The state did not lose by the arrangements, for smallholders were liable to a land tax amounting to one tenth of what they produced. This tax, which may have been introduced by Pisistratus, applied to all kinds of estate and formed a substantial part of the public revenue. To this may be added the income from the silver mines at Laurium in Attica, which were more effectively worked now than they had been in the past. The silver was mainly used for coinage, and so added to the liquidity of Athenian wealth and eased trade.
Land reform was not enough by itself to heal the woes of the countryside. The regime sought to improve the efficiency of farming and, building on Solon’s encouragement of olive oil exports, it planted olive trees more widely.
The creation of a class of peasant proprietors was a substantial achievement and removed in part at least the grievances of the poor that still plagued the body politic. Many Athenians found the loss of civic liberties a fair price for social reconciliation and economic development. And nobody much missed Megacles and his friends.
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The heart of a polis was the agora. This was where people could shop, idle, do business deals, find out the latest news, and, above all, talk politics. A busy market square was evidence of a politically engaged citizenry, so it is more than a little surprising that Pisistratus laid out the famous agora of Athens.
Of course, the tyrant took all the necessary precautions to protect the regime, and employed a permanent force of mercenaries, which included Scythian archers, fierce nomad peoples from the northeast of Europe. But once he had looked after his personal security and warded off any risk of a coup d’état, he relaxed and trusted the people.
The space Pisistratus chose for the agora was roughly triangular. It was skirted by the main road into the city, the Panathenaic Way. Private houses were demolished, an old burial ground cleared, and wells closed. A fountain house was built and opened to the public, into which water was fed by a terra-cotta pipeline. A vestibule was entered through a colonnade and gave access to basins and running water spouts (hence the fountain house’s name “The Nine Spouts”).
In the southwest corner of the marketplace a substantial building rose from the ground, much larger than other Athenian homes of the period. A collection of rooms surrounded a courtyard. Modern archaeologists have found evidence of cooking, and it has been sensibly suggested that this was the residence of Pisistratus and the headquarters of the tyranny.
Establishing the agora could have meant no more than paying lip service to the people’s rights. But in fact, as the author of The Athenian Constitution put it, Pisistratus was “humane, mild and forgiving to criminals” and governed “more like a citizen than like a tyrant.” He left the constitution and institutions of Solon in place. Archons took office every year as usual, although the name of a family member or a reliable ally regularly appeared on the list. We are not certain that they were elected or appointed by him, but one way or another his wishes prevailed. Gradually political unrest subsided.
At some point Pisistratus or his successor, his son Hippias, was reconciled with the aristocracy. Leading noblemen returned to Athens and took part in the government. A fragment of an inscription recording annual Eponymous Archons throws light on how the tyranny organized power, making it effective without being blatant.
Onetorides
Hippias
Cleisthenes
Miltiades
Calliades
Pisistratus
Pisistratus died in 528/7 at about the age of seventy-five. Onetorides, of whom we know nothing (except he was probably the handsome youth whose name appears on painted vases in the middle of the century), was appointed while the old man was still alive. We may assume that the Hippias here was the ruler’s son. The Alcmaeonids liked to claim that they lived in exile throughout the tyranny; we can see that this was not true, for Cleisthenes was a member of the clan. Miltiades belonged to the powerful and extremely rich Philaid clan. Calliades was a common name and is unidentified, but Pisistratus must have been the tyrant’s grandson.
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Despite officially being the tyrant’s political enemy, the step-uncle of the Miltiades on the inscription, also named Miltiades, collaborated with Pisistratus on an important foreign project.
He was sitting one day on the porch of his country house beside the road from Athens to Eleusis when a group of men passed by. Their clothes looked foreign and they were carrying spears. Inquisitive, he asked them over and gave them lodging, and food and drink—a gesture no one had made until then. He learned that they were Thracian tribesmen from the Chersonese (today’s Gallipoli) who were returning from Delphi. They had consulted the oracle about a war with an aggressive neighbor they were fighting and losing. The Pythia told them to appoint as their leader the first man who offered them hospitality. So Miltiades was invited to take charge of their affairs. He checked with Delphi to be sure he should accept the commission, and on receiving clearance from the oracle set off for the Chersonese.
It is a nice story; but the simple truth of the matter is that the tribe appealed to Athens to found a settlement or colony in their territory. This would strengthen their ability to defend themselves from their enemies. Always keen to support Athenian trade, Pisistratus was delighted to gain a strategic foothold on the trade route from the Black Sea. The arrangement had the secondary benefit of removing from the scene a potentially dangerous competitor for power.
Although Miltiades disapproved of the tyranny at home (while collaborating with it), he had no qualms about making himself absolute ruler of the Chersonese, which in effect became a family possession of the Philaids.
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Pisistratus represented much more than a style of governing—he governed with a purpose. He wanted to turn Athens into an international religious and cultural center, and to promote the city as the motherland and moral leader of the Ionian Greeks.
The regime built and built and built. At Eleusis, a town twelve miles from Athens near the border with Megara, an annual festival was held in honor of the goddesses Demeter, patron of agriculture, and her daughter Persephone, queen of the underworld. Pisistratus had a great hall erected where initiates conducted visually spectacular but secret rites, giving them hope of a happy afterlife.
Back in Athens a new temple of Athena duly appeared on the rugged terrain of the Acropolis. Not far away in the south of the city, work started on a vast temple to Olympian Zeus. In this case, Pisistratus had overreached himself and it was many centuries before the building was completed.
The small island of Delos in the Cyclades was a center of pilgrimage for loyal Ionians. It was here that the god Apollo and his twin sister, Artemis, were born to Leto; she was one of the Titans, the generation of divinities that preceded Zeus and the Olympians. A hymn to Apollo reports that “the long-robed Ionians assemble with their wives and children” on Delos for a great annual festival with songs, dancing, and athletic games. It has Leto address the island as if it were a sentient being. She calls on it to build a temple of “far-shooting” Apollo. If they did this, she promised, “all men will bring you hecatombs and gather here, and incessant smells of rich sacrifices will always fill the air.” To be sure that Delos got the point, she predicted that tourists would grow the economy, “for you have to admit that your own soil is not rich.” The islanders obeyed. A temple rose from the ground and a twenty-six-foot-high marble statue of the god was erected.