kylonian

Alternative spelling of Cylonian.

Of his [Solon’s] early poems hardly anything is preserved; the few lines which remain seem to manifest a jovial temperament which we may well conceive to have been overlaid by the political difficulties against which he had to contend—difficulties arising successively out of the Megarian war, the Kylonian sacrilege, the public despondency healed by Epimenidês, and the task of arbiter between a rapacious oligarchy and a suffering people.

The Kylonian affair bears witness to a subtle but noteworthy transformation: the Athenians were developing from passive members of a social hierarchy into active shareholders in a political community.

Alternative spelling of Cylonian.

There still remained, if not a considerable Kylonian party, at least a large body of persons who resented the way in which the Kylonians bad been put to death, and who became in consequence bitter enemies of Megaklês the archon, and of the great family of the Alkmæônidæ, to which he belonged.

The same process of evolution perhaps is discernible in two other signs of territorial awareness in this general period: the boundaries of Attika sworn to be guarded by the ephēboi and the decision of the Athenians to cast the bodies of deceased Alkmeonids, the family polluted by their role in the murder of the Kylonians, “beyond the borders” of Attika (hyper tous horous: Plut. Sol. 12.3, cf. Ath. Pol. 1).