76 HISTORICAL TALES.

Solon, having completed his travels, returned to
Athens to find it in turmoil. Pisistratus, a politi-
cal adventurer and a favorite with the people, had
gained despotic power by a cunning trick. He
wounded himself, and declared that he had been
attacked and wounded by his political enemies. He
asked, therefore, for a body-guard for his protection.
This was granted him by the popular assembly,
which was strongly on his side. With its aid he
seized the Acropolis and made himself master of the
city, while his opponents were forced to fly for their
lives.

This revolutionary movement was strenuously op-
posed by Solon, but in vain. Pisistratus had made
himself so popular with the people that they treated
their old law-giver like a man who had lost his
senses. As a last appeal he put on his armor and
placed himself before the door of his house, as if on
guard as a sentinel over the liberties of his country!
This appeal was also in vain.

“T have done my duty!” he exclaimed; “I have
sustained to the best of my power my country and
the laws.”

He refused to fly, saying, when ales on what he
relied for protection, “On my old age.’

Pisistratus—who proved a very mild decpomeneny
his aged opponent unharmed, and in the next year
Solon died, being then eighty years of age.

His laws lived after him, despite the despotism
which ruled over Athens for the succeeding fifty
years,