Peisistratos

Born around 600 BC, Peisistratos ruled Athens in broken stretches - the late 560s, the early 550s, then continuously from 546 until his death in 527. His power rested on confronting the old families: he confiscated aristocratic lands and redistributed them, an early play for the lower classes that prefigures later populism. He unified Attica, the triangle of Greece that holds Athens, and poured money into religious and artistic programs to spread wealth and employ citizens. In 566 he founded the Panathenaic Games, and under his watch came the first organized attempt to fix a standard text of Homer's epics. His sons Hipparchus and Hippias inherited the rule and held it until 510, the three together known as the Pisistratids. What he left behind was an Athens richer, more cohesive, and positioned for the pre-eminence it would claim in the century after his death.