Aristotle, in his “Constitution of Athens,” lays great stress on the effort of Pisistratus to develop the prosperity of the farmers. He tells how Pisistratus, walking in the country and seeing one digging among the rocks, asked what sort of a crop grew there, and the man, unaware that it was the Tyrant, replied: “Such a crop of evils and pain that it were right that Pisistratus should have his tithe of them.” Pisistratus, pleased both with his industry and his free speech, relieved the farmer of his burdens. And so, Aristotle continues, he was not troubled during his reign but could secure peace and quiet and “the word was often on the lips of many that the tyranny of Pisistratus was a regular life under Kronos,” or Golden Age. Pisistratus did much toward securing for Athens the intellectual hegemony of Greece. Whatever the Panathenæa, inherited from Theseus (or even from Erichthonius), may have been previously, the Greater Panathenaic festival was now solemnized every four years with more magnificence and became at Athens the necessary and dignified offset to the quadrennial games at Olympia and Delphi. Games, sacrifices, and amusements of varied character were added from time to time. Horse, chariot, torch, and foot races were included. Visitors came from abroad. But neither local nor intercantonal athletics gave the keynote. Rhapsodists recited Homer, and flute, cithara, and song were heard. Everything tended to focus itself upon the worship of Athena, who was the Athenian consciousness glorified and made objective. Under Pisistratus or his sons (or, less probably, under Solon) Homer was recalled from Ionia and domiciled on the mainland. Whatever may be the details about a formal recension and publication at this time, recitations from Homer were made an integral part of the public festivals, and Athens became the clearing-house for an intellectual currency good throughout all Hellas. The name “Pan-Athenian,” passing even beyond Pan-Ionian, was to be equated with a culture that was Pan-Hellenic. This befitted the epic breadth transcending mere local traditions. “The Iliad was not composed for any king or tyrant. If it is aristocratic, its appeal is not to any given set of noble families, but to all brave men of Greek legend.” And the spirit in which this epic trust was administered tallies well with the restraint of Pisistratus in respecting, as far as possible, the laws of Solon. If there were Attic interpolations in the poems, they do not glorify his house. In the “Catalogue of the Ships” the Athenians received honourable but not excessive mention. The brief reference to the ships from Salamis, as ranged under the command of the Athenians, would seem to suggest the recent conquest of the island under Solon or even the suspicion that Solon had himself interpolated it beforehand as proof of the ancient suzerainty of Athens:—