Herodotus, Histories 1.59.3 · 1.59.3
Peisistratus and the three factions
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οὔκων ταῦτα παραινέσαντος Χίλωνος πείθεσθαι θέλειν τὸν Ἱπποκράτεα· γενέσθαι οἱ μετὰ ταῦτα τὸν Πεισίστρατον τοῦτον, ὃς στασιαζόντων τῶν παράλων καὶ τῶν ἐκ τοῦ πεδίου Ἀθηναίων, καὶ τῶν μὲν προεστεῶτος Μεγακλέος τοῦ Ἀλκμέωνος, τῶν δὲ ἐκ τοῦ πεδίου Λυκούργου Ἀριστολαΐδεω, καταφρονήσας τὴν τυραννίδα ἤγειρε τρίτην στάσιν· συλλέξας δὲ στασιώτας καὶ τῷ λόγῳ τῶν ὑπερακρίων προστὰς μηχανᾶται τοιάδε.
Hippocrates was not willing to follow this advice of Chilon's; and after this there was born to him this Peisistratus, who, when the Athenians of the coast were feuding with those of the plain, the one led by Megacles son of Alcmeon, the other, of the plain, by Lycurgus son of Aristolaides, set his sights on the tyranny and raised up a third faction. Gathering partisans and giving himself out as the champion of the Hill-men, he contrives the following scheme.
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The setting
Hippocrates ignored Chilon's warning; his son Peisistratus grows up into an Athens already split between the Coast, led by Megacles, and the Plain, led by Lycurgus, and raises a third faction of his own.
A note on this passage
Herodotus drops Chilon's warning in one clause and moves straight to the birth it failed to prevent: egeneto, "there was born," arrives almost as a punishment for not listening. The Athens that Peisistratus is born into is already carved into two camps by geography and by family name, paralōn, "the coast," against the men "from the plain," each with its own leader, Megacles of the Alcmaeonids and Lycurgus son of Aristolaides. Herodotus names both leaders and both lands before he lets Peisistratus do anything, so the reader understands exactly what kind of city a third man could hope to split open.
The verb for what Peisistratus wants is kataphronēsas, built on the same root that elsewhere means "look down on, despise," but here governing an accusative instead of its usual genitive, a small grammatical signal that something has shifted: he is not despising the tyranny, he has set his mind on it. His tool is the hyperakrioi, the "Hill-men," people living above the plain whom nobody else had bothered to organize into a faction. Herodotus flags the trick with a single phrase, tōi logōi, "in word," the historian's own way of saying "so he claimed": Peisistratus is not really their champion, only naming himself one, and what Herodotus calls toiade, "the following," is about to show exactly how little that distinction will matter.
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