His sons Hipparchus and Hippias[170] appear to have succeeded quietly to his authority; which they shared in common, Hipparchus filling the more prominent station. Their father’s virtues descended to them, and Athens for some time flourished under their guidance. The strong expression of Plato is, that the Athenians lived as in old times under the reign of Saturn. He goes on to say that Hipparchus made the collection of Homer’s poems which others have ascribed to Pisistratus, and caused them to be publicly read in the order of their arrangement at the Panathenaic festival; and further displayed his taste in the patronage of Anacreon and Simonides, whom he induced by his liberality to take up their abode in Athens. And having thus provided for the mental cultivation of the citizens, he turned his attention to the improvement of the rustic population, and with this view caused Hermæ[171] to be erected in the main streets of the city and boroughs, upon which he inscribed in verse the most pithy maxims which he had heard or invented, that so the countrymen, wandering about, might taste of his wisdom, and come from the fields and woods to be further instructed in it. Two of these sentences are preserved—“The memorial of Hipparchus. Do not deceive a friend.” “The memorial of Hipparchus. Depart, meditating justice.” Further, we have the testimony of Thucydides, that he oppressed not the many, but bore himself ever inoffensively, and that “these tyrants held virtue and wisdom in great account for a long time, and taking of the Athenians but a twentieth part of their revenues, (they diminished, therefore, Pisistratus’s impost by one half,) adorned the city, managed their wars, and performed the rights of their religion. In other points they were governed by the laws formerly established, save that they took care ever to prefer to the magistracy men of their own adherence.” Thus fourteen years they ruled in peace and honour, when at length a single act of oppression and insult, a moment’s violation of the maxims of temperance and virtue, which their conduct as well as their precepts enforced, produced a revolution upon which probably the destinies of all Greece have hinged.