Pisistrate

Pisistrate (in Greek old Πεισίστρατος/ Peisistratos ), Tyrant of Athens, born towards -600, died in -527.

Wire of the eupatride Hippocrates, Pisistrate seized the capacity by the trick, by occupying the Acropole (-561), and was the first tyrant of Athens, as well as the founder of the Dynastie of the Pisistratides, dynasty which will survive to him only seventeen years.

By its work of politician and statesman, it tore off definitively Athens with the domination of the aristocratic antique Oligarchie and prepared, by a new and daring foreign policy, the military and commercial domination of Athens in Aegean Sea, prerequisite with the introduction of the democracy and the apogee of the Athenian power with, the “century of Périclès”.

The conquest of the capacity by Pisistrate falls under a general movement of the Greek cities, where tyranny spreads. With Corinth, Millet, Sicyone, Samos, Mytilène, in the colonies of Minor Asia, of the tyrants and the dynasties of prestigious tyrants liquidates the oligarchical domination, enriches and reinforces their cities, but also develops the trade and its corollary, the conquests.

Against oligarchy

After the great reforms of the {{VIIe}} and sixth century BC, due to Dracon and Solon, the domination of the land aristocracy and its political system, the Oligarchy, are threatened at the same time by the new rich person, aristocrats or not, whose fortune is movable, and by the country small holders, with which dissatisfaction is growing.

Pisistrate can art excite popular passions: wounded accidentally by its barber, it shows his face ensanglanté in the streets affirming that one has just tried to assassinate it. In its Dialogs of dead the, Fontenelle refers even to one mystification where it would have been posted on a tank in company of an young woman whom it introduced as being Athena itself!

The agrarian crisis is particularly sensitive to Athens. Three “parties” are constituted: the Pédiens (Oligarchy); the Paraliens (new rich person), known as also Alcméonides, of the name of the big family of commercial aristocrats which directs them and whose Périclès will be the downward one; the Diacriens, which represent the farming community poor and particularly that of the mountains of the North-East of the Attique.

Aristocrat himself, Pisistrate becomes the chief of Diacriens thanks to his military prestige acquired against Mégare. Combined to the Alcméonides by its marriage, it assembles a Attentat simulated against him to be made allot bodyguards. One grants them to him with as only restriction which they are provided only with clubs, from where them name: the carry-bludgeon. With this militia it seizes the power and is installed on the Acropole, old residence of the legendary kings (-561). Driven out by the combined opposition of Lycurgue, chief of Pédiens, and Mégaclès, chief of Alcméonides, Pisistrate will remain six years in exile in Thrace where the exploitation of the mines of the Pangée enriches it sufficiently to finance an army of mercenaries, then in Eubée. Benefitting from the weakening of its adversaries, whereas the oligarchical coup d'etat of Cylon fails and that Mégaclès is discredited by a massacre sacrilege made during repression, Pisistrate enlists an army, passes in Attique, raises the mountain dwellers of Diacrie and seizes Athens (-550).

An advised statesman

Careful statesman, Pisistrate will ensure himself, inside, the solid support of the peasants and the maritime contractors by his policy of conquests. It aims at ensuring the supply corn, from where establishment of military colonies on the Hellespont, and to control the Aegean trade, from where the conquest of the Cyclades, Naxos, where Pisistrate establishes the tyranny of his/her friend Lygdamis, and of Délos, religious and commercial center.

Pursuing its goals, he is the instigator of a vast reform political and social (creation of travelling courts) which prolonged the work of Solon, he attacks the privileges of the rich person, solves the land question by founding in the Attique a kind of agricultural credit, supports industry and the maritime trade: finances are cleansed thanks to the gold mines of the Pangée and to the development of those of money of the Laurion; in addition, a tax of 5 % on the income makes it possible to finance the conquests.

To its death, in -527, Pisistrate bequeaths to its two sons, Hippias and Hipparque, a Athens prosperous and powerful, which makes cultural great strides without precedent. But the commercial aristocracy (the Alcméonides in particular), which it however enriched, will try to get rid of a tyranny become particularly police after the assassination of Hipparque by the Tyrannoctones.

To finish some with the dictatorship of Hippias, they will call upon the military intervention of Sparte, which puts an end to the reign of Pisistratides and opens the way with the democratic reform whose Pisistrate had provided the economic and military foundations.

Anecdote

Diogène Laërce quoted in its Vie of the philosophers the text of a letter of Pisistrate with Solon and that of the answer of Solon. It is thought today that both are apocryphal books.

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