During the Peloponnesian War, an group of vandals went around
Athens knocking the phalluses off Hermes - the steles with the
head and phallus of the God Hermes which were often outside houses.
This incident, which lead to suspicions of the Athenian general
Alciabiades, provided Thucydided with a spring board to recount
the story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, two homosexual lovers
credited by the Athenians with overthrowing tyranny.
There they found the Salaminia come from Athens for Alcibiades,
with orders for him to sail home to answer the charges which the
state brought against him, and for certain others of the soldiers
who with him were accused of sacrilege in the matter of the mysteries
and of the Hermae. For the Athenians, after the departure of the
expedition, had continued as active as ever in investigating the
facts of the mysteries and of the Hermae, and, instead of testing
the informers, in their suspicious temper welcomed all indifferently,
arresting and imprisoning the best citizens upon the evidence
of rascals, and preferring to sift the matter to the bottom sooner
than to let an accused person of good character pass unquestioned,
owing to the rascality of the informer. The commons had heard
how oppressive the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons had become
before it ended, and further that that had been put down at last,
not by themselves and Harmodius, but by the Lacedaemonians, and
so were always in fear and took everything suspiciously.
Indeed, the daring action of Aristogiton and Harmodius
was undertaken in consequence of a love affair, which I shall
relate at some length, to show that the Athenians are not more
accurate than the rest of the world in their accounts of their
own tyrants and of the facts of their own history. Pisistratus
dying at an advanced age in possession of the tyranny, was succeeded
by his eldest son, Hippias, and not Hipparchus, as is vulgarly
believed. Harmodius was then in the flower of youthful beauty,
and Aristogiton, a citizen in the middle rank of life, was his
lover and possessed him. Solicited without success by Hipparchus,
son of Pisistratus, Harmodius told Aristogiton, and the enraged
lover, afraid that the powerful Hipparchus might take Harmodius
by force, immediately formed a design, such as his condition in
life permitted, for overthrowing the tyranny. In the meantime
Hipparchus, after a second solicitation of Harmodius, attended
with no better success, unwilling to use violence, arranged to
insult him in some covert way. Indeed, generally their government
was not grievous to the multitude, or in any way odious in practice;
and these tyrants cultivated wisdom and virtue as much as any,
and without exacting from the Athenians more than a twentieth
of their income, splendidly adorned their city, and carried on
their wars, and provided sacrifices for the temples. For the rest,
the city was left in full enjoyment of its existing laws, except
that care was always taken to have the offices in the hands of
some one of the family. Among those of them that held the yearly
archonship at 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 market-place, and
that of Apollo in the Pythian precinct. The Athenian people afterwards
built on to and lengthened the altar in the market-place, 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.
[…Thucydides returns to the story of Alciabides…]
Source.
From: Thucydides: Peloponnesian War
This text is part of the Internet
History Sourcebooks Project. The Sourcebooks are collections of public domain and
copy-permitted texts related to all aspects of history.
Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright.
Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational
purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No
permission is granted for commercial use.
© Paul Halsall, 2023
