History of the Peloponnesian War

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.

There are many other matters, too, belonging to the present and not forgotten through lapse of time, regarding which the other Hellenes[*](Herodotus is doubtless one of the Hellenes here criticized; cf. 6.57, referring to the two votes; 9.53, where he seems to have applied a term belonging to a deme (cf. 3.40) to a division of the army.) as well hold mistaken opinions, for example, that at Lacedaemon the kings cast not one but two votes each, and that the Lacedaemonians have the " Pitana company" in their army, which never at any time existed. So averse to taking pains are most men in the search for the truth, and so prone are they to turn to what lies ready at hand.

Still, from the evidence that has been given, any one would not err who should hold the view that the state of affairs in antiquity was pretty nearly such as I have described it, not giving greater credence to the accounts, on the one hand, which the poets have put into song, adorning and amplifying their theme, and, on the other, which the chroniclers have composed with a view rather of pleasing the ear[*](Public recitation was the ordinary mode of getting the works of the poets and early logographers before the people.) than of telling the truth, since their stories cannot be tested and most of them have from lapse of time won their way into the region of the fabulous so as to be incredible. He should regard the facts as having been made out with sufficient accuracy, on the basis of the clearest indications, considering that they have to do with early times.

And so, even though men are always inclined, while they are engaged in a war, to judge the present one the greatest, but when it is over to regard ancient events with greater wonder, yet this war will prove, for men who judge from the actual facts, to have been more important than any that went before.

As to the speeches that were made by different men, either when they were about to begin the war or when they were already engaged therein, it has been difficult to recall with strict accuracy the words actually spoken, both for me as regards that which I myself heard, and for those who from various other sources have brought me reports. Therefore the speeches are given in the language in which, as it seemed to me, the several speakers would express, on the subjects under consideration, the sentiments most befitting the occasion, though at the same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the general sense of what was actually said.

But as to the facts of the occurrences of the war, I have thought it my duty to give them, not as ascertained from any chance informant nor as seemed to me probable, but only after investigating with the greatest possible accuracy each detail, in the case both of the events in which I myself participated and of those regarding which I got my information from others.

And the endeavour to ascertain these facts was a laborious task, because those who were eye-witnesses of the several events did not give the same reports about the same things, but reports varying according to their championship of one side or the other, or according to their recollection.