c. 5, and Diodorus, xiii, 38-42) mentions Theramenês as the

principal author of the decree for restoring Alkibiadês from exile. But the precise words of the elegy composed by Kritias, wherein the latter vindicates this proceeding to himself, are cited by Plutarch, and are very good evidence. Doubtless many of the leading men supported, and none opposed, the proposition.

Thucydidês bestows marked eulogy upon the general spirit of moderation and patriotic harmony which now reigned at Athens, and which directed the political proceedings of the people.[104] But he does not countenance the belief, as he has been sometimes understood, nor is it true in point of fact, that they now introduced a new constitution. Putting an end to the oligarchy, and to the rule of the Four Hundred, they restored the old democracy seemingly with only two modifications, first, the partial limitation of the right of suffrage; next, the discontinuance of all payment for political functions. The impeachment against Antiphon, tried immediately afterwards, went before the senate and the dikastery exactly according to the old democratical forms of procedure. But we must presume that the senate, the dikasts, the nomothetæ, the ekklesiasts, or citizens who attended the assembly, the public orators who prosecuted state-criminals, or defended any law when it was impugned, must have worked for the time without pay.

[104] Thucyd. viii, 97. Καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα δὴ τὸν πρῶτον χρόνον ἐπί γε ἐμοῦ Ἀθηναῖοι φαίνονται εὖ πολιτεύσαντες· μετρία γὰρ ἥ τε ἐς τοὺς ὀλίγους καὶ τοὺς πολλοὺς ξύγκρασις ἐγένετο, καὶ ἐκ πονηρῶν τῶν πραγμάτων γενομένων τοῦτο πρῶτον ἀνήνεγκε τὴν πόλιν.

I refer the reader to a note on this passage in one of my former volumes, and on the explanation given of it by Dr. Arnold (see vol. v, ch. xlv, p. 330.)

Moreover, the two modifications above mentioned were of little practical effect. The exclusive body of Five Thousand citizens, professedly constituted at this juncture, was neither exactly realized, nor long retained. It was constituted, even now, more as a nominal than as a real limit; a nominal total, yet no longer a mere blank, as the Four Hundred had originally produced it, but containing, indeed, a number of individual names greater than the total, and without any assignable line of demarkation. The mere fact, that every one who furnished a panoply was entitled to be of the Five Thousand,—and not they alone, but others besides,[105]—shows that no care was taken to adhere either to that or to any other precise number. If we may credit a speech composed by Lysias,[106] the Four Hundred had themselves, after the demolition of their intended fortress at Ectioneia, and when power was passing out of their hands, appointed a committee of their number to draw up for the first time a real list of _The_ Five Thousand; and Polystratus, a member of that committee, takes credit with the succeeding democracy for having made the list comprise nine thousand names instead of five thousand. As this list of Polystratus—if, indeed, it ever existed—was never either published or adopted, I merely notice the description given of it, to illustrate my position that the number Five Thousand was now understood on all sides as an indefinite expression for a suffrage extensive, but not universal. The number had been first invented by Antiphon and the leaders of the Four Hundred, to cloak their own usurpation and intimidate the democracy: next, it served the purpose of Theramenês and the minority of the Four Hundred, as a basis on which to raise a sort of dynastic opposition, to use modern phraseology, within the limits of the oligarchy; that is, without appearing to overstep principles acknowledged by the oligarchy themselves: lastly, it was employed by the democratical party generally as a convenient middle term to slide back into the old system, with as little dispute as possible; for Alkibiadês and the armament had sent word home that they adhered to the Five Thousand, and to the abolition of salaried civil functions.[107]

[105] The words of Thucydidês (viii, 97), εἶναι δὲ ~αὐτῶν~, ὁπόσοι καὶ ὅπλα παρέχονται, show that this body was not composed _exclusively_ of those who furnished panoplies. It could never have been intended, for example, to exclude the hippeis, or knights.

[106] Lysias, Orat. xx, pro Polystrato, c. 4, p. 675, Reisk.

[107] Thucyd. viii, 86.

But exclusive suffrage of the so-called Five Thousand, especially with the expansive numerical construction now adopted, was of little value either to themselves or to the state;[108] while it was an insulting shock to the feelings of the excluded multitude, especially to brave and active seamen like the parali. Though prudent as a step of momentary transition, it could not stand, nor was any attempt made to preserve it in permanence, amidst a community so long accustomed to universal citizenship, and where the necessities of defence against the enemy called for energetic efforts from all the citizens.

[108] Thucyd. viii, 92. τὸ μὲν καταστῆσαι μετόχους τοσούτους, ἄντικρυς ἂν δῆμον ἡγούμενοι, etc.

