Hippias of Elis

“ Pisistratus did marvels for Athens; lifting her out of obscurity to a position which should invite great souls to seek birth in her. He died in 527; two years later a son was born to the Eupatrid Euphorion at Eleusis; and I have no doubt there was some such stir over the event, on Olympus or on Parnassus, as happened over a birth at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, and one in Florence in the May of 1265. In 510, Hippias, grown cruel since the assassination of his brother, was driven out from an Athens already fomenting with the yeast of new things. ”

“ Hippias being their despot and growing ever bitterer in enmity against the Athenians by reason of Hipparchus’ death, the Alcmeonidae, a family of Athenian stock banished by the sons of Pisistratus, essayed with the rest of the banished Athenians to make their way back by force and free Athens, but could not prosper in their return and rather suffered great hurt. ”

“ Hipparchus inherited his father's literary tastes. He invited several distinguished poets, such as Anacreon and Simonides, to his court. The people appear to have been contented with their rule; and it was only an accidental circumstance which led to their overthrow and to a change in the government.
Their fall was occasioned by the conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogiton, who were attached to each other by a most intimate friendship. Harmodius having given offence to Hippias, the despot revenged himself by putting a public affront upon his sister. ”

“ Every day they exhibit a fiercer spirit—proofs of which have been already experienced by the Boeotians, the Chalcidians, and may speedily extend to others, unless they take in time wise and salutary precautions. We have erred—we are prepared to atone for our fault, and to aid you in the chastisement of the Athenians. With this intention we have summoned Hippias and yourselves, that by common counsel and united arms we may restore to the son of Pisistratus the dominion and the dignity of which we have deprived him. ”

“ Another citizen, Aristogiton, had reasons of his own for wishing ill to Hipparchus: he stimulated his friend Harmodius to a keener sense of the injury, and they resolved to [170] wash away their wrongs in blood. But few associates were admitted to the knowledge of their plot, which was to be executed at the Panathenaic festival, when it was usual for all persons to appear in arms. Hipparchus alone was personally offensive; but to dissolve the tyranny, and to secure themselves from retribution, Hippias was to be involved in his brother’s fate. ”

“ Hipparchus, ancient astronomer, born at Nicæa; flourished in the 2nd century B.C.; discovered among other things the precession of the equinoxes, determined the place of the equinox, and catalogued 1000 fixed stars.
Hippias, tyrant of Athens, son of Pisistratus; expelled from Athens, applied to the Persians to reinstate him, and kindled the first Persian War with Greece; fell at Marathon, 490 B.C.
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, born at Cos, 460 B.C.; was a contemporary of Socrates and Plato; was of wide-spread renown as a physician ”

“ And when Hippias had returned to Asia from Lacedemon, he set everything in motion, stirring up enmity between the Athenians and Artaphrenes, and using every means to secure that Athens should come under the rule of himself and of Dareios. Hippias, I say, was thus engaged; and the Athenians meanwhile hearing of these things sent envoys to Sardis, and endeavoured to prevent the Persians from following the suggestions of the exiled Athenians. Artaphrenes however commanded them, if they desired to be preserved from ruin, to receive Hippias back again. ”

“ Many were slain, and many fled to join the exiled Alemæonidæ, whose cause became daily more popular at Athens, and throughout the rest of Greece, until at length they gained strength sufficient to enable them, with the assistance of Lacedæmon, to lay siege to Hippias in Athens, in the fourth year after the death of Hipparchus. ”

“ Returning to Athens on the death of Hippias (510 B.C.) , they united with the democracy, and the then head of the family, Cleisthenes, gave a new constitution to the city.
[440] Queen of Halicarnassus, in Caria; an ally of the Persian King Xerxes in his invasion of Greece; she fought gallantly at the battle of Salamis.
[441] A double entendre—with allusion to the posture in sexual intercourse known among the Greeks as [Greek: hippos] , in Latin 'equus,' the horse, where the woman mounts the man in reversal of the ordinary position. ”

