A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

3. HIPPONICUS II., surnamed Ammon, son of Callias I., is said to have increased his wealth considerably by the treasures of a Persian general, which had been entrusted to Diomnestus, a man of Eretria, on the first invasion of that place by the Persians. The invading army being all destroyed Diomnestus kept the money; but his heirs, on the second Persian invasion, transmitted it to Hipponicus at Athens, and with him it ultimately remained, as all the captive Eretrians (comp. Hdt. 6.118) were sent to Asia. This story is given by Athenaeus (xii. pp. 536, f., 537, a.) on the authority of Heracleides of Pontus; but it is open to much suspicion from its inconsistency with the account of Herodotus, who mentions only one invasion of Eretria, and that a successful one B. C. 490. (Hdt. 6.99-101.) Possibly the anecdote, like that of Callias λακκότλουτος below, was one of the modes in which the gossips of Athens accounted for the large fortune of the family.