Even as to the gratuitous functions, the members of the Five Thousand themselves would soon become tired, not less than the poorer freemen, of serving without pay, as senators or in other ways; so that nothing but absolute financial deficit would prevent the reëstablishment, entire or partial, of the pay.[109] And that deficit was never so complete as to stop the disbursement of the diobely, or distribution of two oboli to each citizen on occasion of various religious festivals. Such distribution continued without interruption; though perhaps the number of occasions on which it was made may have been lessened.

[109] See the valuable financial inscriptions in M. Boeckh’s Corpus Inscriptionum, part i, nos. 147, 148, which attest considerable disbursements for the diobely in 410-409 B.C.

Nor does it seem that there was much diminution during these same years in the private expenditure and ostentation of the Chorêgi at the festivals and other exhibitions: see the Oration xxi, of Lysias—Ἀπολογία Δωροδοκίας, c. 1, 2, pp. 698-700, Reiske.

How far or under what restriction, any reëstablishment of civil pay obtained footing during the seven years between the Four Hundred and the Thirty, we cannot say. But leaving this point undecided, we can show, that within a year after the deposition of the Four Hundred, the suffrage of the so-called Five Thousand expanded into the suffrage of all Athenians without exception, or into the full antecedent democracy. A memorable decree, passed about eleven months after that event,—at the commencement of the archonship of Glaukippus (June 410 B.C.), when the senate of Five Hundred, the dikasts, and other civil functionaries, were renewed for the coming year, pursuant to the ancient democratical practice,—exhibits to us the full democracy not merely in action, but in all the glow of feeling called forth by a recent restoration. It seems to have been thought that this first renewal of archons and other functionaries, under the revived democracy, ought to be stamped by some emphatic proclamation of sentiment, analogous to the solemn and heart-stirring oath taken in the preceding year at Samos. Accordingly, Demophantus proposed and carried a (psephism or) decree,[110] prescribing the form of an oath to be taken by all Athenians to stand by the democratical constitution.

[110] About the date of this psephism, or decree, see Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, vol. ii, p. 168, in the comment upon sundry inscriptions appended to his work, not included in the English translation by Mr Lewis; also Meier, De Bonis Damnatorum, sect. ii, pp. 6-10. Wachsmuth erroneously places the date of it after the Thirty; see Hellen. Alterth. ii, ix, p. 267.

The terms of his psephism and oath are striking. “If any man subvert the democracy at Athens, or hold any magistracy after the democracy has been subverted, he shall be an enemy of the Athenians. Let him be put to death with impunity, and let his property be confiscated to the public, with the reservation of a tithe to Athênê. Let the man who has killed him, and the accomplice privy to the act, be accounted holy and of good religious odor. Let all Athenians swear an oath under the sacrifice of full-grown victims, in their respective tribes and demes, to kill him.[111] Let the oath be as follows: ‘I will kill with my own hand, if I am able, any man who shall subvert the democracy at Athens, or who shall hold any office in future after the democracy has been subverted, or shall rise in arms for the purpose of making himself a despot, or shall help the despot to establish himself. And if any one else shall kill him, I will account the slayer to be holy as respects both gods and demons, as having slain an enemy of the Athenians. And I engage by word, by deed, and by vote, to sell his property and make over one-half of the proceeds to the slayer, without withholding anything. If any man shall perish in slaying or in trying to slay the despot, I will be kind both to him and to his children, as to Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and their descendants. And I hereby break and renounce all oaths which have been sworn hostile to the Athenian people, either at Athens or at the camp (at Samos) or elsewhere.[112]’ Let all Athenians swear this as the regular oath, immediately before the festival of the Dionysia, with sacrifice and full-grown victims;[113] invoking upon him who keeps it, good things in abundance; but upon him who breaks it, destruction for himself as well as for his family.”

[111] Andokidês de Mysteriis, sects. 95-99. (c. 16, p. 48, R.)—Ὁ δ᾽ ἀποκτείνας τὸν ταῦτα ποιήσαντα, καὶ ὁ συμβουλεύσας, ὅσιος ἔστω καὶ εὐαγής. Ὀμόσαι δ᾽ ~Ἀθηναίους ἅπαντας~ καθ᾽ ἱερῶν τελείων, ~κατὰ φυλὰς καὶ κατὰ δήμους~, ἀποκτείνειν τὸν ταῦτα ποιήσαντα.

The comment of Sievers (Commentationes De Xenophontis Hellenicis, Berlin, 1833, pp. 18, 19) on the events of this time, is not clear.

