CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE DEMOCRACY RESTORED

The period intervening between the defeat of Ægospotami (October, 405 B.C.), and the re-establishment of the democracy as sanctioned by the convention concluded with Pausanias (some time in the summer of 403 B.C.), presents two years of cruel and multifarious suffering to Athens.

After such years of misery, it was an unspeakable relief to the Athenian population to regain possession of Athens and Attica; to exchange their domestic tyrants for a renovated democratical government; and to see their foreign enemies not merely evacuate the country, but even bind themselves by treaty to future friendly dealing. In respect of power, indeed, Athens was but the shadow of her former self. She had no empire, no tribute, no fleet, no fortifications at Piræus, no long walls, not a single fortified place in Attica except the city itself.

Of these losses, the Athenians made little account at the first epoch of their re-establishment; so intolerable was the pressure which they had just escaped, and so welcome the restitution of comfort, security, property, and independence at home. The very excess of tyranny committed by the Thirty gave a peculiar zest to the recovery of the democracy. In their hands, the oligarchical principle (to borrow an expression from Burke) “had produced in fact and instantly, the grossest of those evils with which it was pregnant in its nature”; realising the promise of that plain-spoken oligarchical oath, which Aristotle mentions as having been taken in various oligarchical cities--to contrive as much evil as possible to the people. So much the more complete was the reaction of sentiment towards the antecedent democracy, even in the minds of those who had been before discontented with it. To all men, rich and poor, citizens and metics, the comparative excellence of the democracy, in respect of all the essentials of good government, was now manifest. With the exception of those who had identified themselves with the Thirty as partners, partisans, or instruments, there was scarcely any one who did not feel that his life and property had been far more secure under the former democracy, and would become so again if that democracy were revived.

It was the first measure of Thrasybulus and his companions, after concluding the treaty with Pausanias and thus re-entering the city, to exchange solemn oaths of amnesty for the past, with those against whom they had just been at war. Similar oaths of amnesty were also exchanged with those in Eleusis, as soon as that town came into their power. The only persons excepted from this amnesty were the Thirty, the Eleven who had presided over the execution of all their atrocities, and the Ten who had governed in Piræus. Even these persons were not peremptorily banished: opportunity was offered to them to come in and take their trial of accountability (universal at Athens in the case of every magistrate on quitting office); so that if acquitted, they would enjoy the benefit of the amnesty as well as all others. We know that Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty, afterwards returned to Athens; since there remains a powerful harangue of Lysias invoking justice against him as having brought to death Polemarchus (the brother of Lysias).

We learn moreover from the same speech, that such was the detestation of the Thirty among several of the states surrounding Attica, as to cause formal decrees for their expulsion or for prohibiting their coming. The sons, even of such among the Thirty as did not return, were allowed to remain at Athens, and enjoy their rights as citizens unmolested; a moderation rare in Grecian political warfare.

The first public vote of the Athenians, after the conclusion of peace with Sparta and the return of the exiles, was to restore the former democracy purely and simply, to choose by lot the nine archons and the senate of Five Hundred, and to elect the generals--all as before. It appears that this restoration of the preceding constitution was partially opposed by a citizen named Phormisius, who, having served with Thrasybulus in Piræus, now moved that the political franchise should for the future be restricted to the possessors of land in Attica. His proposition was understood to be supported by the Lacedæmonians, and was recommended as calculated to make Athens march in better harmony with them. It was presented as a compromise between oligarchy and democracy, excluding both the poorer freemen and those whose property lay either in movables or in land out of Attica; so that the aggregate number of the disfranchised would have been five thousand persons. Since Athens now had lost her fleet and maritime empire, and since the importance of Piræus was much curtailed not merely by these losses, but by demolition of its separate walls and of the Long Walls--Phormisius and others conceived the opportunity favourable for striking out the maritime and trading multitude from the roll of citizens. Many of these men must have been in easy and even opulent circumstances; but the bulk of them were poor; and Phormisius had of course at his command the usual arguments, by which it is attempted to prove that poor men have no business with political judgment or action. But the proposition was rejected; the orator Lysias being among its opponents, and composing a speech against it which was either spoken, or intended to be spoken, by some eminent citizen in the assembly.

