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Probably Athens had needed, after Solon, just such a man as Peisistratus: one with sufficient iron in his blood to beat the disorder of Athenian life into a strong and steady form, and to establish by initial compulsion those habits of order and law which are to a society what the bony structure is to an animal—its shape and strength, though not its creative life. When, after a generation, the dictatorship was removed, these habits of order and the framework of Solon’s constitution remained as a heritage for democracy. Peisistratus, perhaps not knowing it, had come not to destroy the law but to fulfill it. (en) |
