B C. 514.
Ol. 66,3.
Athenians think that Hipparchuswas actually tyrant when
he was slain by Harmodius and Aristogeiton ; they are
not aware that Hippias was the eldest of the sons of Peisistratus, and succeeded him, and that Hipparchus and
Thessalus were only his brothers[1]. At the last moment,
Harmodius and Aristogeiton suddenly suspected that Hip-
pias had been forewarned by some of their accomplices.
They therefore abstained from attacking him, but, wishing
to do something before they were seized, and not to risk
their lives in vain, they slew Hipparchus, with whom they
fell in near the temple called Leocorium as he was
marshalling the Panathenaic procession. There are many
other matters, not obscured by time, but contemporary,
about which the other Hellenes are equally mistaken. For
example, they imagine that the kings of Lacedaemon in
their council have not one but two votes each[2] and that
in the army of the Lacedaemonians there is a division
called the Pitanate division[3]; whereas they never had
anything of the sort. So little trouble do men take in the
search after truth ; so readily do they accept whatever
comes first to hand.
21 Yet any one who upon the grounds which I have given Uncertainty of early history. If estimated by facts the Peloponnesian greater than any preceding war. arrives at some such conclusion as my own about those ancient times, would not be far wrong. He must not be misled by the exaggerated fancies of the poets, or by the tales of chroniclers who seek to please the ear rather than to speak the truth. Their accounts cannot be tested by him ; and most of the facts in the lapse of ages have passed into the region of romance. At such a distance of time he must make up his mind to be satisfied with conclusions resting upon the clearest evidence which can be had. And, though men will always judge any war in which they are actually fighting to be the greatest at the time, but, after it is over, revert to their
