Hello, Χαίρετε, and welcome to Epic Greek History Episode 22, “Pisistratus and Sons: The Age of Tyranny in Athens.” I’m Scott Emmons.

When we last left Athens, Solon had put his reforms in place and then made himself scarce. Rather than hang around and face the pressure he’d get from both aristocrats and poor Athenians, he went abroad for ten years to look after his trade concerns — and, as Herodotus tells us, to see the world. Unfortunately, things at home didn’t turn out the way he’d hoped. I don’t want to downplay Solon’s accomplishments. He abolished debt slavery, which was huge in itself. And he at least laid the foundations for what would become a robust constitution. But his most important aim was to bring peace and stability to the Athenian state, and that effort failed. There was still great tension between rich and poor. Aristocrats didn’t stop scheming to amass power for themselves. We don’t know a lot of specifics about this period, but disputes over the chief archonship give us a good indication of how chaotic the situation was.

A major source of tensions must have been Solon’s measure that the archonship was now open to wealthy men who were not of noble lineage. There had already been stiff competition among aristocrats for the top office, and now they had to compete with the nouveaux riches too. And of course, the up-and-comers would have been eager to flex their new muscle. So there was a lot of hostility, and we learn from Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens that shortly after Solon’s reforms there were two separate periods “anarchy” in a literal Greek sense — years when there was no archon. There must have been so much instability, probably to the point of rioting, that it was impossible to elect a chief magistrate.  

We also hear that a man named Damasias at one point held the archonship for over two years, which was illegal under the Solonian constitution. He must have aimed to hold onto it permanently, which would make him a tyrant. The Athenians managed to get rid of him, but if we can believe Aristotle, for the next year they replaced the top archonship with a board of ten archons taken from different economic classes. This archaic period in Greece has sometimes been called the Age of Experiment, and you can see that playing out in the different attempts to establish some kind of stable government. 

Another important aspect of the power struggles at this time is regionalism. Ancient authors describe three broad regions of Attica with different political interests and each with its own leader. In some older history books these three have been called “parties,” but that’s largely gone out of fashion because they were nothing like the political parties that operate today. Still, we need to call them something, so maybe “factions” is a better choice. Now, the way I’m going to describe these regional factions is oversimplified. It comes mainly from Aristotle, who liked to have everything clearly defined and sorted into distinct categories. The real situation was probably a lot messier than this, with more exceptions and nuances. But I think it’s still a useful starting point to get a broad sense of these regional power dynamics. 

The first of the three is the faction of the plain. That would refer to the plains of central Attica that had the best land for growing grain. So it’s the territory of the old aristocracy, who would like to go back to a pre-Solonian system where they held all the power. This group is led by a nobleman named Lycurgus. Beyond his name, we know very little about him. Then there’s the faction of the coast. Naturally, that’s where merchants would be most active, and you’d also see a high concentration of craftsmen — ship builders and so on. This is thought of as the “middle” faction, whose interest is in keeping Solon’s system in place. The leading figure here is Megacles, a member of the prominent Alcmaeonid clan. He’s the grandson of the Megacles we met in an earlier episode, who gave the order to kill the supporters of Cylon when he’d tried to make himself tyrant. This younger Megacles is also the one who got to marry the daughter of the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon, after his rival Hippocleides got drunk and danced his marriage away.  

The third of these regional groups is the faction of the hills. Or as Herodotus calls it, “beyond the hills.” Broadly speaking, this is northeast Attica, including the coastal area that looks east across the strait to that long, narrow island of Euboea. The faction of the hills is composed mainly of the poorest farmers, who think Solon didn’t go far enough and would like to see a redistribution of land in their favor. Their leader is Pisistratus, who comes from a noble family but not an especially distinguished one. He’s made a name for himself, though, through his military success in one of Athens’s many conflicts with its neighbor Megara. The way Herodotus tells it, the factions of the plain and the coast had already been established, and then Pisistratus built his following and proclaimed himself leader of the hill faction.