[112] Andokidês de Mysteriis, sects. 95-99. (c. 16, p. 48, R.) Ὁπόσοι δ᾽ ὅρκοι ὀμώμονται Ἀθήνῃσιν ἢ ~ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ~ ἢ ἄλλοθί που ἐναντίοι τῷ δήμῳ τῷ Ἀθηναίων, λύω καὶ ἀφίημι.

To what particular anti-constitutional oaths allusion is here made, we cannot tell. All those of the oligarchical conspirators, both at Samos and at Athens, are doubtless intended to be abrogated: and this oath, like that of the armament at Samos (Thucyd. viii, 75), is intended to be sworn by every one, including those who had before been members of the oligarchical conspiracy. Perhaps it may also be intended to abrogate the covenant sworn by the members of the political clubs or ξυνωμοσίαι among themselves, in so far as it pledged them to anti-constitutional acts (Thucyd. viii, 54-81).

[113] Andokidês de Mysteriis, sects. 95-99, (c. 16, p. 48, R.) Ταῦτα δὲ ὀμοσάντων ~Ἀθηναῖοι πάντες~ καθ᾽ ἱερῶν τελείων, τὸν νόμιμον ὅρκον, πρὸ Διονυσίων, etc.

Such was the remarkable decree which the Athenians not only passed in senate and public assembly, less than a year after the deposition of the Four Hundred, but also caused to be engraved on a column close to the door of the senate-house. It plainly indicates, not merely that the democracy had returned, but an unusual intensity of democratical feeling along with it. The constitution which _all_ the Athenians thus swore to maintain by the most strenuous measures of defence, must have been a constitution in which _all_ Athenians had political rights, not one of Five Thousand privileged persons excluding the rest.[114] This decree became invalid after the expulsion of the Thirty, by the general resolution then passed not to act upon any laws passed before the archonship of Eukleidês, unless specially reënacted. But the column on which it stood engraved still remained, and the words were read upon it, at least down to the time of the orator Lykurgus, eighty years afterwards.[115]

[114] Those who think that a new constitution was established, after the deposition of the Four Hundred, are perplexed to fix the period at which the old democracy was restored. K. F. Hermann and others suppose, without any special proof, that it was restored at the time when Alkibiadês returned to Athens in 407 B.C. See K. F. Hermann, Griech. Staats Alterthümer, s. 167, note 13.

[115] Lykurgus adv. Leokrat. sect. 131, c. 31, p. 225: compare Demosthen. adv. Leptin. sect. 138, c. 34, p. 506.

If we wanted any proof, how perfectly reckless and unmeaning is the mention of the name of _Solon_ by the orators, we should find it in this passage of Andokidês. He calls this psephism of Demophantus _a law of Solon_ (sect. 96): see above in this History, vol. iii, ch. xi, p. 122.

The mere deposition of the Four Hundred, however, and the transfer of political power to the Five Thousand, which took place in the first public assembly held after the defeat off Eretria, was sufficient to induce most of the violent leaders of the Four Hundred forthwith to leave Athens. Peisander, Alexiklês, and others, went off secretly to Dekeleia:[116] Aristarchus alone made his flight the means of inflicting a new wound upon his country. Being among the number of the generals, he availed himself of this authority to march—with some of the rudest among those Scythian archers, who did the police duty of the city—to Œnoê, on the Bœotian frontier, which was at that moment under siege by a body of Corinthians and Bœotians united. Aristarchus, in concert with the besiegers, presented himself to the garrison, and acquainted them that Athens and Sparta had just concluded peace, one of the conditions of which was that Œnoê should be surrendered to the Bœotians. He therefore, as general, ordered them to evacuate the place, under the benefit of a truce to return home. The garrison having been closely blocked up, and kept wholly ignorant of the actual condition of politics, obeyed the order without reserve; so that the Bœotians acquired possession of this very important frontier position, a new thorn in the side of Athens, besides Dekeleia.[117]

[116] Thucyd. viii, 98. Most of these fugitives returned six years afterwards, after the battle of Ægospotami, when the Athenian people again became subject to an oligarchy in the persons of the Thirty. Several of them became members of the senate which worked under the Thirty (Lysias cont. Agorat. sect. 80, c. 18, p. 495).

Whether Aristotelês and Chariklês were among the number of the Four Hundred who now went into exile, as Wattenbach affirms (De Quadringent. Ath. Factione, p. 66), seems not clearly made out.

[117] Thucyd. viii, 89, 90. Ἀρίσταρχος, ἀνὴρ ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα καὶ ἐκ πλείστου ἐναντίος τῷ δήμῳ, etc.

