ATHENS. We now turn to Athens, long the principal seat of Grecian learning. Athens is said to have been founded by Cecrops, 1550 B. C., and in the most ancient times was called Cecropia. It probably received the name of Athens from the goddess Minerva, who was called also Athena, by the Greeks, and to whom an elegant temple had been erected in the city. The old city spread from the mount of the Acropolis over a wide and pleasant vale or low peninsula, formed by the junction of the Cephesus and Ilissus. Its distance from the sea-coast was about five miles. In the course of time Athens became populous and surpassingly elegant in its architecture, while its citizens contrived to take a lead in the affairs of the communities around. At first they were governed by kings, but, as in the case of the Spartan citizens, they became dissatisfied with their existing constitution, and about the year 600 B. C. invited Solon, one of the wisest men in Greece, to reörganize their political constitution. Solon obeyed the summons, and constituted the government on a broad republican basis, with a council of state, forming a judicial court, consisting of 400 members, and called the Areopagus. This court of Areopagus besides its other duties, exercised a censorship over public morals, and was empowered to punish impiety, profligacy, and even idleness. To this court every citizen was bound to make an annual statement of his income, and the sources from which it was derived. The court was long regarded with very great respect, and the right was accorded to it of not only revising the sentences pronounced by the other criminal tribunals, but even of annulling the judicial decrees of the general assembly of the people. The regulations of Solon were not maintained for any great length of time, although the republican form of government, in one shape or other, continued as long as the country maintained its independence. Clesthenes, the leader of a party, enlarged the democratic principle in the state; he introduced the practice of _ostracism_, by which any person might be banished for ten years, without being accused of any crime, if the Athenians apprehended that he had acquired too much influence, or harbored designs against the public liberty. Ostracism was so called, because the citizens, in voting for its infliction, wrote the name of the obnoxious individual upon a shell (_ostreon_). It is said that Clesthenes was the first victim of his own law, as has happened in several other remarkable cases, ancient and modern.