History of the Peloponnesian War

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.

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.