institution of the Ostracism [248]. Probably about the same period,
the mode of election to public office generally was altered from the
public vote to the secret lot [249]. It is evident that these
changes, whether salutary or pernicious, were not wanton or uncalled
for. The previous constitution had not sufficed to protect the
republic from a tyranny: something deficient in the machinery of
Solon's legislation had for half a century frustrated its practical
intentions. A change was, therefore, necessary to the existence of
the free state; and the care with which that change was directed
towards the diminution of the aristocratic influence, is in itself a
proof that such influence had been the shelter of the defeated
tyranny. The Athenians themselves always considered the innovations
of Clisthenes but as the natural development of the popular
institutions of Solon; and that decisive and energetic noble seems
indeed to have been one of those rude but serviceable instruments by
which a more practical and perfect action is often wrought out from
the incompleted theories of greater statesmen.

VI. Meanwhile, Isagoras, thus defeated by his rival, had the mean
ambition to appeal to the Spartan sword. Ancient scandal attributes
to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, an improper connexion with the wife of
Isagoras, and every one knows that the fondest friend of the cuckold
is invariably the adulterer;--the national policy of founding
aristocracies was doubtless, however, a graver motive with the Spartan
king than his desire to assist Isagoras. Cleomenes by a public herald
proclaimed the expulsion of Clisthenes, upon a frivolous pretence that
the Alcmaeonidae were still polluted by the hereditary sacrilege of
Cylon. Clisthenes privately retired from the city, and the Spartan
king, at the head of an inconsiderable troop, re-entered Athens--
expelled, at the instance of Isagoras, seven hundred Athenian