e
severity. He affixed the penalty of death to all crimes alike; to
petty thefts, for instance, as well as to sacrilege and murder. Hence
they were said to have been written not in ink but in blood; and we are
told that he justified this extreme harshness by saying that small
offences deserved death, and that he knew no severer punishment for
great ones.

The legislation of Draco failed to calm the prevailing discontent. The
people gained nothing by the written code, except a more perfect
knowledge of its severity; and civil dissensions prevailed as
extensively as before. The general dissatisfaction with the government
was favourable to revolutionary projects; and accordingly, twelve years
after Draco's legislation (B.C. 612), Cylon, one of the nobles,
conceived the design of depriving his brother Eupatrids of their power,
and making himself tyrant of Athens. Having collected a considerable
force, he seized the Acropolis; but he did not meet with support from
the great mass of the people, and he soon found himself closely
blockaded by the forces of the Eupatrids. Cylon and his brother made
their escape, but the remainder of his associates, hard pressed by
hunger, abandoned the defence of the walls, and took refuge at the
altar of Athena (Minerva). They were induced by the archon Megacles,
one of the illustrious family of the Alcmaeonidae, to quit the altar on
the promise that their lives should be spared; but directly they had
left the temple they were put to death, and some of them were murdered
even at the altar of the Eumenides or Furies.

The conspiracy thus failed; but its suppression was attended with a
long train of melancholy consequences. The whole family of the
Alcmaeonidae was believed to have become tainted by the daring act of
sacrilege committed by Megacles; and the friends and partisans of the
murdered conspirators were not slow in demanding vengeance upon the
accursed race. Thus a new element of discord was introduced into the
state, In the midst of these dissensions there was one man who enjoyed
a distinguished reputation at Athens, and to whom his fellow citizens
looked up as the only person in the state who could deliver them from
their political and social dissensions, and secure them from such
misfortunes for the future. This man was Solon, the son of
Execestides, and a descendant of Codrus. He had travelled through many
parts of Greece and Asia, and had formed acquaintance with many of