Hipparchus had conceived a personal ill–will towards an Athenian citizen named Harmodius, which he vented by insulting publicly the offender’s sister. Another citizen, Aristogiton, had reasons of his own for wishing ill to Hipparchus: he stimulated his friend Harmodius to a keener sense of the injury, and they resolved to wash away their wrongs in blood. But few associates were admitted to the knowledge of their plot, which was to be executed at the Panathenaic festival, when it was usual for all persons to appear in arms. Hipparchus alone was personally offensive; but to dissolve the tyranny, and to secure themselves from retribution, Hippias was to be involved in his brother’s fate. On the morning of the festival, while Hippias, attended by his guards, was in the Ceramicus,[172] ordering the procession, Harmodius and Aristogiton saw one of the conspirators conversing with him familiarly, “for Hippias was accessible to all.” Thinking themselves betrayed, they resolved, at least, to take vengeance on the more obnoxious party, and hastened to seek Hipparchus, whom they slew. Harmodius was slain in the tumult which ensued. Aristogiton escaped for a time, but was soon after taken and put to death.
The news being brought instantly to Hippias before others had heard it, he dissembled his emotion, and bade the citizens repair to a certain spot without their arms, as if he wished to address them previous to the procession. He then summoned his guard, and selected from the assembled multitude all whom he suspected, or found armed with daggers, a weapon not generally worn by those celebrating the festival. Thus for the present he preserved his power; but his temper was changed by the danger which he had escaped, and his government became jealous and intolerable. Many were slain, and many fled to join the exiled Alemæonidæ, whose cause became daily more popular at Athens, and throughout the rest of Greece, until at length they gained strength sufficient to enable them, with the assistance of Lacedæmon, to lay siege to Hippias in Athens, in the fourth year after the death of Hipparchus. The city, however, was strong and well provisioned; and he might have baffled their patience, but for a fortunate chance which threw his children, with those of his leading partisans, into the hands of the assailants. Parental anxiety prevailed, and the town surrendered, on condition that the obnoxious should receive no injury, but should quit Attica within five days. Hippias retired to Sigeum. When advanced in years, he accompanied the armament of Darius in hope of recovering his sovereignty; it was he that counselled its descent upon the plain of Marathon, where once before he had landed under a better star, and he is reported by Cicero to have been slain in the memorable battle which ensued.[173]
After the expulsion of Hippias, the memory of Harmodius and Aristogiton was hallowed by the Athenians in every way which the imagination of a grateful people could devise. Brazen statues were erected in honour of them (by the side of which, in after–times, those of Brutus and Cassius were placed), their descendants were gifted in perpetuity with the privilege of eating in the Prytaneum[174] at the public cost, with select places at the public spectacles, and with immunity from taxes: their names, forbidden to be borne by slaves, were ordered to be celebrated at all future Panathenaic festivals: and if the orators of Athens wished to find a theme agreeable to national vanity, it was to the praises of the tyrant–killers, or the events of the Persian war, that they resorted. Yet, after all these tributes of admiration, it is asserted by Æschines, that “a temperate and governed feeling so modified the character of those benefactors of the state, men supereminent in all virtues, that those who have panegyrised their deeds do yet appear therein to have fallen short of the things performed by them.” This extravagant, or probably pretended, enthusiasm may be endured, though not commended, as a privilege assumed by advocates and public speakers in all ages: but we cannot extend the same toleration to Simonides, who had benefited by the friendship and liberality of the deceased, when he asserts “that a light broke upon Athens when Harmodius and Aristogiton slew Hipparchus.” Their exploit was a favourite subject of the odes[175] with which the musical Athenians enlivened their entertainments, one of which, composed by Callistratus, has been preserved, and is esteemed among the noblest specimens of the lyric muse of Greece.
I’ll wreath my sword in myrtle bough,
The sword that laid the tyrant low,
When patriots, burning to be free,
To Athens gave equality.
Harmodius, hail! though reft of breath,
Thou ne’er shalt feel the stroke of death;
The heroes’ happy isles[176] shall be
The bright abode allotted thee.
I’ll wreathe the sword in myrtle bough,
The sword that laid Hipparchus low,
When at Minerva’s adverse fane
He knelt, and never rose again.
While Freedom’s name is understood,
You shall delight the wise and good;
You dared to set your country free,
And gave her laws equality.[177]
Nevertheless there seems not to be the smallest ground for supposing that the actors in this tragedy were guided by patriotic motives. The authors who speak of it vary somewhat in the circumstances which they relate, but all agree that it was a private quarrel, a personal offence, which inspired their resolution and their hatred. Many have been the instances in which the wantonness of power exercised on an individual has proved fatal to men who have trampled unopposed upon the liberties of their country, as if it were beneficially ordained that the vices of individuals should work out the general good.
But though this conspiracy can in no respect be regarded as the proximate cause of the re–establishment of democracy; though neither its motives nor its effects, so far as we can judge after the long lapse of ages, merit the encomiums which have been showered on them so profusely, it nevertheless affected vitally the interests of Athens, and, through her, of the civilised world. The mind need indeed be far–sighted and acute which presumes to trace the changes which a single deviation from the ordained course of events would have produced; yet it is neither uninteresting nor uninstructive to consider in what way a nation’s destiny might have been modified, and to observe the natural connexion by which crime results from intemperance and injustice, misfortune and misconduct from crime; while the melancholy series is still overruled to restore freedom to an injured people, and to punish the ambition which produced such fatal effects. From the apparently uninterrupted content which prevailed at Athens during a period of twenty–four years, from the last return of Pisistratus to the death of Hipparchus, there is good reason to believe that, but for private enmity, the brothers might have borne uninterrupted sway for the natural period of their lives. That of Hippias was prolonged for twenty–three years; making a sufficient period in the whole to have habituated the Athenians to usurpation, and to have enabled him to transfer the sceptre to his children as easily as he received it from his father. Athens, thus converted, like the Ionian cities, into a tyranny,[178] would probably have offered no more effectual progress than they did to the Persian power, and without her assistance all Greece would have fallen under the dominion of the King.[179] To pursue the subject further would be both rash and useless: it is obvious that such an event would have exercised a most powerful influence over the subsequent history of mankind: to define that influence would be difficult to the most penetrating and comprehensive understanding, and the attempt would be presumption here.