57.
The day of the festival arrived, and Hippias went out of the city to the place called the1 Ceramicus, where he was occupied with his guards in marshalling the procession. HarmodiusandAristogiton, who were ready with their daggers, stepped forward to do the deed.
[2]
But seeing one of the conspirators in familiar conversation with Hippias, who was readily accessible to all, they took alarm, and imagined that they had been betrayed and were on the point of being seized.
[3]
Whereupon they determined to take their revenge first on the man who had outraged them and was the cause of their desperate attempt. So they rushed, just as they were, within the gates. They found Hipparchus near the Leocorium, as it was called, and then and there falling upon him with all the blind fury, one of an injured lover, the other of a man smarting under an insult, they smote and slew him.
[4]
The crowd ran together, and so Aristogiton for the present escaped the guards; but he was afterwards taken and not very gently handled. Harmodius perished on the spot.
1 Harmodius and Aristogiton, suspecting that they have been betrayed, leave Hippias and fall upon Hipparchus. The manner of his and their deaths.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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