herodotus

furthest extremities of the Aitolian land: from Peloponnesus, Leokedesthe son of Pheidon the despot of the Argives, that Pheidon whoestablished for the Peloponnesians the measures which they use, andwho went beyond all other Hellenes in wanton insolence, since heremoved from their place the presidents of the games appointed by theEleians and himself presided over the games at Olympia,--his son, Isay, and Amiantos the son of Lycurgos an Arcadian from Trapezus, andLaphanes an Azanian from the city of Paios, son of that Euphorion who(according to the story told in Arcadia) received the Dioscuroi asguests in his house and from thenceforth was wont to entertain all menwho came, and Onomastos the son of Agaios of Elis; these, I say, camefrom Peloponnesus itself: from Athens came Megacles the son of thatAlcmaion who went to Crœsus, and besides him Hippocleides the son ofTisander, one who surpassed the other Athenians in wealth and incomeliness of form: from Eretria, which at that time was flourishing,came Lysanias, he alone from Eubœa: from Thessalia came Diactorides ofCrannon, one of the family of the Scopadai: and from the Molossians,Alcon. 128. So many in number did the wooers prove to be: and whenthese had come by the appointed day, Cleisthenes first inquired oftheir native countries and of the descent of each one, and thenkeeping them for a year he made trial continually both of their manlyvirtue and of their disposition, training and temper, associating bothwith each one separately and with the whole number together: and hemade trial of them both by bringing out to bodily exercises those ofthem who were younger, and also especially in the common feast: forduring all the time that he kept them he did everything that could bedone, and at the same time he entertained them magnificently. Now itchanced that those of the wooers pleased him most who had come fromAthens, and of these Hippocleides the son of Tisander was ratherpreferred, both by reason of manly virtues and also because he wasconnected by descent with the family of Kypselos at Corinth. 129. Thenwhen the appointed day came for the marriage banquet and forCleisthenes himself to declare whom he selected from the whole number,Cleisthenes sacrificed a hundred oxen and feasted both the wooersthemselves and all the people of Sikyon; and when the dinner was over,the wooers began to vie with one another both in music and in speechesfor the entertainment of the company;[113] and as the drinking wentforward and Hippocleides was very much holding the attention of theothers,[114] he bade the flute-player play for him a dance-measure;and when the flute-player did so, he danced: and it so befell that hepleased himself in his dancing, but Cleisthenes looked on at the wholematter with suspicion. Then Hippocleides after a certain time bade onebring in a table; and when the table came in, first he danced upon itLaconian figures, and then also Attic, and thirdly he planted his headupon the table and gesticulated with his legs. Cleisthenes meanwhile,when he was dancing the first and the second time, though he abhorred