lect books--namely,
manuscripts upon the sheets of the rind of the Egyptian paper-rush, or
else upon skins. He was also the first person to collect and arrange the
poems of Homer. Everybody seems to have known some part by heart, but
they were in separate songs, and Pisistratus first had them written down
and put in order, after which no Greek was thought an educated man unless
he thoroughly knew the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.

Pisistratus ruled for thirty-three years, and made the Athenians content,
and when he died his sons Hippias and Hipparchus ruled much as he had
done, and gave no cause for complaint. One thing they did was to set up
mile-stones all over the roads of Attica, each with a bust of Mercury on
the top, and a wise proverb carved below the number of the miles. But
they grew proud and insolent, and one day a damsel of high family was
rudely sent away from a solemn religious procession, because Hipparchus
had a quarrel with her brother Harmodius. This only made Harmodius vow
vengeance, and, together with his friend Aristogeiton, he made a plot
with other youths for surrounding the two brothers at a great festival,
when everyone carried myrtle-boughs, as well as their swords and shields.
The conspirators had daggers hidden in the myrtle, and succeeded in
killing Hipparchus, but Harmodius was killed on the spot, and
Aristogeiton was taken and tortured to make him reveal his other
accomplices, and so was a girl named Leoena, who was known to have been
in their secrets; but she bore all the pain without a word, and when it
was over she was found to have bitten off her tongue, that she might not
betray her friends. Hippias kept up his rule for a few years longer, but
he found all going against him, and that the people were bent on having
Solon's system back; so, fearing for his life, he sent away his wife and
children, and soon followed them to Asia, B.C. 510. This--which is
called the Expulsion of the Pisistratids--was viewed by the Athenians as
the beginning of their freedom. They paid yearly honours to the memory
of the murderers Harmodius and Aristogeiton; and as Leoena means a
lioness, they honoured that brave woman's constancy with the statue of a
lioness without a tongue.

Hippias wandered about for some time, and ended by going to the court of
the king of Persia. Cyrus was now dead, after having established a great
empire, which spread from the Persian Gulf to the shore of the
Mediterranean, and h