Thus was the Athenian democracy again restored, and the divorce between the city and the armament at Samos terminated after an interruption of about four months by the successful conspiracy of the Four Hundred. It was only by a sort of miracle—or rather by the incredible backwardness and stupidity of her foreign enemies—that Athens escaped alive from this nefarious aggression of her own ablest and wealthiest citizens. That the victorious democracy should animadvert upon and punish the principal actors concerned in it,—who had satiated their own selfish ambition at the cost of so much suffering, anxiety, and peril to their country,—was nothing more than rigorous justice. But the circumstances of the case were peculiar: for the counter-revolution had been accomplished partly by the aid of a minority among the Four Hundred themselves,—Theramenês, Aristokratês, and others, together with the Board of Elders called Probûli,—all of whom had been, at the outset, either principals or accomplices in that system of terrorism and assassination, whereby the democracy had been overthrown and the oligarchical rulers established in the senate-house. The earlier operations of the conspiracy, therefore, though among its worst features, could not be exposed to inquiry and trial without compromising these parties as fellow-criminals. Theramenês evaded this difficulty, by selecting for animadversion a recent act of the majority of the Four Hundred, which he and his partisans had opposed, and on which therefore he had no interests adverse either to justice or to the popular feeling. He stood foremost to impeach the last embassy sent by the Four Hundred to Sparta, sent with instructions to purchase peace and alliance at almost any price, and connected with the construction of the fort at Ectioneia for the reception of an enemy’s garrison. This act of manifest treason, in which Antiphon, Phrynichus, and ten other known envoys were concerned, was chosen as the special matter for public trial and punishment, not less on public grounds than with a view to his own favor in the renewed democracy. But the fact that it was Theramenês who thus denounced his old friends and fellow-conspirators, after having lent hand and heart to their earlier and not less guilty deeds, was long remembered as a treacherous betrayal, and employed in after days as an excuse for atrocious injustice against himself.[118]

[118] Lysias cont. Eratosthen., c. 11, p. 427, sects. 66-68. Βουλόμενος δὲ (Theramenês) τῷ ὑμετέρῳ πλήθει πιστὸς δοκεῖν εἶναι, Ἀντιφῶντα καὶ Ἀρχεπτόλεμον, φιλτάτους ὄντας αὑτῷ, κατηγορῶν ἀπέκτεινεν· εἰς τοσοῦτον δὲ κακίας ἦλθεν, ὥστε ἅμα μὲν διὰ τὴν πρὸς ἐκείνους πίστιν ὑμᾶς κατεδουλώσατο, διὰ δὲ τὴν πρὸς ὑμᾶς τοὺς φίλους ἀπώλεσεν.

Compare Xenophon, Hellen., ii, 3, 30-33.

Of the twelve envoys who went on this mission, all except Phrynichus, Antiphon, Archeptolemus, and Onomaklês, seem to have already escaped to Dekeleia or elsewhere. Phrynichus, as I have mentioned a few pages above, had been assassinated several days before. Respecting his memory, a condemnatory vote had already been just passed by the restored senate of Five Hundred, decreeing that his property should be confiscated and his house razed to the ground, and conferring the gift of citizenship, together with a pecuniary recompense, on two foreigners who claimed to have assassinated him.[119] The other three, Antiphon, Archeptolemus, and Onomaklês,[120] were presented in name to the senate by the generals, of whom probably Theramenês was one, as having gone on a mission to Sparta for purposes of mischief to Athens, partly on board an enemy’s ship, partly through the Spartan garrison at Dekeleia. Upon this presentation, doubtless a document of some length and going into particulars, a senator named Andron moved: That the generals, aided by any ten senators whom they may choose, do seize the three persons accused, and hold them in custody for trial; that the thesmothetæ do send to each of the three a formal summons, to prepare themselves for trial on a future day before the dikastery, on the charge of high treason, and do bring them to trial on the day named; assisted by the generals, the ten senators chosen as auxiliaries, and any other citizen who may please to take part, as their accusers. Each of the three was to be tried separately, and, if condemned, was to be dealt with according to the penal law of the city against traitors, or persons guilty of treason.[121]

[119] That these votes, respecting the memory and the death of Phrynichus, preceded the trial of Antiphon, we may gather from the concluding words of the sentence passed upon Antiphon: see Plutarch, Vit. x, Oratt. p. 834, B: compare Schol. Aristoph. Lysistr. 313.

