History of the Peloponnesian War

The Lacedaemonians maintained their hegemony without keeping their allies tributary to them, but took care that these should have an oligarchical form of government conformably to the sole interest of Sparta; the Athenians, on the other hand, maintained theirs by taking over in course of time the ships of the allied cities, with the exception of Chios[*](Cf. 6.85.2, 7.57.4) and Lesbos,[*](Lost its independence after the revolt of 427 B.C., cf. Thuc. 3.1.) and by imposing on them all a tax of money. And so the individual resources of the Athenians available for this war became greater than those of themselves and their allies when that alliance was still unimpaired and strongest.

Now the state of affairs in early times I have found to have been such as I have described, although it is difficult in such matters to credit any and every piece of testimony. For men accept from one another hearsay reports of former events, neglecting to test them just the same,[*](i.e., as if they took place in some distant land.) even though these events belong to the history of their own country.

Take the Athenians, for example; most of them think that Hipparchus was tyrant when he was slain by Harmodius and Aristogeiton.[*](514 B.C. On this digression, cf. Hdt. 5.55; 6.123; Aristot. Ath. Pol. 17.)They do not know that it was Hippias, as the eldest of the sons of Peisistratus, who was ruler, and that Hipparchus and Thessalus were merely his brothers; further, that Harmodius and Aristogeiton, suspecting, on that very day and at the very moment of executing their plan, that information had been conveyed to Hippias by one of their fellow-conspirators, held off from him as forewarned, but wishing to do something before they were seized and then take their chances, fell in with Hipparchus, who was marshalling the Panathenaic procession near the sanctuary called Leocorium,[*](In the inner Ceramicus near the temple of Apollo Patrous.) and killed him.