At length the people grew so angry that they determined to destroy the nobles who treated them so cruelly. But as they were helpless without a leader, they were glad to follow any ambitious noble who would place himself at their head and lead them to fight against their oppressors. Too often the deliverer seized the supreme power himself and oppressed the people more than had the oligarch. The usurper was called by the Greeks a tyrant. But the word tyrant did not mean to them, as it means to us, a cruel man. It meant simply one who had seized a power to which he had no real right. Some of the tyrants were cruel, but others used the power which they had seized for the good of the State. The years 700 B.C. to 500 B.C. are known as the Age of the Tyrants, because there were few States, save Sparta, which did not fall under the power of a tyrant during those years. Often the people learned to hate a tyrant as greatly as they had hated the nobles under whose harsh treatment they had groaned. But it was not easy to get rid of him, for he usually had hired soldiers to help him to keep the citizens from rebelling. One of the wisest and best of the tyrants was named Pisistratus, and he was a cousin of Solon, the great lawgiver of Athens. Solon was not a tyrant, although had he wished he might have become one. CHAPTER XXIX CYLON FAILS TO MAKE HIMSELF TYRANT The people of Attica were divided into three classes. There were the men of the Plain, who owned land and were wealthy; the men of the Shore, who were fisher-folk and traders; the men of the Hill or Uplanders, who were shepherds and herdsmen. These three parties, the Plain, the Shore, the Hill, as they were often called, were dissatisfied with the way in which they were treated by the nobles. For, little by little, they were taking possession of the land and making free men slaves. When the harvest failed, or when trade was bad, the poor were forced to borrow from the rich. And if a poor man could not pay his debt when it became due, his land and his goods were seized by the rich man. Nor was that the worst, for if the land and the goods were not enough to cover the debt, then the poor man himself was taken to be used or sold as a slave. So great was the discontent of the people, that in 632 B.C. a noble named Cylon determined to put himself at their head, overthrow those who were in power, and make himself tyrant. But Cylon did not trouble to gain the goodwill of the people. He succeeded in seizing the Acropolis, but it was by the aid of soldiers whom he had hired from the neighbouring city of Megara, not by the help of the people of Athens. The Athenians were indignant when they saw Megarian soldiers in their capital, and they looked on coldly and struck no blow for Cylon when the archons besieged the rebel noble in the citadel.