20.
Such then I find to have been the state of things past, hard to be believed, though one produce proof for every particular thereof.
For men receive the report of things, though of their own country if done before their own time, all alike, from one as from another, without examination.
[2]
For the vulgar sort of Athenians think that Hipparchus was the tyrant, and slain by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and know not that Hippias had the government, as being the eldest son of Pisistratus, and that Hipparchus and Thessalus were his brethren;
and that Harmodius and Aristogeiton, suspecting that some of their accomplices had that day and at that instant discovered unto Hippias somewhat of their treason, did forbear Hippias as a man forewarned;
and desirous to effect somewhat, though with danger, before they should be apprehended, lighting on Hipparchus slew him near the temple called Leocorium, whilst he was setting forth the Panathenaical show.
[3]
And likewise divers other things now extant, and which time hath not yet involved in oblivion, have been conceived amiss by other Grecians, as that the kings of Lacedaemon, in giving their suffrages, had not single but double votes, and that Pitanate was a band of soldiers so called there, whereas there was never any such.
So impatient of labour are the most men in search of truth, and embrace soonest the things that are next to hand.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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