Ancient Athens · 514 BC
Harmodius and Aristogeiton: the lovers who became a symbol of democracy
Dear reader,
In 514 BC, during a festival in Athens, two men drew daggers hidden in myrtle branches and killed Hipparchus, the brother of the city’s tyrant. Their names were Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and they were lovers.
The historian Thucydides tells us the motive was personal. Hipparchus had tried to seduce Harmodius, was rejected, and took revenge by publicly humiliating his family. Aristogeiton, the older of the two, feared for the man he loved. Harmodius was killed on the spot; Aristogeiton was captured and executed.
Within a few years, the tyranny fell. And Athens, now on its way to democracy, decided that these two had been its liberators. The city erected bronze statues of them in the Agora: the first public monuments in Athens to real, ordinary citizens. When the Persians carried the statues off in 480 BC, the Athenians simply made new ones.
For generations, Athenian men sang drinking songs about the two lovers who freed the city.
We find this story quietly astonishing. One of the founding images of democracy, the idea that ordinary people may rise against power, was a monument to two men who loved each other. Fists raised, side by side.
Up, against the grey. It has always looked like this.
With love, from the messenger,
Boté