Now, the aristocrats in Athens were always worried about the rise of a tyranny, and Pisistratus seems to have been especially threatening. In Plutarch’s Life of Solon, he tells how the old lawgiver returned to Athens after his travels, saw how ambitious and cunning Pisistratus was, and tried to warn the citizens, but his warnings fell on deaf ears. So the story goes that when Pisistratus figured the time was right, he wounded himself and rushed into the city center claiming that his enemies had attacked him. He demanded that the Athenians give him a bodyguard. The assembly granted him a force of armed men, club-bearers, as we’re told, and with their help he seized the Acropolis and made himself tyrant. This, by the way, is one indication that the regional divisions couldn’t have been as cut and dried as I described them. Pisistratus must have had considerable support in the city itself to pull this off. 

Well, seizing power was one thing. Keeping it was another. It took several tries for Pisistratus to make his tyranny stick. His first reign lasted about five years, which is nothing to sneeze at. But ultimately, Megacles and Lycurgus, the leaders of the coast and the plain, banded together and drove Pisistratus into exile. Okay, fine, but now those two old factions were back to square one. It didn’t take long before they were at each other’s throats again. So Megacles now made an alliance with Pisistratus, and they cemented it by having Pisistratus marry Megacles’ daughter. Pisistratus had already been married and had two sons. We don’t know what had become of his first wife. Whatever the case, they now concluded this marriage alliance, presumably with the understanding that Megacles would have some share in power after Pisistratus was restored.  

There’s a bizarre story connected with his return. Pisistratus and his supporters found an exceptionally tall and beautiful young woman by the name of Phye, and they dressed her up in full armor as the goddess Athena and had her ride through the countryside to the city with followers running along, proclaiming, “Athena is bringing Pisistratus back to Athens!” Herodotus expresses some amazement about this. He says, in typical Greek fashion, that the Greeks are generally sharper than barbarians, and the Athenians are smarter than most Greeks. So how could they fall for such an obvious trick? Well, Herodotus himself has often been criticized for being gullible, but Aristotle tells the same story. My own take on it is that it probably happened, but we don’t have to assume anyone was really duped. It sounds to me like a very effective propaganda campaign. Pisistratus could claim that Athena was behind him, just as every politician in the U.S. claims to have God on their side. Having a woman play the role of Athena wouldn’t be as jarring as having someone dress up as Jesus would be to us. After all, a bit later, actors would represent the gods all the time in Athenian drama. No one really knows how much of the story is true, but I’m inclined to think it has a basis in fact. 

So now, with the support of Megacles — and maybe Athena — Pisistratus was back in power. But it didn’t take long for that arrangement to go south. Remember, when Pisistratus married Megacles’ daughter, he already had sons by his first wife, and he didn’t want to mess up his succession plan by producing another possible heir. Now, some history books and translations of Herodotus use expressions like “He didn’t treat her as a wife,” implying that he just kept away from her. But what Herodotus says is that he did have sex with her, but, in the Greek phrase, “ου κατά νόμον” — not according to custom.” “Nomos” can mean either custom or law, so the implication is that whatever he was doing in the bedroom was unorthodox. Well, this got back to Megacles, who was furious at the insult and at being cheated out of a chance to have his grandson rule. So he made up with Lycurgus again, and with their combined forces they drove Pisistratus out. 

But Pisistratus was nothing if not persistent. He was in exile for ten years. And he never gave up on his ambition to rule as the tyrant of Athens. So he spent those ten years making connections and raising money. He had friendly relations with the city of Eretria on the island of Euboea just across the strait from Attica. The Eretrians had extensive settlements in the north Aegean, and that helped Pisistratus establish himself in a part of Thrace that was rich in silver mines. That became an important source of revenue for him. He got financial contributions from Thebes and other cities friendly to him. There was a bigwig named Lygdamis from the island of Naxos who provided financial support and became one of his closest allies. And with all that money, Pisistratus was able to hire mercenaries. So, after a decade of preparations, he was ready. And in 545 BCE, he and his forces landed at Marathon on the Attic coast. In case anyone’s wondering, this isn’t the famous battle of Marathon that you may have heard about. That comes later, in the first Persian War. But Marathon was in Pisistratus’ home territory, and his supporters rushed out to rally around him. They marched inland to a district called Pallene, where they met and vanquished the defending Athenian forces. So now, for the third time, Pisistratus became tyrant of Athens. 

And this time, it stuck. Pisistratus stayed in power for nearly two decades. He died in 527 and passed the tyranny on to his sons Hippias and Hipparchus, who ruled until 510. So that’s a good 35 years that Pisistratus and sons held power. And as we’ll see, those were transformational years for the Athenian state. 