Both Lysias and Lykurgus, the orators, contain statements about the death of Phrynichus which are not in harmony with Thucydidês. Both these orators agree in reporting the names of the two foreigners who claimed to have slain Phrynichus, and whose claim was allowed by the people afterwards, in a formal reward and vote of citizenship, Thrasybulus of Kalydon, Apollodorus of Megara (Lysias cont. Agorat. c. 18, 492; Lykurg. cont. Leokrat. c. 29, p. 217).

Lykurgus says that Phrynichus was assassinated by night, “near the fountain, hard by the willow-trees:” which is quite contradictory to Thucydidês, who states that the deed was done in daylight, and in the market-place. Agoratus, against whom the speech of Lysias is directed, pretended to have been one of the assassins, and claimed reward on that score.

The story of Lykurgus, that the Athenian people, on the proposition of Kritias, exhumed and brought to trial the dead body of Phrynichus, and that Aristarchus and Alexiklês were put to death for undertaking its defence, is certainly in part false, and probably wholly false. Aristarchus was then at Œnoê, Alexiklês at Dekeleia.

[120] Onomaklês had been one of the colleagues of Phrynichus, as general of the armament in Ionia, in the preceding autumn (Thucyd. viii, 25).

In one of the Biographies of Thucydidês (p. xxii, in Dr. Arnold’s edition), it is stated that Onomaklês was executed along with the other two; but the document cited in the Pseudo-Plutarch contradicts this.

[121] Plutarch, Vit. x, Oratt. p. 834; compare Xenophon, Hellenic. i, 7, 22.

Apolêxis was one of the accusers of Antiphon: see Harpokration, v. Στασιώτης.

Though all the three persons thus indicated were at Athens, or at least were supposed to be there, on the day when this resolution was passed by the senate, yet, before it was executed, Onomaklês had fled; so that Antiphon and Archeptolemus only were imprisoned for trial. They too must have had ample opportunity for leaving the city, and we might have presumed that Antiphon would have thought it quite as necessary to retire as Peisander and Alexiklês. So acute a man as he, at no time very popular, must have known that now at least he had drawn the sword against his fellow-citizens in a manner which could never be forgiven. However, he chose voluntarily to stay: and this man, who had given orders for taking off so many of the democratical speakers by private assassination, received from the democracy, when triumphant, full notice and fair trial on a distinct and specific charge. The speech which he made in his defence, though it did not procure acquittal, was listened to, not merely with patience, but with admiration; as we may judge from the powerful and lasting effect which it produced. Thucydidês describes it as the most magnificent defence against a capital charge which had ever come before him;[122] and the poet Agathon, doubtless a hearer, warmly complimented Antiphon on his eloquence; to which the latter replied, that the approval of one such discerning judge was in his eyes an ample compensation for the unfriendly verdict of the multitude. Both he and Archeptolemus were found guilty by the dikastery and condemned to the penalties of treason. They were handed over to the magistrates called the Eleven, the chiefs of executive justice at Athens, to be put to death by the customary draught of hemlock. Their properties were confiscated, their houses were directed to be razed, and the vacant site to be marked by columns, with the inscription: “The residence of Antiphon the traitor,—of Archeptolemus the traitor.” They were not permitted to be buried either in Attica, or in any territory subject to Athenian dominion.[123] Their children, both legitimate and illegitimate, were deprived of the citizenship; and the citizen who should adopt any descendant of either of them, was to be himself in like manner disfranchised.

[122] Thucyd. viii, 68; Aristotel. Ethic. Eudem. iii, 5.

Rühnken seems quite right (Dissertat. De Antiphont. p. 818, Reisk.) in considering the oration περὶ μεταστάσεως to be Antiphon’s defence of himself; though Westermann (Geschichte der Griech. Beredsamkeit, p. 277) controverts this opinion. This oration is alluded to in several of the articles in Harpokration.

[123] So, Themistoklês, as a traitor, was not allowed to be buried in Attica (Thucyd. i, 138; Cornel. Nepos, Vit. Themistocl. ii, 10). His friends are said to have brought his bones thither secretly.

Such was the sentence passed by the dikastery, pursuant to the Athenian law of treason. It was directed to be engraved on the same brazen column as the decree of honor to the slayers of Phrynichus. From that column it was transcribed, and has thus passed into history.[124]

[124] It is given at length in Pseudo-Plutarch, Vit. x, Oratt. pp. 833, 834. It was preserved by Cæcilius, a Sicilian and rhetorical teacher, of the Augustan age; who possessed sixty orations ascribed to Antiphon, twenty-five of which he considered spurious.

