History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗
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Athens was Pisistratus, son of the tyrant Hippias, and named after his
grandfather, who dedicated during his term of office the altar to
the twelve gods in the marketplace, and that of Apollo in the Pythian
precinct. The Athenian people afterwards built on to and lengthened
the altar in the marketplace, and obliterated the inscription; but
that in the Pythian precinct can still be seen, though in faded
letters, and is to the following effect:
Pisistratus, the son of Hippias,
Sent up this record of his archonship
In precinct of Apollo Pythias.
That Hippias was the eldest son and succeeded to the government,
is what I positively assert as a fact upon which I have had more exact
accounts than others, and may be also ascertained by the following
circumstance. He is the only one of the legitimate brothers that
appears to have had children; as the altar shows, and the pillar
placed in the Athenian Acropolis, commemorating the crime of the
tyrants, which mentions no child of Thessalus or of Hipparchus, but
five of Hippias, which he had by Myrrhine, daughter of Callias, son of
Hyperechides; and naturally the eldest would have married first.
Again, his name comes first on the pillar after that of his father;
and this too is quite natural, as he was the eldest after him, and the
reigning tyrant. Nor can I ever believe that Hippias would have
obtained the tyranny so easily, if Hipparchus had been in power when
he was killed, and he, Hippias, had had to establish himself upon
the same day; but he had no doubt been long accustomed to overawe
the citizens, and to be obeyed by his mercenaries, and thus not only
conquered, but conquered with ease, without experiencing any of the
embarrassment of a younger brother unused to the exercise of
authority. It was the sad fate which made Hipparchus famous that got
him also the credit with posterity of having been tyrant.
To return to Harmodius; Hipparchus having been repulsed in his
solicitations insulted him as he had resolved, by first inviting a
sister of his, a young girl, to come and bear a basket in a certain
procession, and then rejecting her, on the plea that she had never
been invited at all owing to her unworthiness. If Harmodius was
indignant at this, Aristogiton for his sake now became more
exasperated than ever; and having arranged everything with those who
were to join them in the enterprise, they only waited for the great
feast of the Panathenaea, the sole day upon which the citizens forming
part of the procession could meet together in arms without
suspicion. Aristogiton and Harmodius were to begin, but were to be
supported immediately by their accomplices against the bodyguard.
The conspirators were not many, for better security, besides which
they hoped that those not in the plot would be carried away by the
example of a few daring spirits, and use the arms in their hands to
recover their liberty.
At last the festival arrived; and Hippias with his bodyguard was
outside the city in the Ceramicus, arranging how the different parts
of the procession were to proceed. Harmodius and Aristogiton had
already their daggers and were getting ready to act, when seeing one
of their accomplices talking familiarly with Hippias, who was easy
of access to every one, they took fright, and concluded that they were
discovered and on the point of being taken; and eager if possible to
be revenged first upon the man who had wronged them and for whom
they had undertaken all this risk, they rushed, as they were, within
the gates, and meeting with Hipparchus by the Leocorium recklessly
fell upon him at once, infuriated, Aristogiton by love, and
Harmodius by insult, and smote him and slew him. Aristogiton escaped
the guards at the moment, through the crowd running up, but was
afterwards taken and dispatched in no merciful way: Harmodius was
killed on the spot.
When the news was brought to Hippias in the Ceramicus, he at once
proceeded not to the scene of action, but to the armed men in the
procession, before they, being some distance away, knew anything of
the matter, and composing his features for the occasion, so as not
to betray himself, pointed to a certain spot, and bade them repair
thither without their arms. They withdrew accordingly, fancying he had
something to say; upon which he told the mercenaries to remove the
arms, and there and then picked out the men he thought guilty and
all found with daggers, the shield and spear being the usual weapons
for a procession.
In this way offended love first led Harmodius and Aristogiton to
conspire, and the alarm of the moment to commit the rash action
recounted. After this the tyranny pressed harder on the Athenians, and
Hippias, now grown more fearful, put to death many of the citizens,
and at the same time began to turn his eyes abroad for a refuge in
case of revolution. Thus, although an Athenian, he gave his
daughter, Archedice, to a Lampsacene, Aeantides, son of the tyrant
of Lampsacus, seeing that they had great influence with Darius. And
there is her tomb in Lampsacus with this inscription:
Archedice lies buried in this earth,
Hippias her sire, and Athens gave her birth;
Unto her bosom pride was never known,
Though daughter, wife, and sister to the throne.
Hippias, after reigning three years longer over the Athenians, was
deposed in the fourth by the Lacedaemonians and the banished
Alcmaeonidae, and went with a safe conduct to Sigeum, and to Aeantides
at Lampsacus, and from thence to King Darius; from whose court he
set out twenty years after, in his old age, and came with the Medes to
Marathon.