That seems like a perfect place for our first break. Epic Greek History is ad-free and always will be. I’m putting it out as a free resource for anyone who’s interested in learning the basics of ancient Greek history. So there’s absolutely no pressure, but if you’d like to help offset the cost of production, the one way to do that is to go to www.epicgreekhistory.com, hit that “Support” button, and choose a monthly contribution level starting at three dollars. For those who’ve contributed, I’d like you to know that your contributions currently cover almost all the podcast hosting fees. So huge thanks. And with that, it’s time for… 

[SFX: A Moment of Greek!] 

This episode gives us a great opportunity to see how Greek names are often stitched together from familiar words. There’s nothing unusual about names with literal meanings, of course. In English we have dozens of names based on occupations, like Fisher, Gardner, and jobs that don’t even exist anymore, like Cooper, Reeve, Fletcher and so on. A great many of the Greek names that have come down to us are aristocratic, and they reflect upper-class values. The leaders of those three regional divisions we looked at are all good examples. The name of Megacles, the leader of the coastal faction, is made up of “mega,” which needs no explanation, and the “kles” part means “fame” or “glory.” So Megacles is essentially “Great Glory.” In the plain we have Lycurgus. “Lycos” means “wolf,” and “ergon” means “deed.” So Lycurgus’ name suggests the fierceness of a wolf.  And in the hill country there’s Peisistratos. The “peisi-” root means “persuade” or in this case more like “control,” and “stratos” means army. So “Peisistratos” is literally “Army Commander,” a name that fits him pretty well, at least in his earlier career. It’s also worth noting that one of the most common roots of upper-class names is “hippos,” meaning “horse.” So there’s Philippos, which comes over into English as “Philip,” but also Hippocrates, Hippobates, Archippos, Melanippos, Chrysippos… and the names of Peisistratos’ two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus. That’s what’s in a name, and that’s today’s moment of Greek.  

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 It seems to me that something about early Athens made it especially resistant to tyranny. Unlike so many other cities, it got through the seventh century without a tyrant, and then in the 590s, the Athenians opted for Solon as the best alternative. It took someone as single-minded as Pisistratus to establish a one-man rule that would take root. But once he was firmly in power, in many ways it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened to  Athens.  

Greek authors looked back on Pisistratus as a law-abiding tyrant, what we might call a “benevolent dictator.” And there’s a great deal of truth to that, although we have to put it in perspective. Pisistratus was an autocrat, and he did autocratic things. For example, he kept a standing army of mercenaries, so he always had muscle to back him up if he needed it. He sent a good number of enemies into exile. And to make sure some families stayed in line, he sent their children off as hostages to the island of Naxos, where he’d installed his old pal Lygdamis as tyrant. 

So he was a dictator, and if you got on his bad side, you were going to be in for some trouble. On the other hand, he didn’t tear up Solon’s constitution. He kept that in place and allowed it to operate. In fact, I would imagine it ran more smoothly, without the kinds of disputes over offices that had been so common earlier. So he kept the Solonian system in place, but of course he saw to it that the archonships were held by his family and supporters, and that any important policy would align with his interests. There’s an anecdote that I think gives a good sense of how the political machinery worked under his rule. Pisistratus was once summoned to appear before the Areopagus on a charge of murder. He obeyed the summons, but his accuser got cold feet and never showed up, so the charge was dismissed. So the organs of government are still operating, but there’s no question about who’s calling the shots and how dangerous it would be to oppose him.

Well, whatever we may think of his methods, he had a far-reaching program for stabilizing the city, improving its infrastructure, and strengthening its position in Attica. Remember, Athens was very unusual in that the polis consisted not only of the urban center and the countryside immediately surrounding it, but the whole region of Attica, which was about the size of Rhode Island. One of Pisistratus’ goals was to break down some of the regionalism that had led to the factions we saw earlier, with the plain, the coast, and the hills. The chapter on Pisistratus in Anthony Andrewes’ classic book, The Greek Tyrants, is titled “Pisistratus and the Consolidation of Attica.” That’s an apt way of looking at how Pisistratus governed. 