“ His father, Hippias, is therefore preparing to set sail for Alexandria to bring back the truant, when Clinias, thinking it would be as well to forewarn Clitophon of what had occurred in his absence, starts without delay, unknown to Hippias, and reaches Alexandria before him. ”

“ To Cirrha, the seaport of Delphi, it is about 60 stades from Delphi, and as you descend to the plain is a Hippodrome, where they celebrate the Pythian horse-races. As to Taraxippus in Olympia I have described it in my account of Elis. In this Hippodrome of Apollo there are accidents occasionally, inasmuch as the deity in all human affairs awards both good and bad, but there is nothing specially contrived to frighten horses, either from the malignity of some hero, or any other cause. ”

“ Fourteen years had thus passed in peace and prosperity, when Hipparchus gave serious offense to a citizen named Harmo ́dius, who thereupon united with his friend Aristogi ́ton in a plot to murder the two tyrants. Hipparchus was slain. Hippias saved himself by promptness and presence of mind; but from that day his character was changed. His most intimate friends had been accused by the conspirators as concerned in the plot, and executed. Though the charge was false and made only for revenge, the suspicions of Hippias never again slept. ”

“ Seeing one of their accomplices speaking to Hippias, and imagining that they were being betrayed, they prematurely attacked and slew Hipparchus alone. Harmodius was cut down on the spot by the guards, and Aristogeiton was soon captured and tortured to death. When Hippias was expelled (510) , Harmodius and Aristogeiton became the most popular of Athenian heroes ”

“ It is from hence, I think, manifest, that the titles Hippa, and Hippos, related to the luminary Osiris; and betokened some particular department of that Deity, who was the same as Dionusus. He was undoubtedly worshipped under this appellation in various regions: hence we read of Hippici Montes in Colchis: Ἱππου κωμη in Lycia: Ἱππου ακρα in Libya: Ἱππου ορος in Egypt: and a town Hippos in Arabia Felix. There occur also in composition [708] , Hippon, Hipporum, Hippouris, Hippana, Hipponesus, Hippocrene. ”

“ They intrusted their designs to few, believing that if once the attempt was begun the people would catch the contagion, and rush spontaneously to the assertion of their freedom. The festival arrived. Bent against the elder tyrant, perhaps from nobler motives than those which urged them against Hipparchus 239, each armed with a dagger concealed in the sacred myrtle bough which was borne by those who joined the procession, the conspirators advanced to the spot in the suburbs where Hippias was directing the order of the ceremonial. ”

“ Hippŏdăme and Hippodamīa, a daughter of Œnomaus king of Pisa, in Elis, who married Pelops son of Tantalus. Her father, who was either enamoured of her himself, or afraid lest he should perish by one of his daughter’s children, according to an oracle, refused to marry her, except to him who could overcome him in a chariot-race. As the beauty of Hippodamia was greatly celebrated, many courted her, and accepted her father’s conditions, though death attended a defeat. Thirteen had already been conquered, and forfeited their lives, when Pelops came from Lydia and entered the lists. ”

“ Hippolytos, the son of Theseus, fleeing from his father, who supposes him guilty of incest with his step-mother Phedra, is thrown from the chariot broken to pieces, when the horses that draw it approach the sea and are terrified by marine monsters. This is a variation of the legend of the young hero, persecuted by his step-mother, who is thrown into the sea, with the novel and remarkable accompaniment that it is his horses themselves which are the cause of his death. ”

“ On the morning of the festival, while Hippias, attended by his guards, was in the Ceramicus, [172] ordering the procession, Harmodius and Aristogiton saw one of the conspirators conversing with him familiarly, “for Hippias was accessible to all.” Thinking themselves betrayed, they resolved, at least, to take vengeance on the more obnoxious party, and hastened to seek Hipparchus, whom they slew. Harmodius was slain in the tumult which ensued. Aristogiton escaped for a time, but was soon after taken and put to death. ”

