If unsuccessful in public, he was not discouraged from applying in private to the leaders of the several parties.

Of all those rival nobles, none deferred to his advice with so marked a respect as the smooth and plausible Pisistratus.

Perhaps, indeed, that remarkable man contemplated the same objects as Solon himself,--although the one desired to effect by the authority of the chief, the order and the energy which the other would have trusted to the development of the people.

But, masking his more interested designs, Pisistratus outbid all competition in his seeming zeal for the public welfare.

The softness of his manners--his profuse liberality--his generosity even to his foes--the splendid qualities which induced Cicero to compare him to Julius Cesar [226], charmed the imagination of the multitude, and concealed the selfishness of his views.