It is very instructive to reflect that Peisistratus, the most enlightened of tyrants, was contemporary with Solon, the father of Greek democracy. The theory, therefore, of a constitution in which wealth as well as birth should have influence, and which should also regard the rights and the burdens of the poor, was not only alive, but represented by Solon, when Peisistratus made himself master of the State. Solon's theory, though supported by his _law against neutrality_[87:1], was unable to overcome the turbulence of faction; and it required a generation of strong rule to prepare the whole people for the revival of Solon's theory, with many further developments, by Cleisthenes. Nevertheless, Solon remains a capital figure in early Greek history, known to us not by legends and legislation only, but also by the fragments of his poetry[87:2]. [Sidenote: Contrast of Greek and modern democracy.] § 38. This is the right place to consider the nature of those Greek democracies that followed upon the expulsion of aristocrats and tyrants, and that have been so lauded in modern histories. The panegyric of Grote is well known; and there is also a very fine chapter[88:1] in which Duruy, without being intimate, apparently, with Grote (for he only quotes Thirlwall in his support), has not only defended and praised this form of government at Athens, but even justified the coercion of all recalcitrant members of the Delian confederacy. The student has, therefore, the case of democracies in Greece ably and brilliantly stated. [Sidenote: Slave-holding democracies.] [Sidenote: Supported by public duties.]