History of the Peloponnesian War

The state enjoyed, too, the laws which had been previously enacted, in all other respects, except that they always took care that one of their own family should hold the offices. Amongst others of them who held the yearly archonship at Athens was Pisistratus, son of the Hippias who had been tyrant, who bore his grandfather's name, and dedicated, while archon, the altar to the twelve gods in the market-place, and that of Apollo in the Pythian precinct.

The Athenian people having afterwards made an addition to the length of that in the market-place, obliterated the inscription on the altar; but that in the Pythian precinct is even still visible, though in faded letters, to this purport:

1. Pisistratus, the son of Hippias, here,
2. In Pythian precinct, marked his archon year.

Now that Hippias, as being the eldest son, succeeded to the government, I both positively assert, because I know it by report more accurately than others, and one may also learn it from this very fact. He alone of the legitimate brothers appears to have had children; as both the altar shows, and the pillar commemorating the wrong committed by the tyrants, placed in the Athenian citadel, on which is inscribed the name of no child of Thlessalus, or of Hipparchus, but five of Hippias, who were born to him of Myrrhine, daughter of Callias, son of Hyperechides. For it was natural that the eldest should have married first. And he is the first mentioned [*](ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ στήλῃ.] As I do not think that πρώτῃ can bear the meaning which Arnold, though with great doubt, proposes to give it, and as no other editor professes to understand its force, I have not translated it at all.) on the pillar after his father;