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Meantime the Athenians had marched to Marathon, and were encamped on the hills that surrounded the plain. Their army numbered ten thousand men, and was commanded by Callim'achus, the Pol'emarch or third Archon, and ten generals, among whom were Milti'ades, Themis'tocles, and Aristi'des, who subsequently acquired immortal fame.
XXIV. Oil was the only product of the country which he allowed to be exported, everything else being forbidden; and he ordered that if any one broke this law the archon was to solemnly curse him, unless he paid a hundred drachmas into the public treasury. This law is written on the first of his tablets.
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.
In every tribe at the place appointed for the annual rendezvous of the same, were then, or soon after begun those buildings which are now called pavilions; each of them standing with one open side upon fair columns, like the porch of some ancient temple, and looking into a field capable of the muster of some 4,000 men; before each pavilion stand three pillars sustaining urns for the ballot, that on the right hand equal in height to the brow of a horseman, being called the horse urn, that on the left hand, with bridges on either side to bring it equal in height with the brow of a footman, being called the foot urn, and the middle urn, with a bridge on the side toward the foot urn, the other side, as left for the horse, being without one; and here ended the whole work of the surveyors, who returned to the Lord Archon with this
The Mercenaries might be recognised by the tattooing on their hands: the old soldiers of Antiochus displayed a sparrow-hawk; those who had served in Egypt, the head of the cynosephalus; those who had served with the princes of Asia, a hatchet, a pomegranate, or a hammer; those who had served in the Greek republics, the side-view of a citadel or the name of an archon; and some were to be seen whose arms were entirely covered with these multiplied symbols, which mingled with their scars and their recent wounds.
Hence, they say, the comic poets gave his family the name of Laccopluti, or enriched by the ditch, alluding to the place where Callias found the gold. Aristides, immediately after this, was archon; although Demetrius, the Phalerian, says he held the office a little before he died, after the battle of Plataea.
He first became known as a writer of love poems; then came into prominence as a successful military commander of volunteer forces in a disastrous war; and at last he gained the confidence of his countrymen so completely that in a period of anarchy, distress, and mutiny, the poor being so grievously oppressed by the rich that a sixth part of the produce of land went to the landlord, he was chosen archon, with authority to revise the laws, and might have made himself king.
When Codrus had been buried, therefore, the Athenians gave his son and heir the government of the city, calling him archon, or chief for life, a title which was borne by many rulers after him.
The commanding functions of the archon were destroyed, and he only retained power to hear complaints, and fix the day of trial, and preside over the dikastic assembly.
Since such, then, was the organization of the constitution, and the many were in slavery to the few, the people rose against the upper class. The strife was keen, and for a long time the two parties were ranged in hostile camps against one another, till at last, by common consent, they appointed Solon to be mediator and Archon, and committed the whole constitution to his hands.
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