Pisistratus staked his claim to the hegemony of Ionia by conducting a purification of the island. He did this by digging up all graves that were within sight of the temple and reburying the polluting dead elsewhere. Evidence of the presence of Athenian workmen suggests that he also improved in some way the shrine itself.
Pisistratus wanted Athens to become a lively tourist destination. He revamped, or perhaps founded, two great festivals. The Panathenaea was, in essence, a grand procession in which much of the population went up to the Acropolis and presented Athena with a robe woven by the hands of young virgins. Every fourth year this was accompanied by athletic and musical competitions.
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The Great or City Dionysia was the consequence of a new temple which Pisistratus built on the southern slopes of the Acropolis in honor of Dionysus, god of wine and of out-of-body experiences. Here every spring festivities were held in his honor.
Choirs sang of legendary events and the leader of the performers, who was also the composer of the music and lyrics, took on the role of the protagonist in the story and exchanged dialogue with them. Sometime between 536 and 533, a man called Thespis is reputed to have added a prologue and speech to what had been a choral performance. Here were the first stirrings of Greek drama.
An able propagandist, Pisistratus called for support from the legendary king of Athens, Theseus. During the years of the tyranny his image is found on Attic pottery, often showing him as the slayer of the Cretan Minotaur. He was made to stand for the rights of the ordinary Athenian and for the permanence of the regime. As we have seen, the king had brought the villages of Attica into a single state. He was credited with founding the Panathenaea festival and opening the city to foreigners. He was well qualified to become the symbolic face of the new well-ordered Athens.
The tyrant also recruited to his cause Homer, the father of epic poetry and the matchless celebrant of Greekness. The tyrant ensured that during the Panathenaea he alone of all the poets should have his works recited. There was no authoritative text of Homer’s poems, and it is said that Pisistratus set up a special commission to collect and review the differing versions which had multiplied with time. We have evidence of spurious additions inserted for political reasons (as, for instance, the allegedly invented couplet about Athens and Megara, for which Solon was supposed to have been responsible). In fact, a member of the commission was himself guilty of forgery: he was invited by Hippias to edit a collection of oracular sayings and was caught introducing into it a prophecy he had made up.
If the existence of the commission was not itself an invention, as modern scholars surmise, it was of course not the first time that the Iliad and the Odyssey had been written down. But it is plausible enough that two centuries or so after the poems were composed it was necessary to remove corrupt passages and produce clean and authoritative editions.
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Wherever one turned in Athens, one came up against signs of the tyranny—well meaning, but patronizing. Throughout the city stood Herms; these were busts of Hermes, god of messages, boundaries, and transitions, which were carved in an old-fashioned style with a pointed beard. They topped squared, stone pillars, from the front of which a penis, usually erect, and testicles protruded at the appropriate level. Herms were talismans against harm and guaranteed success in undertakings.
Inscribed on many of them were little moral messages from Pisistratus’s second son.
A reminder from Hipparchus—when out walking, think just thoughts
and
A reminder from Hipparchus—do not tell lies to a friend.
After their father’s death, Hippias and Hipparchus took charge. They were men of very different character. The former was a public-spirited politician who ran the government and was intellectually well equipped to do so. Hipparchus was younger and flightier. A playboy, he liked to be amused. He spent time and energy on love affairs and was fond of the arts. He encouraged Greece’s most famous poets to spend time in Athens. He sent a state warship to pick up a writer of lyric verse, Anacreon, from his homeland of Teos, a Greek city on the Ionian coast, and enticed to Athens Simonides of Ceos, a Cycladic island, with large subventions and expensive gifts.
Anacreon suited his patron, being a celebrant of sex and wine. He famously chased after boys, who were not invariably complaisant.
Young man with the girlish looks,
I want you, but you will not listen,
Unaware you are my soul’s charioteer.
Simonides must have been more to Hippias’s taste; he was a public poet who was commissioned by states and whose work often appeared on memorials. He took a disenchanted view of human nature: “Any man is good when life treats him well, and bad when it treats him badly.”
Even oddities like Lasus of Hermione were welcome; one of his claims to fame was the “hissless hymn.” This was a poem in which the letter “s” was never used.
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Aristogeiton was losing his patience. An Athenian in his twenties, he was an erastes in love with a handsome teenager, Harmodius. Unusually in such a case he was not an aristocrat, but came from the middle class. The affair was going well and the couple were happy. The relationship seems to have been passionate, but may not have been passionately sexual, for Aristogeiton also had a mistress called Leaena (or Lioness).
However, he had a powerful rival for his eromenos, who would not accept refusal and who just would not go away. This was Hipparchus. He propositioned Harmodius, who turned him down and immediately reported the conversation to his lover.
Aristogeiton was upset, but what could he do? He was afraid that the disappointed lover would use force to have his way with Harmodius. He decided to plot the undoing of the dynasty by cutting down the twin tyrants. Meanwhile Hipparchus tried again to seduce the teenager, but with no better luck. He realized that the snub was definitive.
Despite Aristogeiton’s fears Hipparchus had no intention of resorting to violence. Instead he cast about for a way of insulting Harmodius without revealing his motives for doing so. He arranged for the boy’s sister to be invited to carry a basket in a civic procession; when she arrived she was told to go home on the grounds that she was unfit to take part in the ceremony. The innuendo was that she was not a virgin. Harmodius was furious at the affront, and this made Aristogeiton even angrier.
The couple decided to go ahead with their conspiracy to assassinate Hippias and Hipparchus. The date for the attempt was the Panathenaea of 514; it was chosen because this was the one time in the year when citizens were allowed to carry weapons. To ensure secrecy they recruited only a few plotters, but hoped that once they launched their attack others would spontaneously join in. It was an extraordinarily risky plan, so likely to fail as almost to be suicidal.
Just outside the city wall and the double-arched Dipylon Gate, Hippias was organizing the Panathenaic procession. His bodyguard was in attendance. This was a great state occasion and everything had to be correct.
The lovers were present and watched for their moment. Suddenly they noticed one of their fellow-conspirators go up to Hippias and, with a smile on his face, engage him in conversation. Was the plot being betrayed? Panic-stricken, the would-be assassins rushed into the city and chanced on Hipparchus, the cause of all the trouble. They fell on him at once without thinking of the consequences and fatally wounded him. The tyrant’s bodyguard killed Harmodius, but Aristogeiton managed to slip away in the general confusion. He was picked up later and, Thucydides notes, “died no easy death.”