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tinction between the second and the third class, its privilege, and the supreme magistracy was and it is possible that none such existed. The thrown open to the whole body of nobles. This distance which separated both from the first change was speedily followed by one much was so great, that all slighter gradations may more important. When Tlesias, the successor have been lost in it. Accordingly, Dionysius of Eryxias, had completed the term which his of Halicarnassus, comparing the early institu- predecessor had left unfinished, the duration of tions of Rome and Athens, notices only two the archonship was again reduced to a single classes in the latter, one corresponding to the year; and, at the same time, its branches were Roman patricians, the other to the plebeians.* severed, and distributed among nine new maWe may, perhaps, safely conclude from anal- gistrates. Among these, the first in rank reogy, that even while the power of the nobles tained the distinguishing title of the archon, and was most absolute, a popular assembly was not the year was marked by his name.* He repunknown at Athens, and the example of Sparta resented the majesty of the state, and exercised may suggest a notion of the limitations which a peculiar jurisdiction-that which had belongmight prevent it from endangering the privi-ed to the king as the common parent of his leges of the ruling body. So long as the latter people, the protector of families, the guardian reserved to itself the office of making or decla- of orphans and heiresses, and of the general ring, of interpreting and administering the laws, rights of inheritance. For the second archon as well as the ordinary functions of government, the title of king, if it had been laid aside, was it might securely intrust many subjects to the revived,† as the functions assigned to him were decision of the popular voice. Its first contests those most associated with ancient recollecwere waged, not with the people, but with the tions. He represented the king as the highkings. Even in the reign of Theseus himself priest of his people; he regulated the celebrathe legend exhibits the royal power as on the tion of the mysteries and the most solemn fesdecline. Menestheus, a descendant of the an- tivals; decided all causes which affected the cient kings, is said to have engaged his brother interests of religion, and was charged with the nobles in a conspiracy against Theseus, which care of protecting the state from the pollution finally compelled him and his family to go into it might incur through the heedlessness or imexile, and placed Menestheus on the throne. piety of individuals. The third archon bore the After the death of this usurper, indeed, the title of polemarch,‡ and filled the place of the crown is restored to the line of Theseus for king, as the leader of his people in war, and the some generations. But his descendant, Thy-guardian who watched over its security in time mates, is compelled to abdicate in favour of Melanthus, a stranger, who has no claim but his superior merit. After the death of Codrus, the nobles, taking advantage, perhaps, of the opportunity afforded by the dispute between his sons, are said to have abolished the title of king, and to have substituted for it that of archon. This change, however, seems to have ocen important, rather as it indicated the new, precarious tenure by which the royal power was held, than as it immediately affected the nature of the office. It was, indeed, still held for life; and Medon, the son of Codrus, transmitted it to his posterity, though it would appear that, within the house of the Medontids, the succession was determined by the choice of the nobles. It is added, however, that the archon was deemed a responsible magistrate, which implies that those who elected had the power of deposing him; and, consequently, though the range of his functions may not have been narrower than that of the king's, he was more subject to control in the exercise of them. This indirect kind of sway, however, did not satisfy the more ambitious spirits; and we find them steadily, though gradually, advancing towards the accomplishment of their final object - a complete and equal participation of the Sovereignty. After twelve reigns, ending with that of Alemæon, the duration of the office was limited to ten years; and through the guilt or calamity of Hippomenes, the fourth decennial archon, the house of Medon was deprived of Paus., iv., 5, 10. : The successors of Medon were Acastus, Archippus, Thersippus, Phorbas, Megacles, Diognetus, Pherecles, Anphron. Thespicus, Aganicstor, Eschylus, Alcmeon (Ol. , 1, B.C. 752).

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His predecessors were Charops, Esimedes, Clidicus; he was succeeded by Leocrates, Apsander, and Eryxias. Creon, the first annual archon, enters upon his office B.C. 64.

of peace. Connected with this character of his office was the jurisdiction he possessed over strangers who had settled in Attica under the protection of the state, and over freedmen. The remaining six archons received the common title of thesmothetes, which literally signifies legislators, and was probably applied to them, as the judges who determined the great variety of causes which did not fall under the cognizance of their colleagues; because, in the absence of a written code, those who declare and interpret the laws may be properly said to make them.

