After years of varying fortune Pisistratus finally (540 or 539 B. C.) established himself as Tyrant of Athens. But tyranny at Athens was never more than an episode. The inbred spirit of freedom must be reckoned with. Pisistratus respected popular rights, and after the accession of his sons the suspicion of a tendency to introduce such measures as were acquiesced in, for example, at Corinth, brought death to the one and subsequent banishment to the other. But the result of the tyranny of Pisistratus was beneficent. Under him and his sons the city began to take on both externally and intellectually more of the characteristics which are in mind when we think of Athens. Architect, sculptor, and painter began to contribute enriching details to the Acropolis, including the first Propylæa. Engineers skilfully brought water from near and far into the old Market-place, and in front of the town spring of Callirrhoë Pisistratus built the spacious “Nine Spouts”—the Enneakrounos—where women filled their water-jars and stayed to gossip. The newer market-place, to the north of the Areopagus, was developed. A great Olympieum was begun on the site of the present columns, which date from Hadrian’s time. Gymnasium life became important and the Academy was made ready as if in anticipation of its great future. Doubtless within this lovely grove many a youth of the period might have served as a model for Aristophanes’s fifth-century picture of palæstra life in the good old times:— “But you will go enter as Academe sprinter and under the olives contend With your chaplet of reed, in a contest of speed with some excellent rival and friend: All fragrant with yew and leisure time too, and the leaf which the white poplars fling When the plane whispers love to the elm in the grove in the beautiful season of spring.”[5] Footnote 5: _Clouds_, 992, translation (modified) by Rogers. A distinctive part of Pisistratus’s policy was the encouragement of country life and of agriculture. All over the Attic plain the olive orchards were cultivated, to become an important source of revenue to the Athenian state and immeasurably to enhance the charm of its environment. Herodotus recounts that a tall, handsome woman named Phye, from the hill country, had impersonated Athena come down in mortal guise and, riding in a chariot with Pisistratus, had lent divine sanction to his original _coup d’état_. The Attic demesmen might still more easily accept this new measure as a command transmitted from Athena who had herself first created the olive tree and taught its culture on the Acropolis:— “A heaven-sent grey-gleaming crown for her Athens, Her city of light.”