Athens was fortunate in numbering among her citizens, at this critical period, men able, in the proud boast of Themistocles, to make a great city of a small one. In the time of Pisistratus, the Dolonci, a tribe of Thracians who lived in the Thracian Chersonese, being pressed in war by the Apsinthii, sent to the Delphic oracle to request advice. They were directed to invite him who should first admit them to his hospitality, to become the founder of a colony in their country. Departing, they passed through Phocis and Bœotia without being offered entertainment by any person; then entering Attica, they passed the house of Miltiades, son of Cypselus, an Athenian of the noblest extraction, being descended from the heroes Æacus and the Salaminian Ajax, whose son Philæus became an Athenian citizen, and founded the family of which we speak. Miltiades was sitting in his porch, and observing persons in a foreign dress pass by, bearing lances in their hands, a practice long disused by the Athenians, he called to them, and offered them refreshment and rest. Upon this they explained the object of their mission, and entreated him to comply with the god’s directions. Miltiades, discontented with the superiority assumed by Pisistratus, was well inclined to accede to their request. He went immediately to Delphi to obtain further directions from the oracle, and was determined by the answer he received to remove to the Chersonese, whither he conducted as many of his fellow–citizens as chose to follow him, and on his arrival was made tyrant of the Chersonese by the Thracians.[1] Miltiades died childless, and was succeeded by his nephew Stesagoras, son of Cimon, who also died childless, being murdered after a short residence in the country; and on this Hippias and Hipparchus, who then bore rule in Athens, and whose policy was to encourage monarchical, or as the Greeks would have called it, _tyrannical_ government in every country connected with Attica, sent out Miltiades, son of Cimon, and brother to the deceased, to assume his authority. Upon his arrival Miltiades confined himself to the house, as if to show respect for his brother’s memory; the chief men of the country collected from all the towns of the Chersonese to honour him by sharing in his mourning, and were thrown into prison. He married Hegesipyle, daughter of Olorus, king of Thrace, probably to strengthen himself by an alliance with that powerful neighbour, and took 500 mercenaries into pay. Thus, at Athens, in the Chersonese, and at Florence, that authority which originally was the free gift of the people, was changed in the second or third generation into an arbitrary government maintained by force; and hence all elective governments may draw a warning, not to suffer two members of the same family to be placed in succession at the head of the state, however great their merits.