A good case in point is an innovation in the lawcourts. We’ve seen that Solon established a court of appeal, where any citizen could go if they didn’t like a decision that a magistrate had handed down. But if you lived in Marathon, you’d have to travel 25 miles to the city center to have your day in court. That would be prohibitive for most people. Pisistratus introduced circuit judges so that anyone in Attica could get their case heard locally. 

He also seems to have had a very aggressive program to support independent farmers. This would have helped the poor not only in his old stronghold of the so-called “hill country” but all over Attica. We hear that he advanced loans to struggling farmers to help them get on their feet. In connection with this, there’s one question that’s kept historians scratching their heads for some time. Did Pisistratus confiscate land from families he’d sent into exile and distribute it to some of these small farmers? No ancient author says that explicitly. If he did, it’s surprising that such a significant move wouldn’t appear in the historical record. On the other hand, Athens after Pisistratus is known for its stable, self-sustaining independent farms. It’s a puzzle, but it seems likely that he did what Solon had refused to do and redistributed lands. 

All of this was very popular among the lower classes, of course. But it wasn’t free. Pisistratus needed revenue for everything he was doing, and even his Thracian silver mines weren’t going to cover all the expenses. So he instituted the first direct tax that we hear of in Athens. Some ancient sources say it was 10% of the land’s produce, others say it was 5%. I’m sure people grumbled about it, but on the whole, it doesn’t seem to have been oppressive. And we know of at least one instance when a farmer got a break. Pisistratus, being the hands-on ruler that he was, did regular tours of inspection around Attica. And one day he was up on Mount Hymettos, a very rough place to try to grow crops, and he saw an old farmer trying to work a plot that was mostly rocks. So he sent an attendant to ask him, “What do you grow here?” The farmer answered, “I grow aches and pains. Pisistratus ought to take 10% of those!” Pisistratus said, “I like this guy!” And he declared that from then on, this farm was exempt from taxes. The way Aristotle tells the story, he makes it clear that in his day people still talked about that tax-free plot of land.

Earlier tyrants in other cities had left their mark with building and engineering projects, and Pisistratus carried on that trend. He made a huge improvement in the urban water supply by building the city’s first aqueduct. That channeled water into a fountain house close to the agora, called the “Nine Springs.” So now there was public access to water, as opposed to wells that were usually privately owned. Along with that, he expanded the agora and made improvements there too. 

But if a tyrant really wanted to make a splash with a building project, the best way to do that was with a temple. It’s a little hard for us in the modern world to understand what a sensation it must have been to see a new temple go up. You have to imagine living in a city of wood and mud brick houses, but now here’s this monumental building with elegant columns and painted sculptures. It would be quite a spectacle. So up on the Acropolis, Pisistratus either built or extensively renovated the temple of Athena. Some sculptures from that temple, dating from his sons’ reign, can still be seen in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. Near the foot of the Acropolis, he started construction on another building, the enormous Temple of Olympian Zeus, which neither he nor his successors finished. It sat there unfinished until the Roman emperor Hadrian finally completed it over 600 years later. And if you go to Athens today, you can’t miss the remains of that temple. Even the sections of one toppled column are so gigantic, it’s an unforgettable sight. 

Well, temples aren’t just spectacular monuments; they also help a leader show that he takes religion seriously. Pisistratus played that up too. He naturally tried to associate himself as much as possible with Athena, the patron goddess of Athens. We saw that in his first return, when he had the woman playing Athena ride in the chariot proclaiming that Pisistratus was her man. In addition to building her temple, he expanded the festival of the Great Panathenaea into a much more lavish event than it had been. The Panathenaea was a yearly festival, but the Great Panathenaea was bigger version of it that was held every four years. The main event was a grand procession to Athena’s temple to dress the goddess in a new robe, but it also included many popular events like chariot races, torch races, and musical contests. 

One important thing Pisistratus or his sons added to the festival was public recitations of the complete Homeric epics. So as a part of the festival, you could theoretically hear the entire Iliad or Odyssey if you wanted. Some later authors suggest that the tyrants actually sponsored an editing project that produced the standard versions of the epics, but that’s very much debated. In any case, Pisistratus probably had ambitions to turn the Great Panathenaea into a panhellenic festival to rival the Olympian and Pythian games. It never really attained that status, but it was a major event in Athens and helped to strengthen connections between the city and the outlying areas. 

