es--his whole house--all who had
assisted in the impiety, were stigmatized with the epithet of
"execrable." The faction, or friends of Cylon, became popular from
the odium of their enemies--the city was distracted by civil
commotion--by superstitious apprehensions of the divine anger--and, as
the excesses of one party are the aliment of the other, so the
abhorrence of sacrilege effaced the remembrance of a treason.

III. The petty state of Megara, which, since the earlier ages, had,
from the dependant of Athens, grown up to the dignity of her rival,
taking advantage of the internal dissensions in the latter city,
succeeded in wresting from the Athenian government the Isle of
Salamis. It was not, however, without bitter and repeated struggles
that Athens at last submitted to the surrender of the isle. But,
after signal losses and defeats, as nothing is ever more odious to the
multitude than unsuccessful war, so the popular feeling was such as to
induce the government to enact a decree, by which it was forbidden,
upon pain of death, to propose reasserting the Athenian claims. But a
law, evidently the offspring of a momentary passion of disgust or
despair, and which could not but have been wrung with reluctance from
a government, whose conduct it tacitly arraigned, and whose military
pride it must have mortified, was not likely to bind, for any length
of time, a gallant aristocracy and a susceptible people. Many of the
younger portion of the community, pining at the dishonour of their
country, and eager for enterprise, were secretly inclined to
countenance any stratagem that might induce the reversal of the
decree.

At this time there went a report through the city, that a man of
distinguished birth, indirectly descended from the last of the
Athenian kings, had incurred the consecrating misfortune of insanity.
Suddenly this person appeared in the market-place, wearing the
peculiar badge that distinguished the sick [196]. His friends were,
doubtless, well prepared for his appearance--a crowd, some predisposed
to favour, others attracted by curiosity, were collected round him--
and, ascending to the stone from which the heralds made their
proclamations, he began to recite aloud a poem upon the loss of
Salamis, boldly reproving the cowardice of the people, and inciting
them again to war. His supposed insanity protected him from the law--
his rank, reputation, and the circumstance of his being himself a
native of Sa