besiegers to attack and to conquer Cirrha, and to dedicate its whole
territory to the service of the god. The advice was adopted--Cirrha
was taken (B. C. 586); it became thenceforth the arsenal of Delphi,
and the insulted deity had the satisfaction of seeing the sacred lands
washed by the waves of the Cirrhaean Sea. An oracle of this nature
was perhaps more effectual than the sword of Clisthenes in preventing
future assaults on the divine city! The Pythian games commenced, or
were revived, in celebration of this victory of the Pythian god.

VI. Meanwhile at Athens--the tranquillity of the state was still
disturbed by the mortal feud between the party of Cylon and the
adherents of the Alcmaeonidae--time only served to exasperate the
desire of vengeance in the one, and increase the indisposition to
justice in the other. Fortunately, however, the affairs of the state
were in that crisis which is ever favourable to the authority of an
individual. There are periods in all constitutions when, amid the
excesses of factions, every one submits willingly to an arbiter. With
the genius that might have made him the destroyer of the liberties of
his country, Solon had the virtue to constitute himself their saviour.
He persuaded the families stigmatized with the crime of sacrilege, and
the epithet of "execrable," to submit to the forms of trial; they were
impeached, judged, and condemned to exile; the bodies of those whom
death had already summoned to a sterner tribunal were disinterred, and
removed beyond the borders of Attica. Nevertheless, the superstitions
of the people were unappeased. Strange appearances were beheld in the
air, and the augurs declared that the entrails of the victims denoted
that the gods yet demanded a fuller expiation of the national crime.

At this time there lived in Crete one of those remarkable men common
to the early ages of the world, who sought to unite with the honours