volume 2, pages 252-255.

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The people, or an assembly cleverly made up and manipulated to represent the people, were induced to vote all the powers of government into the hands of a council of Four Hundred, of which council the citizens appointed only five members. Those five chose ninety-five more, to make one hundred, and each of that hundred then chose three colleagues. The conspirators thus easily made up the Four Hundred to their liking, from their own ranks. This council was to convene an assembly of Five Thousand citizens, whenever it saw fit to do so. But when news of this constitutional change reached the army at Samos, where the Athenian headquarters for the Ionian war were fixed, the citizen soldiers refused to submit to it--repudiated it altogether--and organized themselves as an independent state. The ruling spirit among them was Thrasybulus, and his influence brought about a reconciliation with Alcibiades, then an exile sheltered at the Persian court. Alcibiades was recalled by the army and placed at its head. Presently a reaction at Athens ensued, after the oligarchical party had given signs of treasonable communication with Sparta, and in June the people assembled in the Pnyx and reasserted their sovereignty. "The Council was deposed, and the supreme sovereignty of the state restored to the people--not, however, to the entire multitude; for the principle was retained of reserving full civic rights to a committee of men of a certain amount of property; and, as the lists of the Five Thousand had never been drawn up, it was decreed, in order that the desired end might be speedily reached, to follow the precedent of similar institutions in other states and to constitute all Athenians able to furnish themselves with a complete military equipment from their own resources, full citizens, with the rights of voting and participating in the government. Thus the name of the Five Thousand had now become a very inaccurate designation; but it was retained, because men had in the last few months become habituated to it. At the same time, the abolition of pay for civic offices and functions was decreed, not merely as a temporary measure, but as a fundamental principle of the new commonwealth, which the citizens were bound by a solemn oath to maintain. This reform was, upon the whole, a wise combination of aristocracy and democracy; and, according to the opinion of Thucydides, the best constitution which the Athenians had hitherto possessed. On the motion of Critias, the recall, of Alcibiades was decreed about the same time; and a deputation was despatched to Samos, to accomplish the union between army and city."

_E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 4, chapter 5._

Most of the leaders of the Four Hundred fled to the Spartan camp at Decelia. Two were taken, tried and executed.

_Thucydides, History, book 8, section 48-97._

See, also, GREECE: B. C. 413-412.

ALSO IN: _V. Duruy, History of Greece, chapter 26 (volume 3)._

ATHENS: B. C. 411-407. Victories at Cynossema and Abydos. Exploits of Alcibiades. His triumphal return. His appointment to command. His second deposition and exile.

See GREECE: B. C. 411-407.

ATHENS: B. C. 406. The Peloponnesian War: Battle and victory of Arginusae. Condemnation and execution of the Generals.

See GREECE: B. C. 406; and above: B. C. 424-406.

ATHENS: B. C. 405. The Peloponnesian War: Decisive defeat at Aigospotamoi.

See GREECE: B. C. 405.

ATHENS: B. C. 404. The Surrender to Lysander.

After the battle of Ægospotami (August, B. C. 405), which destroyed their navy, and cut off nearly all supplies to the city by sea, as the Spartans at Decelea had long cut off supplies upon the land side, the Athenians had no hope. They waited in terror and despair for their enemies to close in upon them. The latter were in no haste, for they were sure of their prey. Lysander, the victor at Ægospotami, came leisurely from the Hellespont, receiving on his way the surrender of the cities subject or allied to Athens, and placing Spartan harmosts and garrisons in them, with the local oligarchs established uniformly in power. About November he reached the Saronic gulf and blockaded the Athenian harbor of Piræus, while an overwhelming Peloponnesian land force, under the Lacedæmonian king Pausanias, arrived simultaneously in Attica and encamped at the gates of the city. The Athenians had no longer any power except the power to endure, and that they exercised for more than three months, mainly resisting the demand that their Long Walls--the walls which protected the connection of the city with its harbors--should be thrown down. But when famine had thinned the ranks of the citizens and broken the spirit of the survivors, they gave up. "There was still a high-spirited minority who entered their protest and preferred death by famine to such insupportable disgrace. The large majority, however, accepted them [the terms] and the acceptance was made known to Lysander. It was on the 16th day of the Attic month Munychion,--about the middle or end of March,--that this victorious commander sailed into the Peiræus, twenty-seven years, almost exactly, after the surprise of Platæa by the Thebans, which opened the Peloponnesian War. Along with him came the Athenian exiles, several of whom appear to have been serving with his army and assisting him with their counsel."

