Of these two Athenian citizens,[215] both belonging to the ancient gens called Gephyræi, the former was a beautiful youth, attached to the latter by a mutual friendship and devoted intimacy, which Grecian manners did not condemn. Hipparchus made repeated propositions to Harmodius, which were repelled, but which, on becoming known to Aristogeitôn, excited both his jealousy and his fears lest the disappointed suitor should employ force,—fears justified by the proceedings not unusual with Grecian despots,[216] and by the absence of all legal protection against outrage from such a quarter. Under these feelings, he began to look about, in the best way that he could, for some means of putting down the despotism. Meanwhile Hipparchus, though not entertaining any designs of violence, was so incensed at the refusal of Harmodius, that he could not be satisfied without doing something to insult or humiliate him. In order to conceal the motive from which the insult really proceeded, he offered it, not directly to Harmodius, but to his sister. He caused this young maiden to be one day summoned to take her station in a religious procession as one of the kanêphoræ, or basket carriers, according to the practice usual at Athens; but when she arrived at the place where her fellow-maidens were assembled, she was dismissed with scorn as unworthy of so respectable a function, and the summons addressed to her was disavowed.[217] An insult thus publicly offered filled Harmodius with indignation, and still farther exasperated the feelings of Aristogeitôn: both of them, resolving at all hazards to put an end to the despotism, concerted means for aggression with a few select associates. They awaited the festival of the Great Panathenæa, wherein the body of the citizens were accustomed to march up in armed procession, with spear and shield, to the acropolis; this being the only day on which an armed body could come together without suspicion. The conspirators appeared armed like the rest of the citizens, but carrying concealed daggers besides. Harmodius and Aristogeitôn undertook with their own hands to kill the two Peisistratids, while the rest promised to stand forward immediately for their protection against the foreign mercenaries; and though the whole number of persons engaged was small, they counted upon the spontaneous sympathies of the armed bystanders in an effort to regain their liberties, so soon as the blow should once be struck. The day of the festival having arrived, Hippias, with his foreign body-guard around him, was marshalling the armed citizens for procession, in the Kerameikus without the gates, when Harmodius and Aristogeitôn approached with concealed daggers to execute their purpose. On coming near, they were thunderstruck to behold one of their own fellow-conspirators talking familiarly with Hippias, who was of easy access to every man, and they immediately concluded that the plot was betrayed. Expecting to be seized, and wrought up to a state of desperation, they resolved at least not to die without having revenged themselves on Hipparchus, whom they found within the city gates near the chapel called the Leôkorion, and immediately slew him. His attendant guards killed Harmodius on the spot; while Aristogeitôn, rescued for the moment by the surrounding crowd, was afterwards taken, and perished in the tortures applied to make him disclose his accomplices.[218]
The news flew quickly to Hippias in the Kerameikus, who heard it earlier than the armed citizens near him, awaiting his order for the commencement of the procession. With extraordinary self-command, he took advantage of this precious instant of foreknowledge, and advanced towards them,—commanding them to drop their arms for a short time, and assemble on an adjoining ground. They unsuspectingly obeyed, and he immediately directed his guards to take possession of the vacant arms. He was now undisputed master, and enabled to seize the persons of all those citizens whom he mistrusted,—especially all those who had daggers about them, which it was not the practice to carry in the Panathenaic procession.
Such is the memorable narrative of Harmodius and Aristogeitôn, peculiarly valuable inasmuch as it all comes from Thucydidês.[219] To possess great power,—to be above legal restraint,—to inspire extraordinary fear,—is a privilege so much coveted by the giants among mankind, that we may well take notice of those cases in which it brings misfortune even upon themselves. The fear inspired by Hipparchus,—of designs which he did not really entertain, but was likely to entertain, and competent to execute without hindrance,—was here the grand cause of his destruction.
