everything between the Halys and the sea, stopped not till he had
reduced the cities of the coast; the islands being only left to be
subdued by Darius and the Phoenician navy.
Again, wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing
simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and
family aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy,
and prevented anything great proceeding from them; though they would
each have their affairs with their immediate neighbours. All this is
only true of the mother country, for in Sicily they attained to very
great power. Thus for a long time everywhere in Hellas do we find
causes which make the states alike incapable of combination for
great and national ends, or of any vigorous action of their own.
But at last a time came when the tyrants of Athens and the far older
tyrannies of the rest of Hellas were, with the exception of those in
Sicily, once and for all put down by Lacedaemon; for this city, though
after the settlement of the Dorians, its present inhabitants, it
suffered from factions for an unparalleled length of time, still at
a very early period obtained good laws, and enjoyed a freedom from
tyrants which was unbroken; it has possessed the same form of
government for more than four hundred years, reckoning to the end of
the late war, and has thus been in a position to arrange the affairs
of the other states. Not many years after the deposition of the
tyrants, the battle of Marathon was fought between the Medes and the
Athenians. Ten years afterwards, the barbarian returned with the
armada for the subjugation of Hellas. In the face of this great
danger, the command of the confederate Hellenes was assumed by the
Lacedaemonians in virtue of their superior power; and the Athenians,
having made up their minds to abandon their city, broke up their
homes, threw themselves into their ships, and became a naval people.
This coalition, after repulsing the barbarian, soon afterwards split
into two sections, which included the Hellenes who had revolted from
the King, as well as those who had aided him in the war. At the end of
the one stood Athens, at the head of the other Lacedaemon, one the
first naval, the other the first military power in Hellas. For a short
time the league held together, till the Lacedaemonians and Athenians
quarrelled and made war upon each other with their allies, a duel into
which all the Hellenes sooner or later were drawn, though some might
at first remain neutral. So that the whole period from the Median
war to this, with some peaceful intervals, was spent by each power
in war, either with its rival, or with its own revolted allies, and
consequently afforded them constant practice in military matters,
and that experience which is learnt in the school of danger.
The policy of Lacedaemon was not to exact tribute from her allies,
but merely to secure their subservience to her interests by
establishing oligarchies among them; Athens, on the contrary, had by
degrees deprived hers of their ships, and imposed instead
contributions in money on all except Chios and Lesbos. Both found
their resources for this war separately to exceed the sum of their
strength when the alliance flourished intact.
Having now given the result of my inquiries into early times, I
grant that there will be a difficulty in believing every particular
detail. The way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of
their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered,
without applying any critical test whatever. 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.