Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/133

 GKATKL-'UL RECOLLECTI&N OF THE DEED. H5 ernment 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 thero celebrated as the authors of liberty at Athens, " they slew the despot and gave to Athens equal laws." 1 So inestimable a pres- ent was alone sufficient to enshrine in the minds of the subse- quent democracy those who had sold theii lives to purchase it : and we must farther recollect that the intimate connection be- tween 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 Aristogeiton were afterwards com- memorated 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 mul- tiplied, made his only special exception in favor of this respected lineage. 2 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 neg- lect of Hippias. The same public probably cherished many 1 Sec the words of the song On TOV rvpavvov Kravirriv 'loov&ftavg -' 'A-&t/va<; t~on]<ju.r-qv ap. Athenaeum, xv, p. 691. The epigram of the Kcian Simonides, (Fragm. 132, ed. Bergk ap. Hephffistion. c. 14, p. 26, cd. Gaisf.) implies a similar belief: also, the pas- sages in Plato, Symposion, p. 182, in Aristot. Folit. v, 8, 21, and Arrian, Exped. Alex, iv, 10, 3. 8 Herodot. vi, 109; Demosthen. adv. Leptin. c. 27, p. 495; cont. Meidiam, r. 47, p. 569 ; and the oath prescribed in the Psephism of Demophantus, Andokides, De Mysteriis, p. 13 ; Pliny, H. N. xxxiv, 4-8; Pausan. i, 8, 5; Plcitarch, Aristeides, 27. The statues were carried away from Athens by Xerxes, and restored to the Athenians by Alexander after his conquest of Persia (Arrian, Ex, iii, 14, 16 : Pliny, II. N. xxxiv, 4-8).