proposals. Among other changes which he introduced was the abolition of a cruel law by which insolvent debtors were liable to be enslaved along with their families; and in the political sphere he laid the foundations of the democratic constitution which was destined to contribute so largely to the greatness of Athens. He resisted all temptations to take power into his own hands--to the surprise of some, who thought he “should have hauled up the net when he had the fish enmeshed in it.” Unfortunately his self-denying spirit was not shared by all his countrymen, and he had the mortification of seeing his work to a great extent frustrated by one of his own friends, Peisistratus by name, whose success as a usurper was as much due to guile as to force. Posing as a friend of the people he presented himself one day in the market-place bleeding from self-inflicted wounds, which he pretended he had received at the hands of his political enemies, whereupon one of his partisans appealed for a bodyguard of fifty men to protect him, which was granted. With their assistance he soon made himself master of the Acropolis, and, by a stratagem, deprived the citizens of their arms. Although his rule was comparatively mild, and was signalised by some useful public enterprises, he was twice driven from the country. After his second restoration he held his position for about fourteen years. On his death his three sons carried on the government for some years, but at length a plot was formed for their assassination by two young men, partly on public and partly on private grounds. The plot was not altogether successful, two of the despots being untouched. One of the assassins, Harmodius, was at once overpowered and put to death, and the other, Aristogeiton, also forfeited his life after being subjected to torture in the hope that he would betray the names of their accomplices. The dynasty became more unpopular than ever, owing to its increasing severity, and in a few years the surviving members of it were driven into exile. So highly was the conduct of the two tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, appreciated that their statues in bronze were erected in a prominent place between the Agora and the Acropolis, and for a long time it was forbidden to erect any others in the same place. The statues were carried off by Xerxes in the next century, but they were soon replaced by others of a similar kind; and after the earlier ones were recovered, the two groups stood side by side. Another monument of the conspiracy was to be seen in the Acropolis in the form of a tongueless lioness, representing a woman named _Leæna_, who had been suspected of being in the plot, and was put to the torture, without divulging any name.