Hippias was directing the order of the ceremonial. To their dismay,
they perceived him conversing familiarly with one of their own
partisans, and immediately suspected that to be the treason of their
friend which in reality was the frankness of the affable prince.
Struck with fear, they renounced their attempt upon Hippias, suddenly
retreated to the city, and, meeting with Hipparchus, rushed upon him,
wounded, and slew him. Aristogiton turned to fly--he escaped the
guards, but was afterward seized, and "not mildly treated" [240] by
the tyrant. Such is the phrase of Thucydides, which, if we may take
the interpretation of Justin and the later writers, means that,
contrary to the law, he was put to the torture [241]. Harmodius was
slain upon the spot. The news of his brother's death was brought to
Hippias. With an admirable sagacity and presence of mind, he
repaired, not to the place of the assassination, but towards the
procession itself, rightly judging that the conspiracy had only broken
out in part. As yet the news of the death of Hipparchus had not
reached the more distant conspirators in the procession, and Hippias
betrayed not in the calmness of his countenance any signs of his
sorrow or his fears. He approached the procession, and with a
composed voice commanded them to deposite their arms, and file off
towards a place which he indicated. They obeyed the order, imagining
he had something to communicate to them. Then turning to his guards,
Hippias bade them seize the weapons thus deposited, and he himself
selected from the procession all whom he had reason to suspect, or on
whose persons a dagger was found, for it was only with the open
weapons of spear and shield that the procession was lawfully to be
made. Thus rose and thus terminated that conspiracy which gave to the
noblest verse and the most enduring veneration the names of Harmodius
and Aristogiton. [242]