These successive encroachments on the royal prerogatives, and the final triumph of the nobles, are almost the only events that fill the meager annals of Attica for several centuries. Here, as elsewhere, a wonderful stillness suddenly follows the varied stir of enterprise and adventure, and the throng of interesting characters that present themselves to our view in the heroic age. Life seems no longer to offer anything for poetry to celebrate, or for history to record. Are we to consider this long period of apparent tranquillity as one of public happiness, of pure and simple manners, of general harmony and content, which has only been rendered obscure by the absence of the crimes and the calamities which usually leave the deepest traces in the page of history? We should willingly believe this if it were not that, so far as the veil is withdrawn which conceals the occurrences of this period from our sight, it affords us * Ο ̓Αρχών, "Αρχων ἐπώνυμος, οι ὁ Επώνυμος. + Αρχών Βασιλεύς. Wachsmuth suspects, with great probability, that the title had never been dropped. # Пodépaρxos (commander-in-chief).

* Θεσμόθεται. Θεσμοί is used for laws in the ancient oath of the Attic soldier, Pollux, viii., 105, which was probably earlier than Solon, whose laws are commonly said to have been distinguished by the name of vouot, from Draco's Θεσμοί.

glimpses of a very different state of things. In the list of the magistrates who held the undivided sovereignty of the state, the only name with which any events are connected is that of Hippomenes, the last archon of the line of Codrus. It was made memorable by the shame of his daughter, and by the extraordinary punishment which he inflicted on her and her paramour.* Tradition long continued to point out as accursed ground the place where she was shut up to perish from hunger, or from the fury of a wild horse, the companion of her confinement. The nobles, glad, perhaps, to seize an opportunity so favourable to their views, deposed Hippomenes, and razed his house to the ground. This story would seem, indeed, to indicate the austerity, as well as the hardness of the ancient manners; but, on the other hand, we are informed that the father had been urged to this excess of rigour by the reproach that had fallen upon his family from the effeminacy and dissoluteness of its members. Without, however, drawing any inference from this insulated story, we may proceed to observe that the accounts transmitted to us of the legislation of Draco, the next epoch when a dream of light breaks through the obscurity of the Attic history, do not lead us to suppose that the people had enjoyed any extraordinary measure of happiness under the aristocratical government, or that their manners were peculiarly innocent and mild.

only modified or enlarged their jurisdiction. Demades was thought to have described the character of his laws very happily when he said that they were written, not in ink, but in blood. He himself is reported to have justified their severity by observing that the least offences deserved death, and that he could devise no greater punishment for the worst. This sounds like the language of a man who proceeded on higher grounds than those of expediency, and who felt himself bound by his own convictions to disregard the opinions of his contemporaries. Yet it is difficult to believe that Draco can have been led by any principles of abstract justice to confound all gradations of guilt, or, as has been conjectured* with somewhat greater probability, that, viewing them under a religious rather than a political aspect, he conceived that in every case alike they drew down the anger of the gods, which could only be appeased by the blood of the criminal. It seems much easier to understand how the ruling class, which adopted his enactments, might imagine that such a code was likely to be a convenient instrument in their hands for striking terror into their subjects, and stifling the rising spirit of discontent which their cupidity and oppression had provoked. We are, however, unable to form a well-grounded judgment on the degree in which equity may have been violated by his indiscriminate rigour; for though we read that he enacted the same capital punishment for petty thefts as for sacrilege and murder, still, as there were some offences for which he provided a milder sentence,† he must have framed a kind of scale, the wisdom and justice of which we have no means of estimating.

The immediate occasion which led to Draco's legislation is not recorded, and even the motives which induced him to impress it with that character of severity to which it owes its chief celebrity are not clearly ascertained. We know, however, that he was the author of the first The danger which threatened the nobles at written laws of Athens; and as this measure length showed itself from a side on which tended to limit the authority of the nobles, to they probably deemed themselves most secure. which a customary law, of which they were the Twelve years after Draco's legislation,‡ a console expounders, opposed a much feebler check, spiracy was formed by one of their own number we may reasonably conclude that the innovation for overthrowing the government. Cylon, the did not proceed from their wish, but was ex- author of this plot, was eminent both in birth torted from them by the growing discontent of and riches. His reputation, and, still more, his the people. On the other hand, Draco undoubt-confidence in his own fortune, had been greatly edly framed his code as much as possible in conformity to the spirit and the interests of the ruling class, to which he himself belonged; and hence we may fairly infer that the extreme rigour of its penal enactments was designed to overawe and repress the popular movement which had produced it. Aristotle observes that Draco made no change in the Constitution, and that there was nothing remarkable in his laws except the severity of the penalties by which they were sanctioned. It must, however, be remembered, that the substitution of law for custom, of a written code for a fluctuating and flexible tradition, was itself a step of great importance; and we also learn that he introduced some changes in the administration of criminal justice by transferring cases of murder, or of accidental homicide, from the cognizance of the archons to the magistrates called ephetes ;† though it is not clear whether he instituted, or

