handed down to us of the laws which Solon established is extremely lame and imperfect, I shall only mention the sarcasm of Anacharsis upon that occasion, as a proof of their insufficiency to answer that end for which Solon designed them. For that philosopher comparing the corrupt manners of the Athenians with the coercive power of Solon’s laws, resembled the latter to cobwebs which would entangle only the poor and feeble;[57] but were easily broke through by the rich and powerful. Solon is said to have replied,[58] “that men would readily stand to those mutual compacts, which it was the interest of neither party to violate; and that he had so rightly adapted his laws to the reason of his countrymen, as to convince them how much more advantageous it was to adhere to what was just, than to be guilty of injustice.” The event, as Plutarch truly observes, proved more correspondent to the opinion of Anacharsis, than to the hopes of Solon. For Pisistratus, a near relation of Solon’s, having artfully formed a strong party among the poorer citizens, by distributing bribes under the specious pretence of relieving their necessities, procured a guard of fifty men armed with clubs only for the safety of his person, by the help of which he seized the citadel, abolished the democracy, and established a single tyranny in spite of all the efforts of Solon.[59] This usurpation proved the source of endless faction, and brought innumerable calamities upon the republick. Pisistratus was expelled more than once by the opposite party, and as often brought back in triumph either by the fraud or force of his prevailing faction. At his death he left the kingdom to his two sons Hipparchus and Hippias. The former of these was assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogiton for a personal injury they had received;[60] Hippias was soon after driven out of Athens by the Spartans at the instigation of some of his discontented countrymen. Despairing of recovering his former sovereignty by any other means, he fled to Darius for assistance, and was the cause of the first invasion of Greece by the Persians, in which he died fighting against his country in the ever memorable battle of Marathon. But the most fatal evil which resulted from the usurpation of Pisistratus, was, that perpetual fear of seeing the supreme power again lodged in the hands of a single person.[61] For this fear kept the jealousy of the people in a constant alarm, and threw them at last into the hands of the factious demagogues. Hence superior merit was frequently represented as an unpardonable crime, and a kind of high treason against the republick.[62] And the real patriots were rendered suspected to the people, just as the demagogues were influenced by envy or private pique, or even bribed by ambitious or designing men, who aspired at the very thing of which the others were unjustly accused. The history of Athens abounds with instances of the levity and inconstancy of that unsteady people.