Herodotus, Histories 1.61.3 · 1.61.3

Hippias wins the argument, and his name matters: this is the first appearance of the son who will one day be the last tyrant expelled from Athens and, decades later, will stand on the beach at Marathon pointing the Persians toward his old city. His gnōmē, "opinion," here is simple and blunt, to take the tyranny back by force rather than by another trick, and Herodotus marks the shift from costume drama to war chest in a single clause.

The fundraising detail is Herodotus doing what he does best, turning a vague claim into something almost auditable: cities give because they proaideonto kou ti, "were under some prior obligation," a phrase hedged by his own kou, "I suppose," admitting he cannot fully trace the debts himself. Then one number cuts through the vagueness, Thēbaioi hyperebalonto tēi dosi tōn chrēmatōn, "the Thebans outdid everyone in the giving of money." Thebes will matter again, much later in this book, on the Persian side at Plataea, and Herodotus is quietly logging, this early, exactly how far back its debts to Athenian tyranny go.

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