*The precise nature of the extraordinary punishment inflicted on the seducer can only be conjectured from the description of Heraclides Ponticus, 1, who says that Hippomenes put him to death by yoking him to a chariot. The occurrence is mentioned by Eschines, Timarch., 182. 'Epéra (Pollux, viii., 125). Courts of appeal: xpiois ἐφέσιμος.

raised by a victory at the Olympic Games; and he had farther increased the lustre and influence of his family by an alliance with Theage. nes, the tyrant of Megara, whose daughter he married. This extraordinary prosperity elated his presumption, and inflamed his ambition with hopes of a greatness which could only be attained by a dangerous enterprise. He conceived the design of becoming master of Athens. He could reckon on the cordial assistance of his father-in-law, who, independently of their affinity, was deeply interested in establishing at Athens a form of government similar to that which he himself had founded at Megara; and he had also, by his personal influence, ensured the support of numerous friends and adherents. Yet it is probable that he would not have relied on these resources, and that his scheme would never have suggested itself to his mind, if the general disaffection of the people towards their rulers, the impatience produced by the evils

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for which Draco had provided so inadequate ader the safeguard of the goddess, who had thus remedy, and by the irritating nature of the rem- visibly rejected their supplication, and immediedy itself, and the ordinary signs of an ap-ately proceeded to arrest them. His words proaching change, the need of which began to were the signal of a general massacre, from be universally felt, had not appeared to favour which even the awful sanctity of the neighhis aims. At this period scarcely any great en- bouring altars did not screen the fugitives: terprise was undertaken in Greece without the none escaped but those who found means of sanction of an oracle; yet we cannot but feel imploring female compassion.* some surprise when we are informed by Thu- If the conduct of the principal actors in this cydides that Cylon consulted the Delphic god bloody scene had been marked only by treachery on the means by which he might overthrow the and cruelty, it would never have exposed them government of his country, and still more at the to punishment, perhaps not even to reproach. answer he is said to have received: that he But they had been guilty of a flagrant violation must seize the citadel of Athens during the of religion; and Megacles and his whole house principal festival of Zeus. Cylon naturally in- were viewed with horror, as men polluted with terpreted the oracle to mean the Olympic Games, the stain of sacrilege. All public disasters and the scene of his glory; and Thucydides thinks calamities were henceforth construed into signs it worth observing that the great Attic festival of the Divine displeasure; and the surviving in honour of the same god occurred at a differ- partisans of Cylon did not fail to urge that the ent season. At the time, however, which ap- gods would never be appeased until vengeance peared to be prescribed by his infallible coun- should have been taken on the offenders. Yet sellor, Cylon proceeded to carry his plan into if this had been the only question which agitaeffect. With the aid of a body of troops fur-ted the public mind, it might have been hushed nished by Theagenes, and of his partisans, he without producing any important consequences. made himself master of the citadel. We hear But it was only one ingredient in the ferment nothing more of his Megarian auxiliaries, and which the conflict of parties, the grievances of perhaps, when his first object was accomplish- the many, and the ambition of the few, now cared, he dismissed them, relying on the favourable ried to a height that called for some extraordidispositions of the people. But the insurrection nary remedy. Hence Cylon's conspiracy and seems not to have been judiciously concerted. its issue exercised an influence on the history Those who had most cause to wish for a change of Athens which has rendered it forever memhad no reason to believe that this was designed orable, as the event which led the way to the for their benefit, and the co-operation of the legislation of Solon. foreigners was sufficient to deter all patriotic citizens from espousing his cause. Cylon and his friends soon found themselves besieged by the forces which the government called in from all parts of the country. The greater part of these were soon dismissed, as the blockade proved tedious, and only a small body was left under the command of the nine archons, to wait till famine should compel the insurgents to sur-ed them the means of forming honourable allirender. In the mean while Cylon and his brother effected their escape. Their adherents seem never to have entertained any hopes of mercy. When their provisions were all spent, and some had died of hunger, the remainder abandoned the defence of the walls, and took refuge in the temple of Athené. The archon Megacles and his colleagues, seeing them re-ners, and institutions. We are unable to asduced to the last extremity of weakness, began to be alarmed lest the sanctuary should be profaned by their death. To avoid this danger, they induced them to surrender on condition that their lives should be spared. Thucydides simply relates that the archons broke their promise, and put their prisoners to death when they had quitted their asylum, and that some * Plut., Sol., 12. Herodotus, v., 71, tells the story somewere even killed at the altars of the dread god-prytanes of the Naucranes (puravis Tv vauкpapwv), of what differently. According to him, the magistrates called desses, as the Eumenides, or Furies, were call-whose power he speaks in terms very similar to those ed, to which they had fled in the tumult. Plutarch adds a feature to the story, which seems too characteristic of the age to be considered as a later invention. More effectually to ensure their safety, the suppliants, before they descended from the citadel, fastened a line to the statue of Minerva, and held it in their hands as they passed through the midst of their enemies. But the line chancing to break as they were passing by the sanctuary of the Eumenides, Megacles, with the approbation of his colleagues, declared that they were no longer un-of the conspiracy, B.C. 612. See Clinton's Fasti, i., p. 301.

