16.1
Of his power there can be no doubt, since Thucydides gives so clear an exposition of it, and the comic poets unwittingly reveal it even in their malicious gibes, calling him and his associates new Peisistratidae, and urging him to take solemn oath not to make himself a tyrant, on the plea, forsooth, that his preeminence was incommensurate with a democracy and too oppressive.
16.2
Telecleides saysIn a play of unknown name. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 220. that the Athenians had handed over to him With the cities’ assessments the cities themselves, to bind or release as he pleases, Their ramparts of stone to build up if he likes, and then to pull down again straightway, Their treaties, their forces, their might, peace, and riches, and all the fair gifts of good fortune. And this was not the fruit of a golden moment, nor the culminating popularity of an administration that bloomed but for a season; nay rather he stood first for forty yearsReckoning roundly from 469 to 429 B.C. among such men as Ephialtes, Leocrates, Myronides, Cimon, Tolmides, and Thucydides,
