We now arrive at what may be called the second period of Grecian history, beginning with the rule of Peisistratus at Athens and of Crœsus in Lydia. It has been already stated that Peisistratus made himself despot of Athens in 560 B. C.: he died in 527 B. C., and was succeeded by his son Hippias, who was deposed and expelled in 510 B. C., thus making an entire space of fifty years between the first exaltation of the father and the final expulsion of the son. These chronological points are settled on good evidence: but the thirty-three years covered by the reign of Peisistratus are interrupted by two periods of exile,—one of them lasting not less than ten years,—the other, five years. And the exact place of the years of exile, being nowhere laid down upon authority, has been differently determined by the conjectures of chronologers.[193] Partly from this half-known chronology, partly from a very scanty collection of facts, the history of the half-century now before us can only be given very imperfectly: nor can we wonder at our ignorance, when we find that even among the Athenians themselves, only a century afterwards, statements the most incorrect and contradictory respecting the Peisistratids were in circulation, as Thucydidês distinctly, and somewhat reproachfully, acquaints us. [193] Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fast. Hellen. vol. ii, Appendix, c. 2, p. 201) has stated and discussed the different opinions on the chronology of Peisistratus and his sons. More than thirty years had now elapsed since the promulgation of the Solonian constitution, whereby the annual senate of Four Hundred had been created, and the public assembly (preceded in its action as well as aided and regulated by this senate) invested with a power of exacting responsibility from the magistrates after their year of office. The seeds of the subsequent democracy had thus been sown, and no doubt the administration of the archons had been practically softened by it; but nothing in the nature of a democratical sentiment had yet been created. A hundred years hence, we shall find that sentiment unanimous and potent among the enterprising masses of Athens and Peiræeus, and shall be called upon to listen to loud complaints of the difficulty of dealing with “that angry, waspish, intractable little old man, Dêmus of Pnyx,”—so Aristophanes[194] calls the Athenian people to their faces, with a freedom which shows that _he_ at least counted on their good temper. But between 560-510 B. C. the people are as passive in respect to political rights and securities as the most strenuous enemy of democracy could desire, and the government is transferred from hand to hand by bargains and cross-changes between two or three powerful men,[195] at the head of partisans who echo their voices, espouse their personal quarrels, and draw the sword at their command. It was this ancient constitution—Athens as it stood before the Athenian democracy—which the Macedonian Antipater professed to restore in 322 B.