History of the Peloponnesian War

Such then I found to be the early state of things, though it is difficult to trust every proof of it in succession. For men receive alike without examination from each other the reports of past events, even though they may have happened in their own country.

For instance, the mass of the Athenians think that Hipparchus was tyrant when he was slain by Harmodius and Aristogiton; and do not know that Hippias held the government as being the eldest of the sons of Pisistratus, and Hipparchus and Thessalus were his brothers. But Harmodius and Aristogiton having suspected that on that day, and at the very moment, some information had been given to Hippias by their accomplices, abstained from attacking him, as being fore-warned; but as they wished before they were seized to do something even at all hazards, having fallen in with Hipparchus near the Leocorium, as it is called, while arranging the Panathenaic procession, they slew him.

And there are many other things also, even at the present day, and not such as are thrown into oblivion by time, of which the rest of the Greeks too have not correct notions; as, that the kings of the Lacedaemonians do not vote with one vote each, but with two; and that they have a Pitanensian Lochus; which never yet existed. With so little pains is the investigation of truth pursued by most men; and they rather turn to views already formed.