Antiphon left a daughter, whom Kallæschrus sued for in marriage, pursuant to the forms of law, being entitled to do so on the score of near relationship (ἐπεδικάσατο). Kallæschrus was himself one of the Four Hundred, perhaps a brother of Kritias. It seems singular that the legal power of suing at law for a female in marriage, by right of near kin (τοῦ ἐπιδικάζεσθαι), could extend to a female disfranchised and debarred from all rights of citizenship.

If we may believe Harpokration, Andron, who made the motion in the senate for sending Antiphon and Archeptolemus to trial, had been himself a member of the Four Hundred oligarchs, as well as Theramenês (Harp. v. Ἄνδρων).

The note of Dr. Arnold upon that passage (viii, 68) wherein Thucydidês calls Antiphon ἀρετῇ οὐδενὸς ὕστερος, “inferior to no man in virtue,” well deserves to be consulted. This passage shows, in a remarkable manner, what were the political and private qualities which determined the esteem of Thucydidês. It shows that his sympathies went along with the oligarchical party; and that, while the exaggerations of opposition-speakers, or demagogues, such as those which he imputes to Kleon and Hyperbolus, provoked his bitter hatred, exaggerations of the oligarchical warfare, or multiplied assassinations, did not make him like a man the worse. But it shows, at the same time, his great candor in the narration of facts: for he gives an undisguised revelation both of the assassinations, and of the treason, of Antiphon.

How many of the Four Hundred oligarchs actually came to trial or were punished, we have no means of knowing; but there is ground for believing that none were put to death except Antiphon and Archeptolemus, perhaps also Aristarchus, the betrayer of Œnoê to the Bœotians. The latter is said to have been formally tried and condemned:[125] though by what accident he afterwards came into the power of the Athenians, after having once effected his escape, we are not informed. The property of Peisander, he himself having escaped, was confiscated, and granted either wholly or in part as a recompense to Apollodorus, one of the assassins of Phrynichus:[126] probably the property of the other conspicuous fugitive oligarchs was confiscated also. Polystratus, another of the Four Hundred, who had only become a member of that body a few days before its fall, was tried during absence, which absence his defenders afterwards accounted for, by saying that he had been wounded in the naval battle of Eretria, and heavily fined. It seems that each of the Four Hundred was called on to go through an audit and a trial of accountability, according to the practice general at Athens with magistrates going out of office. Such of them as did not appear to this trial were condemned to fine, to exile, or to have their names recorded as traitors: but most of those who did appear seem to have been acquitted; partly, we are told, by bribes to the logistæ, or auditing officers, though some were condemned either to fine or to partial political disability, along with those hoplites who had been the most marked partisans of the Four Hundred.[127]

[125] Xenoph. Hellenic. i, 7, 28. This is the natural meaning of the passage; though it _may_ also mean that a day for trial was named, but that Aristarchus did not appear. Aristarchus may possibly have been made prisoner in one of the engagements which took place between the garrison of Dekeleia and the Athenians. The Athenian exiles in a body established themselves at Dekeleia, and carried on constant war with the citizens at Athens: see Lysias, De Bonis Niciæ Fratris, Or. xviii, ch. 4, p. 604: Pro Polystrato, Orat. xx, c. 7, p. 688; Andokidês de Mysteriis, c. 17, p. 50.

[126] Lysias, De Oleâ Sacrâ, Or. vii, ch. ii, p. 263, Reisk.

[127] “Quadringentis ipsa dominatio fraudi non fuit; imo qui cum Theramene et Aristocrate steterant, in magno honore habiti sunt: omnibus autem rationes reddendæ fuerunt; qui solum vertissent, proditores judicati sunt, nomina in publico proposita.” (Wattenbach, De Quadringentorum Athenis Factione, p. 65.)

From the psephism of Patrokleidês, passed six years subsequently, after the battle of Ægospotamos, we learn that the names of such among the Four Hundred as did not stay to take their trial, were engraved on pillars distinct from those who were tried and condemned either to fine or to various disabilities; Andokidês de Mysteriis, sects. 75-78: Καὶ ὅσα ὀνόματα τῶν τετρακοσίων τινὸς ἐγγέγραπται, ἢ ἄλλο τι περὶ τῶν ἐν τῇ ὀλιγαρχίᾳ πραχθέντων ἔστι που γεγραμμένον, ~πλὴν ὁπόσα ἐν στήλαις γέγραπται τῶν μὴ ἐνθάδε μεινάντων~, etc. These last names, as the most criminal, were excepted from the amnesty of Patrokleidês.

We here see that there were two categories among the condemned Four Hundred: 1. Those who remained to stand the trial of accountability, and were condemned either to a fine which they could not pay, or to some positive disability. 2. Those who did not remain to stand their trial, and were condemned _par contumace_.