_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 65 (volume 8)._

The Long Walls and the fortifications of Piræus were demolished, and then followed the organization of an oligarchical government at Athens, resulting in the reign of terror under "The Thirty."

_E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 4, chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _Xenophon, Hellenics, book 2, chapter 2._

_Plutarch, Lysander._

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ATHENS: B. C. 404-403. The tyranny of the Thirty. The Year of Anarchy.

In the summer of B. C. 404, following the siege and surrender of Athens, and the humiliating close of the long Peloponnesian War, the returned leaders of the oligarchical party, who had been in exile, succeeded with the help of their Spartan friends, in overthrowing the democratic constitution of the city and establishing themselves in power. The revolution was accomplished at a public assembly of citizens, in the presence of Lysander, the victorious Lacedæmonian admiral, whose fleet in the Piraeus lay ready to support his demands. "In this assembly, Dracontidas, a scoundrel upon whom repeated sentences had been passed, brought forward a motion, proposing the transfer of the government into the hands of Thirty persons; and Theramenes supported this proposal which he declared to express the wishes of Sparta. Even now, these speeches produced a storm of indignation; after all the acts of violence which Athens had undergone, she yet contained men outspoken enough to venture to defend the constitution, and to appeal to the fact that the capitulation sanctioned by both parties contained no provision as to the internal affairs of Athens. But, hereupon, Lysander himself came forward and spoke to the citizens without reserve, like one who was their absolute master. ... By such means the motion of Dracontidas was passed; but only a small number of unpatriotic and cowardly citizens raised their hands in token of assent. All better patriots contrived to avoid participation in this vote. Next, ten members of the government were chosen by Critias and his colleagues [the Critias of Plato's Dialogues, pupil of Socrates, and now the violent and blood-thirsty leader of the anti-democratic revolution], ten by Theramenes, the confidential friend of Lysander, and finally ten out of the assembled multitude, probably by a free vote; and this board of Thirty was hereupon established as the supreme government authority by a resolution of the assembly present. Most of the members of the new government had formerly been among the Four Hundred, and had therefore long pursued a common course of action." The Thirty Tyrants so placed in power were masters of Athens for eight months, and executed their will without conscience or mercy, having a garrison of Spartan soldiers in the Acropolis to support them. They were also sustained by a picked body of citizens, "the Three Thousand," who bore arms while other citizens were stripped of every weapon. Large numbers of the more patriotic and high-spirited Athenians had escaped from their unfortunate city and had taken refuge, chiefly at Thebes, the old enemy of Athens, but now sympathetic in her distress. At Thebes these exiles organized themselves under Thrasybulus and Anytus, and determined to expel the tyrants and to recover their homes. They first seized a strong post at Phyle, in Attica, where they gained in numbers rapidly, and from which point they were able in a few weeks to advance and occupy the Piræus. When the troops of The Thirty came out to attack them, they drew back to the adjacent height of Munychia and there fought a battle which delivered their city from the Tyrants. Critias, the master-spirit of the usurpation, was slain; the more violent of his colleagues took refuge at Eleusis, and Athens, for a time, remained under the government of a new oligarchical Board of Ten; while Thrasybulus and the democratic liberators maintained their headquarters at Munychia. All parties waited the action of Sparta. Lysander, the Spartan general, marched an army into Attica to restore the tyranny which was of his own creating; but one of the two Spartan kings, Pausanias, intervened, assumed the command in his own person, and applied his efforts to the arranging of peace between the Athenian parties. The result was a restoration of the democratic constitution of the Attic state, with some important reforms. Several of The Thirty were put to death,--treacherously, it was said,--but an amnesty was extended to all their partisans. The year in which they and The Ten controlled affairs was termed in the official annals of the city the Year of Anarchy, and its magistrates were not recognized.

_E. Curtius, History of Greece,