the public habitually looked up. Degenerate as they were, however, they were the legitimate representatives of the prophet and purifier from Knossus, to whose presence the Athenians had been so much indebted two centuries before: and their altered position was owing less to any falling off in themselves, than to an improvement in the mass upon whom they sought to operate. Had Epimenidês himself come to Athens in those days, his visit would probably have been as much inoperative to all public purposes as a repetition of the stratagem of Phyê, clothed and equipped as the goddess Athênê, which had succeeded so completely in the days of Peisistratus,—a stratagem which even Herodotus treats as incredibly absurd, although, a century before his time, both the city of Athens and the demes of Attica had obeyed, as a divine mandate, the orders of this magnificent and stately woman, to restore Peisistratus.[155] [152] Respecting the characteristics of this age, see the second chapter of the treatise of Heinrich, above alluded to, Kreta und Griechenland in Hinsicht auf Wunderglauben. [153] Plato, Kratylus, p. 405; Phædr. p. 244. [154] Eurip. Hippolyt. 957; Plato, Republ. ii, p. 364; Theophrast. Charact. c. 16. [155] Herodot. i, 60. CHAPTER XI. SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION. We now approach a new era in Grecian history,—the first known example of a genuine and disinterested constitutional reform, and the first foundation-stone of that great fabric, which afterwards became the type of democracy in Greece. The archonship of the eupatrid Solon dates in 594 B. C., thirty years after that of Drako, and about eighteen years after the conspiracy of Kylôn, assuming the latter event to be correctly placed B. C. 612. The life of Solon by Plutarch and by Diogenês, especially the former, are our principal sources of information respecting this remarkable man; and while we thank them for what they have told us, it is impossible to avoid expressing disappointment that they have not told us more. For Plutarch certainly had before him both the original poems, and the original laws, of Solon, and the few transcripts which he gives from one or the other form the principal charm of his biography: but such valuable materials ought to have been made available to a more instructive result than that which he has brought out. There is hardly anything more to be deplored, amidst the lost treasures of the Grecian mind, than the poems of Solon; for we see by the remaining fragments, that they contained notices of the public and social phenomena before him, which he was compelled attentively to study,—blended with the touching expression of his own personal feelings, in the post, alike honorable and difficult, to which the confidence of his countrymen had exalted him.