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Updated: May 21, 2025
His friend, Aristogiton, was as angry as he; and the two young men, consulting together, decided that as long as these men ruled, the Athenians would be treated badly, and that it would be well to get rid of them soon. Harmodius and Aristogiton, having decided to get rid of the tyrants, told their plans to a few of their friends.
Thus rose and thus terminated that conspiracy which gave to the noblest verse and the most enduring veneration the names of Harmodius and Aristogiton. III. The acutest sharpener of tyranny is an unsuccessful attempt to destroy it to arouse the suspicion of power is almost to compel it to cruelty.
Rhodopis lived to hear of the murder of Hipparchus, the tyrant of Athens, by Harmodius and Aristogiton, and died at last in the arms of her best friends, Theopompus the Milesian and Kallias the Athenian, firm in her belief of the high calling of her countrymen. All Naukratis mourned for her, and Kallias sent a messenger to Susa, to inform the king and Sappho of her death.
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.
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.
The general Athenian public fancy that Hipparchus was tyrant when he fell by the hands of Harmodius and Aristogiton, not knowing that Hippias, the eldest of the sons of Pisistratus, was really supreme, and that Hipparchus and Thessalus were his brothers; and that Harmodius and Aristogiton suspecting, on the very day, nay at the very moment fixed on for the deed, that information had been conveyed to Hippias by their accomplices, concluded that he had been warned, and did not attack him, yet, not liking to be apprehended and risk their lives for nothing, fell upon Hipparchus near the temple of the daughters of Leos, and slew him as he was arranging the Panathenaic procession.
Ever on earth for both of you lives glory, O loved Harmodius, loved Aristogiton, For ye the tyrant slew, And back to Athens ye gave equal laws. When the song had ceased, the dancers, the musicians, the attendant slaves had withdrawn from the hall, dismissed by a whispered order from Antagoras.
Harmodius, Aristogiton they are everywhere but in our hearts! in mine, at least, they shall not perish!
And in the same place: "O Aristogiton! you have betrayed that mercy which used to be shown to offences of this nature, or rather, indeed, you have wholly destroyed it. In vain then would you fly for refuge to a port, which you have shut up, and encompassed with rocks."
DR. ANTHON considers them cowardly conspirators, entitled to no heroic honors. But, as he says, statues were erected to them at the public expense; and when an orator wished to suggest the idea of the highest merit and of the noblest services to the cause of liberty, he never failed to remind his hearers of Harmodius and Aristogiton.
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