VOL. 1-2

Solon, son of Execestides,† was sprung from the line of Codrus. His father had reduced his fortune by his imprudent liberality; and Solon, in his youth, is said to have been compelled, in order to repair the decay of his patrimony, to embark in commercial adventures: a mode of acquiring wealth which was not disdained by men of the highest birth, as it frequently afford

ances in foreign countries, and even of raising themselves to princely rank as the founders of colonies. It was, however, undoubtedly not more the desire of affluence than the thirst of knowledge that impelled Solon to seek distant shores; and the most valuable fruit of his travels was the experience he collected of men, man

certain the precise time at which he returned to settle in Athens; but if, as is most probable, it was in the period following Cylon's conspiracy, he found his country in a deplorable condition, distracted within by the contests of exasperated parties, and scarcely able to resist the

which Thucydides, i., 126, applies to the archons (vepov τότε τὰς ̓Αθήνας-τότε τὰ πολλὰ τῶν πολιτικῶν ἔπρασσον), entered into the engagement with the suppliants, who were afterward murdered by the Alemaonids. Wachsmuth (1. i., p. 246) ingeniously reconciles these accounts by the supposition that the magistrates mentioned by Herodotus public proceedings, identified with him and his colleagues. Dr. Arnold's explanation. Thuc., i, p. 664, seems to create new difficulties, and to fail in reconciling Herodotus with Thucydides.

were assessors of the first archon, and were therefore, in

Only one writer, of little note, called him the son of Eu. phorion, Plut., Sul., 1.

As he can scarcely have been boru much earlier or later than B.C. 638, he would be about twenty-six at the time

attacks of its least powerful neighbours. Even | cision of an impartial tribunal. An extraordithe little state of Megara was at this time a for-nary court of Three Hundred persons, chosen midable enemy. It had succeeded in wresting from their own order, was commissioned to try the island of Salamis from the Athenians, who them. Under such circumstances their conhad been repeatedly baffled in their attempts to demnation was inevitable: those who had surrecover what they esteemed their rightful pos-vived went into exile, and the bones of the desession. The losses they had sustained in this ceased were taken out of their graves, and transtedious war had broken their spirit, and had ported beyond the frontier. In the mean while driven them to the resolution of abandoning for- the Megarians had not relinquished their preever the assertion of their claims. A decree tensions to Salamis, and they took advantage of had been passed, which, under penalty of death, the troubles which occupied the attention of the forbade any one so much as to propose the re- Athenians to dislodge their garrison from Ninewal of the desperate undertaking. Solon, sæa, and to reconquer the island, where five who was himself a native of Salamis, and was, hundred Athenian colonists, who had voluntarily perhaps, connected by various ties with the isl- shared Solon's first expedition, had been reand, was indignant at this pusillanimous poli-warded with an allotment of lands, which gave cy, and he devised an extraordinary plan for them a predominant influence in the governrousing his countrymen from their despondency.ment. It seems probable that it was after this He was endowed by nature with a happy poeti-event that the two states, seeing no prospect of cal talent, of which some specimens are still ex- terminating by arms a warfare subject to such tant in the fragments of his numerous works, vicissitudes, and equally harassing to both, now which, though they never rise to a very high that their honour had been satisfied by alternate degree of beauty, possess the charm of a vigor- victories, agreed to refer their claims to arbious and graceful simplicity. He now composed tration. At their request the Lacedæmonians a poem on the loss of Salamis, which Plutarch appointed five commissioners to try the cause. praises as one of his most ingenious productions. Solon, who was the chief spokesman on the To elude the prohibition, he assumed the de-side of the Athenians, maintained their title on meanour of a madman; and rushing into the market-place, mounted the stone from which the heralds were used to make their proclamations, and recited his poem to the by-standers. It contained a vehement expostulation on the disgrace which the Athenian name had incurred, and a summons to take the field again, and vindicate their right to the lovely island. The hearers caught the poet's enthusiasm, which was seconded by the applause of his friends, and particularly by the eloquence of his young kinsman Pisistratus. The restraining law was repealed, and it was resolved once more to try the fortune of arms.