The conspiracy here detailed happened in 514 B. C., during the thirteenth year of the reign of Hippias,—which lasted four years longer, until 510 B. C. And these last four years, in the belief of the Athenian public, counted for his whole reign; nay, many of them made the still greater historical mistake of eliding these last four years altogether, and of supposing that the conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogeitôn had deposed the Peisistratid government and liberated Athens. Both poets and philosophers shared this faith, which is distinctly put forth in the beautiful and popular Skolion or song on the subject: the two friends are there celebrated as the authors of liberty at Athens,—“they slew the despot and gave to Athens equal laws.”[220] So inestimable a present was alone sufficient to enshrine in the minds of the subsequent democracy those who had sold their lives to purchase it: and we must farther recollect that the intimate connection between the two, so repugnant to the modern reader, was regarded at Athens with sympathy,—so that the story took hold of the Athenian mind by the vein of romance conjointly with that of patriotism. Harmodius and Aristogeitôn were afterwards commemorated both as the winners and as the protomartyrs of Athenian liberty. Statues were erected in their honor shortly after the final expulsion of the Peisistratids; immunity from taxes and public burdens was granted to the descendants of their families; and the speaker who proposed the abolition of such immunities, at a time when the number had been abusively multiplied, made his only special exception in favor of this respected lineage.[221] And since the name of Hipparchus was universally notorious as the person slain, we discover how it was that he came to be considered by an uncritical public as the predominant member of the Peisistratid family,—the eldest son and successor of Peisistratus,—the reigning despot,—to the comparative neglect of Hippias. The same public probably cherished many other anecdotes,[222] not the less eagerly believed because they could not be authenticated, respecting this eventful period.
Whatever may have been the moderation of Hippias before, indignation at the death of his brother, and fear for his own safety,[223] now induced him to drop it altogether. It is attested both by Thucydidês and Herodotus, and admits of no doubt, that his power was now employed harshly and cruelly,—that he put to death a considerable number of citizens. We find also a statement, noway improbable in itself, and affirmed both in Pausanias and in Plutarch,—inferior authorities, yet still in this case sufficiently credible,—that he caused Leæna, the mistress of Aristogeitôn, to be tortured to death, in order to extort from her a knowledge of the secrets and accomplices of the latter.[224] But as he could not but be sensible that this system of terrorism was full of peril to himself, so he looked out for shelter and support in case of being expelled from Athens; and with this view he sought to connect himself with Darius king of Persia,—a connection full of consequences to be hereafter developed. Æantidês, son of Hippoklus the despot of Lampsakus on the Hellespont, stood high at this time in the favor of the Persian monarch, which induced Hippias to give him his daughter Archedikê in marriage; no small honor to the Lampsakene, in the estimation of Thucydidês.[225] To explain how Hippias came to fix upon this town, however, it is necessary to say a few words on the foreign policy of the Peisistratids.
It has already been mentioned that the Athenians, even so far back as the days of the poet Alkæus, had occupied Sigeium in the Troad, and had there carried on war with the Mityleneans; so that their acquisitions in these regions date much before the time of Peisistratus. Owing probably to this circumstance, an application was made to them in the early part of his reign from the Dolonkian Thracians, inhabitants of the Chersonese on the opposite side of the Hellespont, for aid against their powerful neighbors the Absinthian tribe of Thracians; and opportunity was thus offered for sending out a colony to acquire this valuable peninsula for Athens. Peisistratus willingly entered into the scheme, and Miltiadês son of Kypselus, a noble Athenian, living impatiently under his despotism, was no less pleased to take the lead in executing it: his departure and that of other malcontents as founders of a colony suited the purpose of all parties. According to the narrative of Herodotus,—alike pious and picturesque,—and doubtless circulating as authentic at the annual games which the Chersonesites, even in his time, celebrated to the honor of their œkist,—it is the Delphian god who directs the scheme and singles out the individual. The chiefs of the distressed Dolonkians went to Delphi to crave assistance towards procuring Grecian colonists, and were directed to