But one great festival wasn’t enough. He developed the Great Dionysia, also known as the City Dionysia. There had already been local festivals of Dionysus around Attica, but he established the Great Dionysia as a yearly event that again would attract people from all over the region. This evolved into the great dramatic festival where later playwrights like Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides competed for top honors. According to legend, Thespis performed the first tragedy during the reign of Pisistratus.  

What about foreign policy? Unlike so many autocrats, Pisistratus didn’t want to squander his city’s resources on unnecessary wars. So his relations with other city-states were mostly peaceful. One overseas venture was in keeping with his religious policies. He purified the island of Delos, which was sacred to Apollo. That entailed digging up any graves that were within view of the sanctuary and moving the bodies farther away. What was in it for Pisistratus and the Athenians? Well, Delos was an Ionian sanctuary, and Athens always thought of itself as kind of a parent figure to the Ionians, so this was one way of reasserting that status. 

Another venture had a more practical aim, to strengthen the Athenian presence in the Hellespont, that strait that leads from the northeast Aegean ultimately to the Black Sea. That waterway was extremely important for Athens, because the city was more and more dependent on grain from the Black Sea region. So Pisistratus regained control of Sigeion at the mouth of the straits, where Athens had previously had a foothold but later lost it. And across the straits, on the peninsula that the Greeks called the Thracian Chersonese, now known as Gallipoli, he sent an Athenian named Miltiades out to become essentially a tyrant in the region. Miltiades belonged to the Philaid clan, which wasn’t always on great terms with Pisistratus, so this was probably a way to have someone looking out for Athenian interests while at the same time getting a potential threat out of the way. 

To say Pisistratus was a busy guy would be an extreme understatement. We don’t have a biography of him, but the impression I get is a little like the way the Roman author Suetonius described Augustus Caesar as constantly working, tending to state business day and night. And he seems to have had the kind of political savvy and diplomatic skills to get things done without ruffling too many feathers. Of course, we’re not hearing from the people he dispossessed, so the picture we get is a little one-sided. But Aristotle says he was loved by both the commoners and the nobles, and he was clearly able to negotiate effectively with both sides. In any case, he managed to keep his position secure until he died peacefully and passed the tyranny on to his sons.  

That’ll take us to our second break. When we pick up again, we’ll look at Pisistratus’ successors, the fall of the tyranny, and its legacy. But now let’s break for… 

[SFX: Random Facts!]

 Pisistratus came to power and held onto it using mercenary forces. Some of those were very likely to have been Scythian archers. The Scythians were a nomadic people from the Eurasian Steppes, and these archers start appearing in Athenian vase paintings during Pisistratus’ reign. They’re easy to recognize because of their distinctive costume. They’re shown wearing high, pointed hats and close-fitting tunics with leggings, and they carry bows and quivers. So they came to Athens as part of the tyrant’s mercenary force, but they still had a presence after the fall of the tyranny. In the classical period they were public slaves who acted as a sort of rudimentary police force. They were still called archers, although by that time they probably weren’t using bows and arrows. There’s a lot of debate about exactly what their duties were. The comic playwright Aristophanes shows them mainly as keeping order in the assembly. However they functioned, Scythian Archers remained a public presence in Athens long after Pisistratus. And that’s today’s random fact. 

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 Pisistratus lived to a ripe old age and died, apparently of natural causes, in 527 BCE. His power then passed to his sons from his first marriage, Hippias and Hipparchus. Hippias was the older one, and he seems to have been the one in charge. The historian Thucydides was a real stickler for details like that, and he goes on at some length about how Hippias was the real tyrant. Hipparchus may have had some share in power. It’s unclear exactly what his position was, but he was at least a prominent figure in the court. 

On succession, Hippias seems to have followed the same policies as his father. Let the government run the way it’s supposed to, make sure you have family and friends elected to the archonships, and so on. One thing that does stand out in this generation is that Hippias and Hipparchus were great patrons of the arts. We’ve seen this kind of thing with earlier tyrants like Periander of Corinth. Greek tyrants want to have their names associated with great artists. Hipparchus, the younger brother, seems to have been especially active in attracting some of the most renowned poets of the time to Athens. Anacreon of Teos, who was known for his drinking songs and love lyrics, came to the tyrants’ court, as did Simonides of Ceos, who was known for writing in a simple style with great emotional impact.