With these events in their minds, and recalling everything they knew
by hearsay on the subject, the Athenian people grow difficult of
humour and suspicious of the persons charged in the affair of the
mysteries, and persuaded that all that had taken place was part of
an oligarchical and monarchical conspiracy. In the state of irritation
thus produced, many persons of consideration had been already thrown
into prison, and far from showing any signs of abating, public feeling
grew daily more savage, and more arrests were made; until at last
one of those in custody, thought to be the most guilty of all, was
induced by a fellow prisoner to make a revelation, whether true or not
is a matter on which there are two opinions, no one having been
able, either then or since, to say for certain who did the deed.
However this may be, the other found arguments to persuade him, that
even if he had not done it, he ought to save himself by gaining a
promise of impunity, and free the state of its present suspicions;
as he would be surer of safety if he confessed after promise of
impunity than if he denied and were brought to trial. He accordingly
made a revelation, affecting himself and others in the affair of the
Hermae; and the Athenian people, glad at last, as they supposed, to
get at the truth, and furious until then at not being able to discover
those who had conspired against the commons, at once let go the
informer and all the rest whom he had not denounced, and bringing
the accused to trial executed as many as were apprehended, and
condemned to death such as had fled and set a price upon their
heads. In this it was, after all, not clear whether the sufferers
had been punished unjustly, while in any case the rest of the city
received immediate and manifest relief.
To return to Alcibiades: public feeling was very hostile to him,
being worked on by the same enemies who had attacked him before he
went out; and now that the Athenians fancied that they had got at
the truth of the matter of the Hermae, they believed more firmly
than ever that the affair of the mysteries also, in which he was
implicated, had been contrived by him in the same intention and was
connected with the plot against the democracy. Meanwhile it so
happened that, just at the time of this agitation, a small force of
Lacedaemonians had advanced as far as the Isthmus, in pursuance of
some scheme with the Boeotians. It was now thought that this had
come by appointment, at his instigation, and not on account of the
Boeotians, and that, if the citizens had not acted on the
information received, and forestalled them by arresting the prisoners,
the city would have been betrayed. The citizens went so far as to
sleep one night armed in the temple of Theseus within the walls. The
friends also of Alcibiades at Argos were just at this time suspected
of a design to attack the commons; and the Argive hostages deposited
in the islands were given up by the Athenians to the Argive people
to be put to death upon that account: in short, everywhere something
was found to create suspicion against Alcibiades. It was therefore
decided to bring him to trial and execute him, and the Salaminia was
sent to Sicily for him and the others named in the information, with
instructions to order him to come and answer the charges against
him, but not to arrest him, because they wished to avoid causing any
agitation in the army or among the enemy in Sicily, and above all to
retain the services of the Mantineans and Argives, who, it was
thought, had been induced to join by his influence. Alcibiades, with
his own ship and his fellow accused, accordingly sailed off with the
Salaminia from Sicily, as though to return to Athens, and went with
her as far as Thurii, and there they left the ship and disappeared,
being afraid to go home for trial with such a prejudice existing
against them. The crew of the Salaminia stayed some time looking for
Alcibiades and his companions, and at length, as they were nowhere
to be found, set sail and departed. Alcibiades, now an outlaw, crossed
in a boat not long after from Thurii to Peloponnese; and the Athenians
passed sentence of death by default upon him and those in his company.
_Seventeenth and Eighteenth Years of the War - Inaction of
the Athenian Army - Alcibiades at Sparta - Investment of Syracuse_
The Athenian generals left in Sicily now divided the armament into
two parts, and, each taking one by lot, sailed with the whole for
Selinus and Egesta, wishing to know whether the Egestaeans would
give the money, and to look into the question of Selinus and ascertain
the state of the quarrel between her and Egesta. Coasting along
Sicily, with the shore on their left, on the side towards the Tyrrhene
Gulf they touched at Himera, the only Hellenic city in that part of
the island, and being refused admission resumed their voyage. On their
way they took Hyccara, a petty Sicanian seaport, nevertheless at war
with Egesta, and making slaves of the inhabitants gave up the town
to the Egestaeans, some of whose horse had joined them; after which
the army proceeded through the territory of the Sicels until it
reached Catana, while the fleet sailed along the coast with the slaves
on board. Meanwhile Nicias sailed straight from Hyccara along the
coast and went to Egesta and, after transacting his other business and
receiving thirty talents, rejoined the forces. They now sold their
slaves for the sum of one hundred and twenty talents, and sailed round
to their Sicel allies to urge them to send troops; and meanwhile
went with half their own force to the hostile town of Hybla in the
territory of Gela, but did not succeed in taking it.
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