, first brought the poems of Homer into this country of ours, and compelled the rhapsodes at the Panathenaea to recite them in relay, one man following on another, as they still do now.

And who do you think were governed by Hippias, son of Peisistratus, who governed in this city?

nor do I see why self-restraint should be difficult, when I know that even the tempers of tyrants, swollen by fortune and licence, have repressed the savagery familiar to them.

the tyrant of the Athenians, is recorded—when a drunken guest had said many things against his cruelty, and there was no lack of those willing to lend a hand against him, and one from here, another from there set torches beneath the fire—to have borne it with a calm mind and to have answered those who were provoking him that he was no more angry at the man than if someone with bandaged eyes had run into him.