Pisistratus did not limit himself to the fifty men allotted him, but raised a much larger force, with which he seized the Acropolis and made himself master of the city. Notwithstanding his resistance to the usurpation, Solon was treated with great deference by his cousin, who constantly asked his counsel in the administration of affairs. But the aged law-giver did not long survive the freedom of Athens. After his death his ashes were scattered, as he had directed, around the island of Salamis, which in his youth he had won for the Athenians.
=76.= THE FIRST TYRANNY OF PISISTRATUS was not of long duration. For six years he had maintained the laws of Solon, when the two factions of the Plain and the Shore combined against him, and he was driven from the city. An incident which occurred during his first reign had an important bearing on the later history of Greece. A noble named Milti´ades, of the highest birth in Athens, was sitting one day before his door, when he saw strangers passing whom he knew to be foreigners by their spears and peculiar garments. With true Athenian hospitality, he invited them to enjoy the comforts of his house, and was rewarded by a singular disclosure.
They were natives of the Thracian Chersonesus—that narrow tongue of land which lies along the north shore of the Hellespont—and had been to consult the oracle at Delphi concerning the war in which their countrymen were now engaged. The priestess had directed them to ask the first man who should offer them hospitality after leaving the temple, to found a colony in the Chersonesus. They had passed through Phocis and Bœotia without receiving an invitation, and they now hailed their host as the person described by the oracle, and entreated him to come to their assistance. Miltiades and his family were regarded with especial enmity by Pisistratus, and were discontented under his rule. He accepted the invitation of his guests, collected a party of the similarly affected among his fellow-citizens, and with them planted an independent principality on the Hellespont. It was his nephew who commanded at Marathon.[41]
=77.= SECOND TYRANNY. Within six years from the expulsion of Pisistratus, his rivals quarreled between themselves, and Megacles, the leader of the Shore, invited him to return and resume the sovereignty. But Athens could not yet remain at peace. In a short time Pisistratus offended Megacles, who had brought him back, and who again united with Lycurgus to expel him. This time the tyrant was ten years in exile, but he was constantly engaged in raising men and money in the different states of Greece. He landed at length with a powerful army at Marathon, and, joined by many friends, advanced toward the city. He had pitched his tent near the temple of Athena before his enemies had mustered any force to oppose him, and their hastily gathered troops were then signally defeated. The people willingly changed masters, and Pisistratus became for the third time supreme ruler of Athens.