Meanwhile, Isagoras, thus defeated by his rival, had the mean ambition to appeal to the Spartan sword.

Ancient scandal attributes to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, an improper connexion with the wife of Isagoras, and every one knows that the fondest friend of the cuckold is invariably the adulterer;--the national policy of founding aristocracies was doubtless, however, a graver motive with the Spartan king than his desire to assist Isagoras.

Cleomenes by a public herald proclaimed the expulsion of Clisthenes, upon a frivolous pretence that the Alcmaeonidae were still polluted by the hereditary sacrilege of Cylon.

Clisthenes privately retired from the city, and the Spartan king, at the head of an inconsiderable troop, re-entered Athens-- expelled, at the instance of Isagoras, seven hundred Athenian families, as inculpated in the pretended pollution of Clisthenes-- dissolved the senate--and committed all the offices of the state to an oligarchy of three hundred (a number and a council founded upon the Dorian habits), each of whom was the creature of Isagoras.

But the noble assembly he had thus violently dissolved refused obedience to his commands; they appealed to the people, whom the valour of liberty simultaneously aroused, and the citadel, of which Isagoras and the Spartans instantly possessed themselves, was besieged by the whole power of Athens.