“ Hippias in the past night had seen a vision in his sleep, wherein he thought that he lay with his own mother; he interpreted this dream to signify that he should return to Athens and recover his power, and so die an old man in his own mother-country. Thus he interpreted the vision; for the nonce, being the Persians’ guide, he carried the slaves taken in Eretria to the island of the Styreans called Aeglea; moreover, it was he who made the ships to anchor when they had put in at Marathon, and who set the foreigners in array when they were landed. ”

“ In Erythræ, Knôpus or Kleopus is noted as the Kodrid œkist, and as having procured for himself, partly by force, partly by consent, the sovereignty of the preëxisting settlement of mixed inhabitants. The Erythræan historian Hippias recounted how Knôpus had been treacherously put to death on ship-board, by Ortygês and some other false adherents; who, obtaining some auxiliaries from the Chian king Amphiklus, made themselves masters of Erythræ and established in it an oppressive oligarchy. ”

“ The hippo, roaring frightfully, pulled one way, Bartlett and the keepers pulled the other, and at last out came the tooth, and Hippo soon got well again.
No animal in this world is made without a purpose, and we always find that the structure of an animal is admirably adapted to its mode of life. I believe that one of the principal duties which the elephant and rhinoceros unconsciously perform, is to cut paths through the dense forests and jungles in which they live. The home of the hippopotamus is among the aquatic forests at the bottoms of large rivers such as the Upper Nile. ”

“ She that follows her adulterer has no qualms. The one is sick all over her husband. The other dines among the sailors and walks the quarter-deck, and delights in handling the hard ropes. And yet what was the beauty that inflamed, what the prime of life that captivated Hippia? ”

“ As a rule, each is known to us only by small fragments of its skeleton, so that we can have no assurance as to what the whole animal was really like, or even that all parts assigned to one creature really belonged to him. We can accordingly feel no certainty that if we could see any of these as a whole we should find it possible to suppose that the horse descended from it. Thus in Hippidium, an American genus closely allied to Equus, it is at least doubtful whether the digits did not terminate in claws. [285] One species of Hippidium is known only by a solitary tooth. ”

“ Hippys is quoted by Aelian (N. A. ix. 33) , by Stephanus Byzantinus (s. v. Ἀρκάς) , who says that Hippys first called the Arcadians προσελήνους; by Plutarch (de Defect. Orac. 23, p. 422) ; by the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (iv. 262) , and, with a corruption of the name into Ἱππίας and Ἱππεύς, by Athenaeus (i. p. 31, b.) ; by a Scholiast on Euripides (Med. 9) ; and by Zenobius (Prov. iii. 42) . Perhaps too one passage (Antig. Hist. Mir. 133) , in which the name of Hippon of Rhegium occurs, may really refer to Hippys. ”

“ Thirteen proper young men lost their lives for that fair Hippodamias' sake, the daughter of Onomaus, king of Elis: when that hard condition was proposed of death or victory, they made no account of it, but courageously for love died, till Pelops at last won her by a sleight. ”

“ The upper and lower front teeth of the hippos are very long and contain magnificent ivory which is distinguished from the elephant's by the fact that it never turns yellow. The flesh is good to eat but it is tough and oily, nevertheless many native tribes consider it a great delicacy. The whole hide weighs about six hundred pounds and often more. The african natives make whips out of a single piece of skin, and they are said to last forever.
Sometimes a prowling leopard is foolish enough to risk its life trying to steal a baby hippo. ”

“ Is forced to work and dig among the rocks,
Eating poor figs, and small stale loaves of barley,
Food fit for slaves.
And Strattis also mentions the thunnis, in his Callipides.
68. There is also a fish called the hippurus, or horsetail. Aristotle, in the fifth book of his treatise on the Parts of Animals, says that the hippuri lay eggs, and that these are small at first, but come to a great size, like those of the lamprey; and that they bring forth their young in the spring. But Dorion, in his book upon Fish, says that the hippurus is also called the coryphæna. ”

“ Hippias. Subsequently he took an important part in suppressing the Ionian revolt (see Ionia, Aristagoras, Histiaeus) , and after the war compelled the cities to make agreements by which all differences were to be settled by reference. ”