Well, things seem to have gone along pretty smoothly until about 514 BCE, when a conspiracy broke out with a plot to assassinate the tyrants. This wasn’t a revolution. There was no big movement to overthrow the dictatorship. It came out of a personal quarrel. The leaders of the plot were Harmodius and Aristogeiton. They were one of those classic Greek same-sex couples with an older man, in this case Aristogeiton, and his younger eromenos, his “beloved,” Harmodius. We’re told that Harmodius was a very attractive youth, and Hipparchus started making advances toward him, which the young man rejected. Aristogeiton was pretty angry that Hipparchus was putting moves on his boyfriend, and he started thinking about trying to topple the monarchy. Meanwhile, Hipparchus wasn’t happy about being rebuffed, so he engineered a public insult to Harmodius’ family. He invited Harmodius’ sister to be a basket-bearer in a religious procession, but then withdrew the invitation, saying she wasn’t worthy – a thinly disguised way of saying she wasn’t sexually pure. So now Aristogeiton was even more incensed on his young lover’s behalf, and they cooked up a plan to murder the tyrants. 

They rounded up a few accomplices — not too many, to avoid attracting attention — and decided to strike at the festival of the Panathenaea. On the day of the festival, they found Hippias with his bodyguard directing preparations for the procession. They had their daggers ready, but before they could make a move, they saw one of their fellow conspirators in what appeared to be friendly conversation with Hippias. Their nerves must have been on edge to begin with, and when they saw that, they thought the jig was up. So they fled the scene and started looking for Hipparchus, thinking they could at least get at him before they were caught. They soon found him, took him by surprise, and stabbed him to death. What happened next must have been absolute chaos. Harmodius was killed on the spot. Aristogeiton escaped briefly but he was soon apprehended and executed, as Thucydides puts it, “not in a mild way.” Aristotle says more explicitly that Hippias had him tortured until he revealed the names of other conspirators. I should point out that what I’ve given you is mostly Thucydides’ version of events. Aristotle’s telling differs in a few details, but the main points are the same. 

The important thing is that Hipparchus was dead, but the tyrant Hippias was still alive and still in power. And here we have a case where in later times the popular perception of the event was pretty far off from the historical fact. Because Harmodius and Aristogeiton later became folk heroes to the Athenians. They were celebrated as the “tyrannicides.” People thought of them as the ones who brought down the tyranny. 

A pair of bronze statues representing them was set up in the agora. In the period of the democracy, they were legendary heroes. Thucydides is very concerned to correct that, saying in a couple of places that no, they didn’t kill the tyrant. Hippias was the tyrant, they just killed his brother. Thucydides sometimes reminds me of those guys who have to keep pointing out, “It’s not champagne unless it comes from the Champagne region of France.” “Frankenstein is the name of the creator, not the monster!” Okay, Thucydides, we get it. 

In any case… Hippias stayed in power, but according to our sources, the character of the tyranny changed after that. You can imagine that the murder of his brother in a conspiracy that targeted both of them must have messed with his head. So he became paranoid, and his rule became harsher. He started having more citizens put to death. And as his fear of a revolution grew, he started looking overseas for a place where he might be safe if he had to leave Athens. 

While Hippias’ reign was becoming harsher, the exiled families started trying to return and overthrow him. Those, of course, included our old friends the Alcmaeonids. Or at least some of them. This business of who’s in exile at what periods can be tricky to sort out. The way the ancient authors tell it, it sounds like the whole Alcmaeonid clan was tossed out when Pisistratus came back to power. Remember his old feud with Megacles. But it so happens that an inscription survives showing a list of archons from Hippias’s reign, and one of the names listed is Cleisthenes, who was an Alcmaeonid. So there’s some question about when they were in exile and how complete their exile was. Things aren’t always as simple as the authors make them out to be. But we can be sure that a good number of Alcmaeonids were in exile. They and other exiled families now tried to fight their way back in but failed. So the Alcmaeonids tried a different approach with the aim of bringing in the Spartan military to help depose the tyrant.  

