16 The Situation at Athens (§§59-64)

The story of Athens concerns its subjection to the tyrant Pisistratus.^[1] On three occasions Athens fell under his sway, and the three periods of rule resulted from three schemes for achieving power, all of which are highly illustrative of Athenian character.^[2]

Herodotus begins with an account of the events preceding the birth of Pisistratus, when a great marvel (τέρας μέγα) befell his father Hippocrates at the Olympic games. A jar he had sacrificed that contained meat and water started to boil without the addition of fire. Chilon, a Spartan who happened to be there, advised Hippocrates never to take a wife who could bear children; if he had such a wife already, to send her away; and if he had a son by her, to disown him. Hippocrates disregarded both the prodigy and the advice, and soon afterwards Pisistratus was born.^[3]

This preliminary passage has several elements of great interest for the History as a whole. First is the mention of the Olympic games as the site οf the prodigy. Since the event is a pan-Hellenic festival, Herodotus carries on his recent theme of the commonality of all Greeks, especially the fact of Spartans and Athenians consorting together and giving one another advice. Chilon, the advisor, we know from a later passage (7.235.2), when Demaratus calls him the wisest of the Spartans and repeats some of Chilon’s strategic advice about Cythera, an island off the coast of the Peloponnese. Here too for the first time we witness the prophetic abilities of Lacedaemonians, abilities to figure again very soon in the story of the bones of Orestes; finally, we witness a refusal to take good advice on the part of an Athenian.^[4]

The story immediately shifts to Pisistratus’s manhood, when in Athens the factions of Megacles and Lycurgus are competing with one another for control of the city. Pisistratus assembles a third faction and wins power by a trick. He wounds himself and his mules, then goes to the marketplace where he claims that he has barely escaped his enemies and therefore needs a state-provided guard. Reminding them of prior services he has rendered the city, he succeeds in persuading his fellow citizens to give him a contingent of bodyguards. He uses the contingent to seize the Acropolis. Herodotus takes care to point out that Pisistratus governed the city well and according to the established laws. Nevertheless, the other two factions soon unite to expel Pisistratus (1.60). But the factions then quarrel among themselves, and Megacles offers Pisistratus the sovereignty on the condition that he marry Megacles’s daughter. Agreeing, Pisistratus contrives a plan that Herodotus ambiguously calls εὐηθέστατον, a word that can mean “silliest” or “most absurd,” but that can also mean “most guileless” and “most good-natured.” Finding a tall beautiful woman, Phya, he dresses her like Athena, puts her on a chariot, and sends forth heralds proclaiming that the goddess is bringing Pisistratus back to power. Herodotus says that the people believed the proclamation and welcomed Pisistratus.^[5] Thus he gained the sovereignty of Athens a second time.

Wary of having children by his new wife, however, because of a curse on her family, he has sexual intercourse with her in some way not according to custom (οὐ κατὰ vόµov). Megacles hears about this offense and effects a reconciliation with his rivals. Pisistratus, learning of the plots against him, leaves the country and in Eretria plans with his children to win back the sovereignty. They collect money from many sources, not least from Thebans, and prepare to retake Attica with a mercenary army (1.62). Thus, after ten years, they return to Attica, capture Marathon, and march on Athens (how the name Marathon must resonate with Herodotus’s audience!). An Acarnanian soothsayer communicates an encouraging oracle to Pisistratus, who leads his army on. He finds the Athenians sleeping or playing dice and easily puts them to rout. Then, as Herodotus puts it, he employed “an exceedingly clever plan.” He sends his sons on horseback to those fleeing to tell them to go home and be of good cheer. By this plan he keeps them from gathering again in force and thus becomes ruler of Athens a third time. Those Athenians who resisted him and did not go home he exiled to Naxos, having first taken their children as hostages. In response to some oracles, he purified the island of Delos.

What do we learn from these stories about Athens that would be of interest to Croesus and to Herodotus’s audience? From the first story we learn that Athenians honor the lives of their citizens; moreover, they are willing to go to the public expense of a bodyguard to keep one patriotic citizen from being unjustly attacked. From the story of their gullible belief in the false Athena, we learn that they are a religious people who honor the gods. (Piety is shown even by Pisistratus, who purified Delos.) While simple piety may not be a vice, it might render the pious individuals unsuitable to be participants in a preemptive conquest such as that Croesus has in mind. Finally, from the story of Pisistratus’s sons who spread the message to go home since the war is over, we learn that the Athenians so prefer peace to war that they are eager to resume their lives of peace and to quit a fight without laborious reflection. Croesus would not find any of these qualities desirable in potential allies. From the mere fact that Pisistratus was a tyrant, one might think the Athenians a good choice of allies, for Croesus is no less a despot than Pisistratus (unless we believe that the hereditary nature of his rule lends it legitimacy^[6]), and, as has often been observed, despots feel more comfortable with one another than with popular regimes. Nevertheless, the delicate peace-loving character exhibited in these stories about the Athenians disqualifies them from consideration. And how would Herodotus’s present audience of Athenians receive the tales? Rather than smile bemusedly at their naivete of the past, would they not reflect longingly on a more peaceful era, when their virtuous simplicity kept them from foreign entanglements?