Along with the first category we find other names besides those of the Four Hundred, found guilty as their partisans: ἄλλο τι (ὄνομα) περὶ τῶν ἐν τῇ ὀλιγαρχίᾳ πραχθέντων. Among these partisans we may rank the soldiers mentioned a little before, sect. 75: οἱ στρατιῶται, οἷς ὅτι ~ἐπέμειναν ἐπὶ τῶν τυράννων~ ἐν τῇ πόλει, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα ἦν ἅπερ τοῖς ἄλλοις πολίταις, εἰπεῖν δ᾽ ἐν τῷ δήμῳ οὐκ ἐξῆν αὐτοῖς οὐδὲ βουλεῦσαι, where the preposition ἐπὶ seems to signify not simply contemporaneousness, but a sort of intimate connection, like the phrase ἐπὶ προστάτου οἰκεῖν (see Matthiæ, Gr. Gr. sect. 584; Kühner, Gr. Gr. sect. 611).

The oration of Lysias pro Polystrato is on several points obscure: but we make out that Polystratus was one of the Four Hundred who did not come to stand his trial of accountability, and was therefore condemned in his absence. Severe accusations were made against him, and he was falsely asserted to be the cousin, whereas he was in reality only fellow-demot, of Phrynichus (sects. 20, 24, 11). The defence explains his non-appearance, by saying that he had been wounded at the battle of Eretria, and that the trial took place immediately after the deposition of the Four Hundred (sects. 14, 24). He was heavily fined, and deprived of his citizenship (sects. 15, 33, 38). It would appear that the fine was greater than his property could discharge; accordingly this fine, remaining unpaid, would become chargeable upon his sons after his death, and unless they could pay it, they would come into the situation of insolvent public debtors to the state, which would debar them from the exercise of the rights of citizenship, so long as the debt remained unpaid. But while Polystratus was alive, his sons were not liable to the state for the payment of his fine; and _they_ therefore still remained citizens, and in the full exercise of their rights, though _he_ was disfranchised. They were three sons, all of whom had served with credit as hoplites, and even as horsemen, in Sicily and elsewhere. In the speech before us, one of them prefers a petition to the dikastery, that the sentence passed against his father may be mitigated; partly on the ground that it was unmerited, being passed while his father was afraid to stand forward in his own defence, partly as recompense for distinguished military services of all the three sons. The speech was delivered at a time later than the battle of Kynossêma, in the autumn of this year (sect. 31), but not very long after the overthrow of the Four Hundred, and certainly, I think, long before the Thirty; so that the assertion of Taylor (Vit. Lysiæ, p. 55) that _all_ the extant orations of Lysias bear date after the Thirty, must be received with this exception.

Indistinctly as we make out the particular proceedings of the Athenian people at this restoration of the democracy, we know from Thucydidês that their prudence and moderation were exemplary. The eulogy, which he bestows in such emphatic terms upon their behavior at this juncture, is indeed doubly remarkable:[128] first, because it comes from an exile, not friendly to the democracy, and a strong admirer of Antiphon; next, because the juncture itself was one eminently trying to the popular morality, and likely to degenerate, by almost natural tendency, into excess of reactionary vengeance and persecution. The democracy was now one hundred years old, dating from Kleisthenês, and fifty years old, even dating from the final reforms of Ephialtês and Periklês; so that self-government and political equality were a part of the habitual sentiment of every man’s bosom, heightened in this case by the fact that Athens was not merely a democracy, but an imperial democracy, having dependencies abroad.[129] At a moment when, from unparalleled previous disasters, she is barely able to keep up the struggle against her foreign enemies, a small knot of her own wealthiest citizens, taking advantage of her weakness, contrive, by a tissue of fraud and force not less flagitious than skilfully combined, to concentrate in their own hands the powers of the state, and to tear from their countrymen the security against bad government, the sentiment of equal citizenship, and the long-established freedom of speech. Nor is this all: these conspirators not only plant an oligarchical sovereignty in the senate-house, but also sustain that sovereignty by inviting a foreign garrison from without, and by betraying Athens to her Peloponnesian enemies. Two more deadly injuries it is impossible to imagine; and from neither of them would Athens have escaped, if her foreign enemy had manifested reasonable alacrity. Considering the immense peril, the narrow escape, and the impaired condition in which Athens was left, notwithstanding her escape, we might well have expected in the people a violence of reactionary hostility such as every calm observer, while making allowance for the provocation, must nevertheless have condemned; and perhaps somewhat analogous to that exasperation which, under very similar circumstances, had caused the bloody massacres at Korkyra.[130] And when we find that this is exactly the occasion which Thucydidês, an observer rather less than impartial, selects to eulogize their good conduct and moderation, we are made deeply sensible of the good habits which their previous democracy must have implanted in them, and which now served as a corrective to the impulse of the actual moment. They had become familiar with the cementing force of a common sentiment; they had learned to hold sacred the inviolability of law and justice, even in respect to their worst enemy; and what was of not less moment, the frequency and freedom of political discussion had taught them not only to substitute the contentions of the tongue for those of the sword, but also to conceive their situation with its present and prospective liabilities, instead of being hurried away by blind retrospective vengeance against the past.