That was a tall order, because Pisistratus had made sure to establish good relations with Sparta. The family had formal ties of guest-friendship with them. But the Alcmaeonids had both money and brains, and they contrived to put pressure on Sparta through the oracle of Delphi. In 548 BCE, a devastating fire had broken out that destroyed the temple of Apollo. The Alcmaeonids won the contract to rebuild it. And when they did, they went way beyond the terms of the contract. Instead of building the façade in limestone, they built it in Parian marble, making it that much more magnificent. That put them in a good position to ask for favors at Delphi, and they arranged it so that anytime a Spartan delegation came to consult the Pythia for any reason, the immediate answer would be, “First, free the Athenians.” 

Well, that put the Spartans in a difficult position. Guest-friendship with the Pisistratids wasn’t to be taken lightly, but being essentially blocked from the Delphic oracle was a serious problem. And the Spartans had always taken pride in their reputation for opposing tyranny and being champions of freedom. As Herodotus puts it, they considered that the will of the gods took precedence over human concerns.  So they decided to intervene, to invade Attica and bring down the tyrant. It took two tries. They sent a force by sea under a general named Anchimolios to land on the Attic coast at Phaleron. But Hippias had brought in a crack force of Thessalian cavalry that ended the matter pretty quickly. So the Spartans then had to send a bigger force, this time by land, under command of one of the kings, Cleomenes.  

This king, Cleomenes, was a very ambitious and energetic man, one of the most colorful characters in Spartan history. There’ll be a lot more to say about him in upcoming episodes. For now, I’ll cut to the chase and say his expedition was more successful. He and the Athenian forces opposing the tyranny got the Pisistratids trapped in an old Bronze Age fortification on the Acropolis called the Pelargikon. But according to Herodotus, the Pisistratids were nowhere near beaten yet. Their supporters were somehow able to get through the blockade and keep them supplied with food and water. Meanwhile, Cleomenes wasn’t prepared to make this a long-term campaign. So all the Pisistratids had to do was wait them out. But at one point the Pisistratids tried to smuggle some of their children out and have them taken off to safety, and they fell into their enemies’ hands. So now the anti-tyranny faction had hostages, and the Pisistratids had to cut a deal. They’d get their kids back, but they had to leave Attica within five days.  

Where were they going to go? As I mentioned earlier, Pisistratus had regained that town of Sigeion at the mouth of the Hellespont. So Hippias and his family were granted safe conduct there. From Sigeion he went a little farther east to the city of Lampsacus, where he’d already made an alliance by marrying his daughter to the son of the tyrant there. And the rulers of Lampsacus had good connections with Darius, the king of Persia. So Hippias ultimately landed at the Persian court, where he lived as an honored guest of the Great King. That’s where we’ll leave him for now, but we haven’t seen the last of Hippias. 

The reign of Pisistratus and his sons had lasted continuously for three and a half decades, and that was a formative period for Athens. For one thing, it provided stability, so that state institutions could run smoothly. No doubt, the more ambitious aristocrats chafed at having one family in power, but there were probably a lot who appreciated the relief from constant struggles. And during this period, more people from different classes had a chance to participate in government. The highest offices were still reserved for the top two economic classes, but more people of the middle class could serve in lower offices, maybe on the council, and as jurors in the lawcourts. So a broader cross section of Athenian citizens gained experience and became accustomed to having a place in governing bodies. Ironically, the tyranny laid a lot of the groundwork for the democracy that was to come.

 Later Athenians looked back on the Pisistratid tyranny with mixed feelings. The Greeks generally disapproved of one-man rule, especially of dictatorship as opposed to hereditary kingship. And Hippias, being a harsh ruler in the later part of his reign, made a good villain in their national myth, the arrogant tyrant who had to be overthrown. You can see why the so-called tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, became legendary heroes. It certainly made a more flattering story than having to have Sparta come in and drive the tyrants out. But even if they frowned on tyranny as a form of government, the Athenians looked back on Pisistratus’ reign as a time of peace, stability, and prosperity. Aristotle tells us that it was often described as a “golden age.” 

And that’s a wrap for episode 22. I hope you’ve found the Pisistratean tyranny as fascinating as I do. If you have questions, additions, corrections, or any other comments, I’m always happy to answer emails at scott@epicgreekhistory.com. Or you can leave a comment on my Facebook or Instagram. I’m Scott Emmons. The music for my theme song and interstitials was composed and recorded by Parry Gripp. My logo and other artwork are by Chris Harding. Until next time, εὐτυχεῖτε, be well!