choose for their œkist the individual who should first show them hospitality on their quitting the temple. They departed and marched all along what was called the Sacred Road, through Phocis and Bœotia to Athens, without receiving a single hospitable invitation; at length they entered Athens, and passed by the house of Miltiadês, while he himself was sitting in front of it. Seeing men whose costume and arms marked them out as strangers, he invited them into his house and treated them kindly: they then apprized him that he was the man fixed upon by the oracle, and abjured him not to refuse his concurrence. After asking for himself personally the opinion of the oracle, and receiving an affirmative answer, he consented; sailing as œkist, at the head of a body of Athenian emigrants, to the Chersonese.[226]
Having reached this peninsula, and having been constituted despot of the mixed Thracian and Athenian population, he lost no time in fortifying the narrow isthmus by a wall reaching all across from Kardia to Paktya, a distance of about four miles and a half; so that the Absinthian invaders were for the time effectually shut out,[227] though the protection was not permanently kept up. He also entered into a war with Lampsakus, on the Asiatic side of the strait, but was unfortunate enough to fall into an ambuscade and become a prisoner. Nothing preserved his life except the immediate interference of Crœsus king of Lydia, coupled with strenuous menaces addressed to the Lampsakenes, who found themselves compelled to release their prisoner; Miltiadês having acquired much favor with this prince, in what manner we are not told. He died childless some time afterwards, while his nephew Stesagoras, who succeeded him, perished by assassination, some time subsequent to the death of Peisistratus at Athens.[228]
The expedition of Miltiadês to the Chersonese must have occurred early after the first usurpation of Peisistratus, since even his imprisonment by the Lampsakenes happened before the ruin of Crœsus, (546 B. C.). But it was not till much later,—probably during the third and most powerful period of Peisistratus,—that the latter undertook his expedition against Sigeium in the Troad. This place appears to have fallen into the hands of the Mityleneans: Peisistratus retook it,[229] and placed there his illegitimate son Hegesistratus as despot. The Mityleneans may have been enfeebled at this time (somewhere between 537-527 B. C.) not only by the strides of Persian conquest on the mainland, but also by the ruinous defeat which they suffered from Polykratês and the Samians.[230] Hegesistratus maintained the place against various hostile attempts, throughout all the reign of Hippias, so that the Athenian possessions in those regions comprehended at this period both the Chersonese and Sigeium.[231] To the former of the two, Hippias sent out Miltiadês, nephew of the first œkist, as governor, after the death of his brother Stesagoras. The new governor found much discontent in the peninsula, but succeeded in subduing it by entrapping and imprisoning the principal men in each town. He farther took into his pay a regiment of five hundred mercenaries, and married Hegesipylê, daughter of the Thracian king Olorus.[232] It appears to have been about 515 B. C. that this second Miltiadês went out to the Chersonese.[233] He seems to have been obliged to quit it for a time, after the Scythian expedition of Darius, in consequence of having incurred the hostility of the Persians; but he was there from the beginning of the Ionic revolt until about 493 B. C., or two or three years before the battle of Marathon, on which occasion we shall find him acting commander of the Athenian army.
Both the Chersonese and Sigeium, though Athenian possessions, were however now tributary and dependent on Persia. And it was to this quarter that Hippias, during his last years of alarm, looked for support in the event of being expelled from Athens: he calculated upon Sigeium as a shelter, and upon Æantidês, as well as Darius, as an ally. Neither the one nor the other failed him.
The same circumstances which alarmed Hippias, and rendered his dominion in Attica at once more oppressive and more odious, tended of course to raise the hopes of his enemies, the Athenian exiles, with the powerful Alkmæônids at their head. Believing the favorable moment to be come, they even ventured upon an invasion of Attica, and occupied a post called Leipsydrion in the mountain range of Parnês, which separates Attica from Bœotia.[234] But their schemes altogether failed: Hippias defeated and drove them out of the country. His dominion now seemed confirmed, for the Lacedæmonians were on terms of intimate friendship with him; and Amyntas king of Macedon, as well as the Thessalians, were his allies. Yet the exiles whom he had beaten in the open field succeeded in an unexpected manœuvre, which, favored by circumstances, proved his ruin.