[128] This testimony of Thucydidês is amply sufficient to refute the vague assertions in the Oration xxv, of Lysias (Δήμου Καταλυσ. Ἀπολ. sects. 34, 35), about great enormities now committed by the Athenians; though Mr. Mitford copies these assertions as if they were real history, referring them to a time four years afterwards (History of Greece, ch. xx, s. 1, vol. iv, p. 327).

[129] Thucyd. viii, 68.

[130] See about the events in Korkyra, vol. vi, ch. 1, p. 283.

There are few contrasts in Grecian history more memorable or more instructive, than that between this oligarchical conspiracy, conducted by some of the ablest hands at Athens, and the democratical movement going on at the same time in Samos, among the Athenian armament and the Samian citizens. In the former, we have nothing but selfishness and personal ambition, from the beginning: first, a partnership to seize for their own advantage the powers of government; next, after this object has been accomplished, a breach among the partners, arising out of disappointment alike selfish. We find appeal made to nothing but the worst tendencies; either tricks to practise upon the credulity of the people, or extra-judicial murders to work upon their fear. In the latter, on the contrary, the sentiment invoked is that of common patriotism, and equal, public-minded sympathy. That which we read in Thucydidês,—when the soldiers of the armament and the Samian citizens, pledged themselves to each other by solemn oaths to uphold their democracy, to maintain harmony and good feeling with each other, to prosecute energetically the war against the Peloponnesians, and to remain at enmity with the oligarchical conspirators at Athens,—is a scene among the most dramatic and inspiriting which occurs in his history.[131] Moreover, we recognize at Samos the same absence of reactionary vengeance as at Athens, after the attack of the oligarchs, Athenian as well as Samian, has been repelled; although those oligarchs had begun by assassinating Hyperbolus and others. There is throughout this whole democratical movement at Samos a generous exaltation of common sentiment over personal, and at the same time an absence of ferocity against opponents, such as nothing except democracy ever inspired in the Grecian bosom.

[131] Thucyd. viii, 75.

It is, indeed, true that this was a special movement of generous enthusiasm, and that the details of a democratical government correspond to it but imperfectly. Neither in the life of an individual, nor in that of a people, does the ordinary and every-day movement appear at all worthy of those particular seasons in which a man is lifted above his own level and becomes capable of extreme devotion and heroism. Yet such emotions, though their complete predominance is never otherwise than transitory, have their foundation in veins of sentiment which are not even at other times wholly extinct, but count among the manifold forces tending to modify and improve, if they cannot govern, human action. Even their moments of transitory predominance leave a luminous track behind, and render the men who have passed through them more apt to conceive again the same generous impulse, though in fainter degree. It is one of the merits of Grecian democracy that it _did_ raise this feeling of equal and patriotic communion: sometimes, and on rare occasions, like the scene at Samos, with overwhelming intensity, so as to impassion an unanimous multitude; more frequently, in feebler tide, yet such as gave some chance to an honest and eloquent orator, of making successful appeal to public feeling against corruption or selfishness. If we follow the movements of Antiphon and his fellow-conspirators at Athens, contemporaneous with the democratical manifestations at Samos, we shall see that not only was no such generous impulse included in it, but the success of their scheme depended upon their being able to strike all common and active patriotism out of the Athenian bosom. Under the “cold shade” of their oligarchy—even if we suppose the absence of cruelty and rapacity, which would probably soon have become rife had their dominion lasted, as we shall presently learn from the history of the second oligarchy of Thirty—no sentiment would have been left to the Athenian multitude except fear, servility, or at best a tame and dumb sequacity to leaders whom they neither chose nor controlled. To those who regard different forms of government as distinguished from each other mainly by the feelings which each tends to inspire in magistrates as well as citizens, the contemporaneous scenes of Athens and Samos will suggest instructive comparisons between Grecian oligarchy and Grecian democracy.