the ground of ancient possession by arguments which, though they never silenced the Megarians, appear to have convinced the arbitrators. The strongest seem to have been derived from the Athenian customs, of which he pointed out traces in the mode of interment observed in Salamis, as well as inscriptions on the tombs, which attested the Attic origin of the persons they commemorated. He is also said to have appealed to the authority of the Homeric catalogue of the Grecian fleet, and to have resorted to a patriotic fraud, by forging a line which described Ajax as ranging the ships which he brought from Salamis in the Athenian station; and he interpreted some oracular verses which spoke of Salamis as an Ionian island in a similar sense. Modern criticism would not have been much better satisfied with the plea, which he grounded on the Attic tradition, that the sons of the same hero had settled in Attica, and had been adopted as Athenian citizens, and, in return, had transferred their hereditary dominion over the island to their new countrymen. The weight, however, of all these arguments determined the issue in favour of the Athenians; and it seems more probable that the Megarians acquiesced in a decision to which they had themselves appealed, than that, as Plutarch represents, they almost immediately renewed hostilities.

Solon not only inspired his countrymen with hope, but led them to victory, aided in the camp as in the city by the genius of Pisistratus. The stratagem with which he attacked the Megarians is variously related; but he is said to have finished the campaign by a single blow, and certainly succeeded in speedily recovering the island. We may even conclude that the Athenians at the same time made themselves masters of the port of Megara, Nisæa, since it is said to have been soon after reconquered by the Megarians. The reputation which Solon acquired by this enterprise was heightened, and more widely diffused throughout Greece, by the part he took in the sacred war, which ended with the destruction of Cirrha. But already before this he had gained the confidence of his fellow- Party feuds continued to rage with unabated citizens, and had begun to exert his influence in violence at Athens. The removal of the men healing their intestine divisions. The outcry whom public opinion had denounced as objects of against Megacles and his associates in the mas- the divine wrath was only a preliminary step tosacre had risen so high, that it became evident wards the restoration of tranquillity, but the evil that quiet could never be restored until they had was seated much deeper, and required a differexpiated their offence, and had delivered the ent kind of remedy, which was only to be found city from the curse which they seemed to have in a new organization of the state. This, it is brought upon it. Solon, with the assistance of probable, Solon already meditated, as he must the most moderate nobles, prevailed on the par-long have perceived its necessity. But he saw ty of Megacles to submit their cause to the de

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that, before it could be accomplished, the minds of men must be brought into a frame fitted for its reception, and that this could only be done tious fears to be stilled, angry passions to be with the aid of religion. There were supersti

This venerated person was now publicly invited to Athens, to exert his marvellous powers in behalf of the distracted city. His visit to Athens, as it was the most memorable event of his life, is also that which gives us the clearest. view of his character, and shows that, though he may not have a claim to the title of a philosopher, it would be equally unjust to consider him as a juggler and an impostor. The measures he adopted on his arrival consisted in great part of religious rites, which, as they finally allayed the fears of the superstitious, were undoubtedly as efficacious as any that could have been devised. We regret, indeed, to find that, among other propitiations, he prescribed the sacrifice of a human victim: it was, perhaps, demanded by the public opinion, in which he may himself have partaken. A youth, named Cratinus, voluntarily devoted himself for his country, and was joined in death by his friend Aristodemus.* A still more significant and important act was the foundation of a temple to the Eumenides, on the Areopagus-a hill al

