city hearth, and appointed the "founder," to establish the new settlement with appropriate religious rites and to distribute the mixed inhabitants, who thronged in from all sides, into artificial tribes and gentes, after the fashion of Greek society. The colonists ceased absolutely to be citizens in their old home, and the new city enjoyed complete independence. Each colony recognized its religious and social obligations to its "metropolis," but neither mother nor daughter city thought of converting the relation into a political union. Corinth for a time. made an exception; that city did retain some political supremacy over its colonies. And Athens in a later period adopted another form of colonization, of which we shall have occasion to speak (§§ 133, 190).

106. Distribution of Colonies. The map shows the distribution of the colonies. To the east, some sixty settlements fringed the Black Sea and its straits; on the west, Sicily and southern Italy became almost wholly Greek, taking the proud name of Magna Graecia. The one city of Chalcis (in Euboea) founded thirty-two colonies in Thrace. Among the more important cities established in this period were Syracuse in Sicily, Tarentum in Italy, Corcyra in the Adriatic, Massilia (Marseilles) in Gaul, Olynthus in Thrace, Cyrene in Africa, and Byzantium on the Bosphorus. No one of the scores of these colonies was an inland settlement.

REFERENCES FOR FURTHER READING. Oman, ch. vi.; Holm, I. 272– 294; Abbott, I. chs. iv. and xi.; Greenidge, 36-45; Curtius, I. 432-500. See Freeman's Greater Greece and Greater Britain for a comparison with modern colonies.

SPECIAL REPORT.

The method of founding colonies, illustrated by

the story of some particular foundation.

V. THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION.

107. The Kings overthrown by the Chiefs. During the obscure period the old "kings" disappeared from every Greek city except Sparta and Argos; and in those the Homeric king

ship was modified. Religious feeling determined the general character of the change. An Homeric king had had the triple functions of priest, judge, and war chief. Plainly, the last could least safely be left to the accident of birth; accordingly, it was this function that was first made elective. Then, as judicial work increased, with the more complex city life, special judges were chosen to take over that part of the king's work. The priestly dignity (powerless of itself, and connected most closely with family descent) was left longest a matter of inheritance: in some cities we find a "king-archon" (basileus archon) for city priest, from the old royal family, long after all other sign of royalty had vanished; and in democratic Athens, all through her later history, the same title of kingarchon was given to the elected city priest.

This was the general order, then, of the change by which the rule of the king became the rule of "the few." The process was gradual and commonly peaceful. The means and occasion. varied. A disputed succession, the dying out of a royal line, a minor or a weak king, -any of these conditions would make it easy for the nobles to encroach upon the royal power.1

108. The Oligarchies overthrown by the Tyrants. The origin of the oligarchies varied. The original aristocratic or oligarchic element consisted of the council of clan elders. But sometimes the families of a few greater chiefs had come to overshadow the rest; sometimes, possibly, the various branches of one royal clan established their rule; in places, groups of conquering families ruled the descendants of the conquered; sometimes, perhaps, wealth helped to draw the line between "the few" and "the many," though the distinction was always based fundamentally upon blood. Whatever the exact principle of division, there was in all Greek cities a sharp line between two classes—one calling itself "the few," "the good," "the noble," and another called by these "the many," "the bad," "the base." "The few had succeeded the kings. "The

1 For instances, see Coulanges' Ancient City, 238, 239, and 316.

many" were oppressed and misgoverned, and began to clamor for relief. They were too ignorant as yet to govern themselves or to maintain themselves against the more intelligent and better united "few." The way was prepared for them by the tyrants.

109. The Tyrants pave the Way for Democracies. - Everywhere in city Greece, about 700 B.C., these tyrants sprang up,' often several times, at short intervals, in the same city. In the outlying parts of Hellas they were a common phenomenon through all the later history, but by the year 500 they had disappeared from the main peninsula, and so the two centuries from 700 to 500 B.c. are called the "Age of Tyrants."

A tyrant in Greek history is simply a man who by force seizes or holds royal power. Arbitrary rule was hateful to all Greeks, and the murder of a tyrant seemed a virtuous act. Sometimes, too, the selfish and wanton indulgence of such rulers justified the detestation that clings to the name. But at the worst the tyrants seem to have been a necessary evil, to break down the greater evil of the selfish, anarchic oligarchies; and many of them were generous, far-sighted, beneficent rulers, building public works, developing trade, patronizing art and literature. The tyrant was made possible by the strife between the ruling few and the oppressed many, and he always appeared as champion of the democracy. Sometimes he was a noble opposed by his order; sometimes by birth

man of the people. At Argos, King Pheidon massacred the nobles and made himself tyrant, without the city passing through a complete oligarchic stage.

The tyrants surrounded themselves with mercenaries, but they sought also to keep the favor of the masses, who had helped them to the throne. The nobles they could not conciliate; these they burdened with taxes, oppressed, exiled, and murdered in great numbers. The story goes that Periander, tyrant of Corinth, sent to the tyrant of Miletus, to ask

1 Sparta was the only city that did not have a tyrant at this period.