Herodotus, Histories 1.59.6 · 1.59.6

The coup itself takes Herodotus one verb, eschon, "they seized," and he spends far more words on what Peisistratus did not do than on the seizure itself. Oute timas tas eousas syntaraxas, "disturbing neither the existing offices," and oute thesmia metallaxas, "nor changing the laws": two negatives in a row, each one a thing a new tyrant could have done and chose not to. The old magistracies stay, the old statutes stay, and Herodotus names both so the reader cannot mistake the restraint for an accident.

The closing phrase, kosmeōn kalōs te kai eu, "ordering it fairly and well," uses kosmeōn, the verb behind kosmos, the Greek word for an ordered, beautiful arrangement of things, the same root that gives the universe its name. Herodotus is not praising Peisistratus by accident; he is setting up a contrast the rest of the Peisistratid story will test, a seizure of power followed immediately by competent, careful government. The city he governs epi toisi katestēosi, "according to the established order," is Athens functioning normally under a man who took it by a trick, and that paradox is exactly what Herodotus wants on the record before the factions turn on him again.

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