Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/134

 116 HISTORY OF GREECE. other anecdotes, 1 not the less eagerly believed because they could not be authenticated, respecting this eventful period. Whatever may have been the moderation of Hippias before, indignation at the death of his brother, and fear for his own safety, 2 now induced him to drop it altogether. It is attested both by Thucydides and Herodotus, and admits of no doubt, that his power was now employed harshly and cruelly, that he put to death a considerable number of citizens. We find also a statement, noway improbable in itself, and affirmed both in Pau- sanias and in Plutarch, inferior authorities, yet still in this case sufficiently credible, that he caused Lecena, the mistress of Aristogeiton, to be tortured to death, in order to extort from her a knowledge of the secrets and accomplices of the latter. 3 But as he could not but be sensible that this system of terrorism was full of peril to himself, so he looked out for shelter and support in case of being expelled from Athens ; and with this view he sought to connect himself with Darius king of Persia, a con- nection full of consequences to be hereafter developed. JEan- tides, son of Hippoklus the despot of Lampsakus on the Hellespont, stood high at this time in the favor of the Persian monarch, which induced Hippias to give him his daughter Arcli- edike in marriage ; no small honor to the Lampsakene, in the estimation of Thucydides. 4 To explain how Hippias came to fix upon this town, however, it is necessary to say a few words on the foreign policy of the Peisistratids. 1 One of these stories may he seen in Justin, ii, 9, who gives the name of Diokles to Hipparchus, " Diodes, alter ex filiis, per vim stuprata vif gine, a fratre puelloe interficitur." 8 'H -yap dst/.ia QOVIKUTCITOV IOTIV h> rate rvpavvlaiv observes Plutanti, (Artaxerxes, c. 25). 3 Pausan. i, 23, 2 ; Plutarch, De Garrulitate, p. 897 ; Polyasn. viii, 45 ; Athenams, xiii, p. 596. 4 We can hardly be mistaken in putting this interpretation on the words of Thucydides 'Atf^vatof uv, Aa^aKTivu iduKE (vi, 59). Some financial tricks and frauds are ascribed to Hippias by the author of the Pseudo-Aristotelian second book of the (Economica (ii 4). I place little reliance on the statements in this treatise respecting persons of early date, such as Kypselus or Hippias : in respect to facts of the subsequent period of Greece, between 450-300 B.C., the author's means of infomiatioB will doubtless render him a better witness.