Boothed, barbarous usages, hallowed by long will, if not endowed with the faculty of penetraprescription, to be abolished; and even the au- ting, as often as he wished, into the depths of thority of Solon was not of itself sufficient for futurity. He was a poet, too, as well as a prophthese purposes. He therefore looked abroad et, and the descriptions given of his works atfor a coadjutor, and fame directed his view to test the fecundity of his genius. It seems, a man peculiarly qualified to meet this emer- however, that he did not disdain to heighten gency. Crete at this time boasted of a person the respect which these advantages procured whom his contemporaries regarded as a being for him, by assuming an exterior which distinof a superior nature, and who even to us ap-guished him from the rest of mankind, and by pears in a mysterious, or at least an ambiguous affecting an Oriental austerity of habits. It was light, from our inability to decide how far he said that no one ever saw him eat, and when himself partook in the general opinion which he appeared in public the awful gravity of the ascribed to him an intimate communion with sage was announced by the length of his flowhigher powers. This was Epimenides,* a na- ing hair. tive, it is said, of the town of Phæstus, but, as his history seems to show, a citizen of Cnossus, the ancient capital of Minos. His origin seems to have been obscure, for, like the ancient sage Musæus, he was said to be the son of a nymph, a kind of parentage which in both cases implies the popular belief of inspired wisdom in those to whom it was ascribed. His youth, and even a great part of his manhood, according to a legend which seems to have been current even in his own time, passed away in a preternatural slumber: he had been sent by his father to fetch a sheep from the country, but having turned aside into a cave for shelter from the noontide heat, he was overtaken by sleep. He woke unconscious of any change, and it was only by that which he gradually discovered in the persons and things around him that he found more than half a century had elapsed since he left his father's house. Many of the ancients perceived that this marvellous tale was not without a meaning, though they were not unanimous in their interpretation of it. The greater part of them, however, drew from it the probable infer-ready hallowed by the most ancient court of ence that Epimenides had spent the early part criminal justice-and the consecration of two of his life in obscurity-either that of voluntary altars to appease the baneful Powers, whose seclusion or of distant travel-and that the malignant influence had stifled in the breasts of time during which he thus withdrew himself the citizens the respect they owed to each othfrom the eyes of his countrymen was employed er and to the laws. But Epimenides appears in acquiring those stores of knowledge by which not merely as a founder of sacred rites and monhe afterward excited their astonishment. He uments; he also introduced some regulations, seems to have studied the healing virtues of which, though not wholly foreign to religion, plants, and thus to have made some proficiency had manifestly a political object, and were probin an art which enabled him to confer solid ben-ably framed either at the suggestion of Solon, efits upon mankind. But this was not the main or in order to meet his views. They imposed foundation of his fame, nor probably that which restraints on the profuse expense with which he himself considered as the most precious re- private persons celebrated the worship of the sult of his solitary meditations. His rude at- gods, and on the wild and unseemly signs of tempts to explore the secrets of nature, by open-grief which the women had been accustomed ing new sources of wonder to his inquisitive to display at funerals. These, to us, may seem mind, served, perhaps, to nourish that credu- trifles, but Solon thought them worthy objects lous enthusiasm, from which some of the great- of his legislation; and as the last was perhaps est intellects of this period were not exempt, not unconnected with the cause of the disorders and which was rather strengthened than so- which had called for the presence of Epimenibered by the first essays of philosophical spec-des, so no less an authority may have been reulation. He sought a more direct road to knowledge in the favour of the gods, which he strove to win, both by the diligent practice of old observances, and by the institution of new and more acceptable rites. Thus, in the opinion of his countrymen, and probably in his own, he rose to the dignity of a priestly seer, profoundly learned in mystic ordinances, eminently skilled in the art of propitiating the anger of heaven when provoked by impiety or neglect, and honoured with frequent revelations of the Divine

On the history of Epimenides there is a useful little work by Heinrich: Epimenides aus Kreta,

quisite for innovations which seemed to encroach upon the most sacred privileges.

Epimenides had been received with a reverence which ensured the success of his beneficent work, and when it was accomplished he was dismissed with tokens of the warmest gratitude. The Athenians decreed gold and signal honours to their benefactor, but he had too high a sense of the sanctity of his office to ac

Cratinus and Ctesibius.
* Athenæus, p. 602. Diogenes Laertius, i., 110, names

+ "Yopis and 'Avaideta, insolence and impudence. Contumelia and impudentia, in Cicero, De Leg., il., 11, whe speaks of a temple; other authors know only of altars.

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