Aristogeiton and Harmodius
(circa 532 - 514 BC) Greece
Founders of Athenian democracy
Two devoted Athenian friends. The young and beautiful Harmodius' sister was insulted by the tyrant Hippias' brother and co-ruler Hipparchus. Possibly provoked by Hipparchus sexual approaches to the youth. The lovers decided to kill him at the festival of Panathenaea in 514 B.C. They succeeded but both died and were honoured as martyrs. They have been credited with the overthrow of tyranny in Athens. However it was pride and jealousy not democracy which motivated them.
From Thucydides, Histories, Book VI. 54-56
Indeed, the daring action of Aristogeiton and Harmodius was undertaken in consequence of a love affair, which I shall relate at some length, to show that the Athenians are not more accurate than the rest of the world in their accounts of their own tyrants and of the facts of their own history. Pisistratus dying at an advanced age in possession of the tyranny, was succeeded by his eldest son, Hippias, and not Hipparchus, as is vulgarly believed.
 Harmodius was then in the flower of youthful beauty, and Aristogeiton, a citizen in the middle rank of life, was his lover and possessed him. Solicited without success by Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus, Harmodius told Aristogeiton, and the enraged lover, afraid that the powerful Hipparchus might take Harmodius by force, immediately formed a design, such as his condition in life permitted, for overthrowing the tyranny. In the meantime Hipparchus, after a second solicitation of Harmodius, attended with no better success, unwilling to use violence, arranged to insult him in some covert way.
[Digression in praise of the political administration of the Pisistratids]
Hipparchus having been repulsed in his solicitations insulted him as he had resolved, by first inviting a sister of his, a young girl, to come and bear a basket in a certain procession, and then rejecting her, on the plea that she had never been invited at all owing to her unworthiness. If Harmodius was indignant at this, Aristogeiton for his sake now became more exasperated than ever; and having arranged everything with those who were to join them in the enterprise, they only waited for the great feast of the Panathenaea, the sole day upon which the citizens forming part of the procession could meet together in arms without suspicion. Aristogeiton and Harmodius were to begin, but were to be supported immediately by their accomplices against the bodyguard. The conspirators were not many, for better security, besides which they hoped that those not in the plot would be carried away by the example of a few daring spirits, and use the arms in their hands to recover their liberty.
At last the festival arrived; and Hippias with his bodyguard was outside the city in the Ceramicus, arranging how the different parts of the procession were to proceed. Harmodius and Aristogeiton had already their daggers and were getting ready to act, when seeing one of their accomplices talking familiarly with Hippias,  who was easy of access to every one, they took fright, and concluded that they were discovered and on the point of being taken; and eager if possible to be revenged first upon the man who had wronged them and for whom they had undertaken all this risk, they rushed, as they were, within the gates, and meeting with Hipparchus by the Leocorium recklessly fell upon him at once, infuriated, Aristogeiton by love, and Harmodius by insult, and smote him and slew him. Aristogeiton escaped the guards at the moment, through the crowd running up, but was afterwards taken and dispatched in no merciful way: Harmodius was killed on the spot.
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