#harmodius

[aaronstveit]

oh my, happy birthday! i just finished reading deep end, it’s wonderful. Thank you. What human organ would you assign it?

ahh thank you so much!! i'm so glad you enjoyed deep end :''') and i love this extremely weird question about it! i hate to be a cliche but i really do think it would be the heart (at least to me). deep end for me was a very emotionally bloody experience, in a good way if that makes sense? i exorcised a lot of demons while writing it. i dug pretty deep into things that i usually leave alone, and exposed stuff i typically like to keep hidden. and it was a very healing and hopeful experience for me! i cried a lot while writing which is kind of embarrassing but also who cares. and, to me at least, it's a deeply hopeful story. painful? definitely. bloody? at least a little bit (sorry grantaire). but the hope was the most important bit to me. hope that people can change, hope that we can help each other, hope that we can grow into the things that we want but didn't fit for a long time. it's all very mushy, i know. and i'm attributing a lot of stuff to the heart that's completely metaphorical. unfortunately i am a very sentimental person so these things happen.

sorry this is so long. even more than a year down the line, i am still physically incapable of speaking briefly about deep end 😭 thank you so much for reading!🫶🫶

[scribl1ta]

Harmodius and Aristogeiton @jarl-of-nordland ⚔️ sketch under the cut

*I'm not tagging this because it's heroic nudity (so sfw) but I can if that becomes an issue.

[obitcheus]

This could be us but you playin

[muraae]

↳rk1000 moodboard(s): the tyrannicides

Harmodius and Aristogeiton were two lovers known as the Tyrannicides after they killed the tyrant Hipparchus in 514 BC, and were the preeminent symbol of democracy to ancient Athenians. Hipparchus invited Harmodius' young sister to be the kanephoros (to carry the ceremonial offering basket) at the Panathenaea festival, and then publicly chased her away on the pretext she was not a virgin, as required. This publicly shamed Harmodius' family; then he, with his lover Aristogeiton, resolved to assassinate both Hipparchus and his brother Hippias and thus to overthrow the tyranny. The assassination plot was to be carried out by means of daggers hidden in the ceremonial myrtle wreaths on the occasion of the Panathenaic Games. They managed to kill Hipparchus, stabbing him to death as he was organizing the Panathenaean processions at the foot of the Acropolis. Harmodius was killed on the spot by guards, while Aristogeiton was arrested shortly thereafter. While being tortured by Hippias, Aristogeiton feigned willingness to betray his co-conspirators, claiming only Hippias' handshake as guarantee of safety. Upon receiving the tyrant's hand he is reputed to have berated him for shaking the hand of his own brother's murderer, upon which the tyrant wheeled and struck him down on the spot. His brother's murder led Hippias to establish an even stricter dictatorship, which proved very unpopular and was overthrown, with the help of an army from Sparta, in 508. This was followed by the reforms of Cleisthenes, who established a democracy in Athens.

Traditional placement of the statues of the lovers is meant to imply that Aristogeiton is guarding the younger man with his cloak before his lover makes the killing blow.

[honorthegods]

These Gay Lovers Were Heroes of Athenian Democracy

Andrew Lear, PhD in Classics, reveals the story behind this fragment from a red-figured Greek vase. It’s not much to look at, but history doesn’t get more gay than the Tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, lovers who were honored as the heroes of Athenian democracy.

Read more ->

Additional information about their hero cult from Dr. Lear ->

The pottery fragment at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ->

Harmodius and Aristogeiton group, casting in Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Russia. Photo by shakko, 2012 via WIkimedia Commons (X) License: CC BY-SA 3.0

[king-of-uruk]

Sculptural pairing of the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton. Roman copy 2nd century AD, from a Greek original of the early classical period.

[masquerading-as-a-genius]

Can we all take the time to appreciate that the Tyranny of the Pisistratids, the only great Tyrants of Athens, was overthrown because of a homosexual love triangle. 

[renlyslittlerose]

history meme | five assassinations: the assassination of Hipparchus by Harmodius and Aristogeiton

 The city state of Athens is perhaps most known for the introduction of democracy. Prior to this introduction in the late 6th century BCE, Athens was ruled by an aristocratic body, where corruption was common and the usurping of power was not unheard of. Throughout the 6th century, the tyrant Pisistratus garnered control of Athens on three occasions, and upon his death his two sons, Hipparchus and Hippias, took control of the city, becoming tyrants themselves (Tyrant in the Greek definition meaning authoritarian ruler, without the negative connotation we have today).

 Under Hippias and Hipparchus' rule, Athens struggled due to numerous internal and external conflicts, including Hipparchus abusing his power, causing the Athenian people to turn bitter toward the two brothers. In 514 BCE, Hipparchus made a grave mistake, when he insulted the young man Harmodius, by inviting his sister to partake in an important ceremony only to publicly chastise her for not being a virgin. Harmodius, along with his erastes, Aristogeiton, plotted out a way in which to gain back Harmodius' family honour, while obtaining revenge upon a man whom had gravely insulted both of them (some versions of the story relate that Hipparchus had made sexual advances toward Harmodius, which in turn angered Aristogeiton who was Harmodius' lover).

 A plot was hatched in which the two men would stab Hipparchus during the religious festival, the Panathenaic games. Unfortunately, the two men thought they had been betrayed when one of their co-conspirators personally greeted Hippias in a friendly manner, and they rushed into action, stabbing Hipparchus to death for everyone to see. Harmodius was immediately killed by Hipparchus' guards, but Aristogeiton made a break for it, running for a short while until he was captured and tortured for information. He was eventually executed.

 Although they did not killed Hippias, and indeed his tyrannical rule lasted for a little while longer (he was expelled from Athens in 510 BCE), future Athenians would regard this moment as the moment when the seeds of Athenian democracy were planted. Harmodius and Aristogeiton were dubbed τυραννοκτόνοι (Tyrannicides or Tyrant Killers), and when democracy was fully formed Cleisthenes commissioned a bronze statue of the two lovers be erected for the public to enjoy. While the original bronze copy has been lost to us, a few Roman marble copies have survived, the best of which resides in the museum of Naples, Italy.

 "A marvelous great light shone upon Athens when Aristogeiton and Harmodios slew Hipparchus" - Simonides of Ceos