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Updated: May 18, 2025
Harmodius had a sister who was as good as she was beautiful: so the people, hoping to please him, chose her to carry a basket of flowers in the great religious procession which took place in Athens every year. One of the tyrants, Hipparchus, was very jealous of Harmodius, because the people loved him so much.
The two friends, Harmodius and Aristogiton, who in 514 had formed a conspiracy to rid Athens of her tyrants, but who had succeeded only in killing one of them, came to be regarded after the expulsion of the remaining tyrant and his family in 510 as the liberators of the city.
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.
The custom of Sparta existed also in Crete. Greek legend and history, in fact, resounds with the praises of friends. Achilles and Patroclus, Pylades and Orestes, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Solon and Peisistratus, Socrates and Alcibiades, Epaminondas and Pelopidas, these are names that recall at once all that is highest in the achievement and all that is most romantic in the passion of Greece.
Papias will make us one of straw, rags and gypsum I know his magic hand and in order that the others may not be too unlike their new-born sister they shall be whitewashed." "Capital but why choose Papias when we have Harmodius?" "Harmodius takes art in earnest, and we should have the Emperor here before he had completed his sketches.
But in general the ancient world had regarded liberty as attached to certain political forms; freedom was personified in Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus and Cassius. The true Christian enjoys more real freedom; here below he is an exile; what matters it to him who is the transitory governor of this earth, which is not his home? Liberty for him is truth.
Crusaders not cutting their beards till they found Jerusalem, Jacobins calling each other Harmodius and Epaminondas when their names were Jacques and Jules, these are wild things, but they were done in wild spirits at a wild moment. But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane. For instance, I have a gun license.
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.
Harmodius and Aristogiton did not justify Brutus and Cassius: but neither do Brutus and Cassius criminate Harmodius and Aristogiton. The rule applies till an extreme case occurs; and how can this be proved? I answer, the only proof is success and good event; for these afford the best presumption, first, of the extremity, and secondly, of its remediable nature the two elements of its justification.
"Shame to the feast, where the praises of Harmodius are not sung," said Pericles, smiling, as he looked toward Eudora.
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