Unfortunately we have only a fragment of the speech remaining, wherein the proposition is justly criticised as mischievous and unseasonable, depriving Athens of a large portion of her legitimate strength, patriotism, and harmony, and even of substantial men competent to serve as hoplites or horsemen--at a moment when she was barely rising from absolute prostration. Never certainly was the fallacy which connects political depravity or incapacity with a poor station, and political virtue or judgment with wealth, more conspicuously unmasked than in reference to the recent experience of Athens. The remark of Thrasybulus was most true--that a greater number of atrocities, both against person and against property, had been committed in a few months by the Thirty, and abetted by the class of horsemen, all rich men, than the poor majority of the demos had sanctioned during two generations of democracy. Moreover we know, on the authority of a witness unfriendly to the democracy, that the poor Athenian citizens, who served on shipboard and elsewhere, were exact in obedience to their commanders; while the richer citizens who served as hoplites and horsemen and who laid claim to higher individual estimation, were far less orderly in the public service.

The motion of Phormisius being rejected, the antecedent democracy was restored without qualification, together with the ordinances of Draco, and the laws, measures, and weights of Solon. But on closer inspection, it was found that the latter part of the resolution was incompatible with the amnesty which had been just sworn. According to the laws of Solon and Draco, the perpetrators of enormities under the Thirty had rendered themselves guilty, and were open to trial. To escape this consequence, a second psephism or decree was passed, on the proposition of Tisamenus, to review the laws of Solon and Draco, and re-enact them with such additions and amendments as might be deemed expedient. Five hundred citizens had just been chosen by the people as _nomothetæ_ or law-makers, at the same time when the senate of Five Hundred was taken by lot; out of these nomothetæ the senate now chose a select few, whose duty it was to consider all propositions for amendment or addition to the laws of the old democracy, and post them up for public inspection before the statues of the Eponymous Heroes, within the month then running. The senate, and the entire body of five hundred nomothetæ, were then to be convened, in order that each might pass in review, separately, both the old laws and the new propositions; the nomothetæ being previously sworn to decide righteously. While this discussion was going on, every private citizen had liberty to enter the senate, and to tender his opinion with reasons for or against any law. All the laws which should thus be approved (first by the senate, afterwards by the nomothetæ), but no others--were to be handed to the magistrates, and inscribed on the walls of the portico called Pœcile, for public notoriety, as the future regulators of the city. After the laws were promulgated by such public inscription, the senate of Areopagus was enjoined to take care that they should be duly observed and enforced by the magistrates. A provisional committee of twenty citizens was named, to be generally responsible for the city during the time occupied in this revision. As soon as the laws had been revised and publicly inscribed in the Pœcile pursuant to the above decree, two concluding laws were enacted which completed the purpose of the citizens.

The first of these laws forbade the magistrates to act upon, or permit to be acted upon, any law not among those inscribed; and declared that no psephism, either of the senate or of the people, should overrule any law. It renewed also the old prohibition (dating from the days of Clisthenes and the first origin of the democracy), to enact a special law inflicting direct hardship upon any individual Athenian apart from the rest, unless by the votes of six thousand citizens voting secretly.

The second of the two laws prescribed, that all the legal adjudications and arbitrations which had been passed under the antecedent democracy should be held valid and unimpeached--but formally annulled all which had been passed under the Thirty. It further provided that the laws now revised and inscribed, should only take effect from the archonship of Euclides; that is, from the nominations of archons made after the recent return of Thrasybulus and the renovation of the democracy.

By these ever memorable enactments, all acts done prior to the nomination of the archon Euclides and his colleagues (in the summer of 403 B.C.) were excluded from serving as grounds for criminal process against any citizen. To insure more fully that this should be carried into effect, a special clause was added to the oath taken annually by the senators, as well as to that taken by the heliastic dicasts. The senators pledged themselves by oath not to receive any impeachment, or give effect to any arrest, founded on any fact prior to the archonship of Euclides, excepting only against the Thirty and the other individuals expressly shut out from the amnesty, and now in exile. To the oath annually taken by the heliasts, also, was added the clause: “I will not remember past wrongs, nor will I abet any one else who shall remember them; on the contrary, I will give my vote pursuant to the existing laws”: which laws proclaimed themselves as only taking effect from the archonship of Euclides.

By additional enactments, security was taken that the proceedings of the courts of justice should be in full conformity with the amnesty recently sworn, and that, neither directly nor indirectly, should any person be molested for wrongs done anterior to Euclides. And in fact the amnesty was faithfully observed: the re-entering exiles from Piræus, and the horsemen with other partisans of the Thirty in Athens, blended again together into one harmonious and equal democracy.

Eight years prior to these incidents, we have seen the oligarchical conspiracy of the Four Hundred, for a moment successful, and afterwards overthrown; and we have had occasion to notice, in reference to that event, the wonderful absence of all reactionary violence on the part of the victorious people, at a moment of severe provocation for the past and extreme apprehension for the future. We noticed that Thucydides, no friend to the Athenian democracy, selected precisely that occasion--on which some manifestation of vindictive impulse might have been supposed likely and natural--to bestow the most unqualified eulogies on their moderate and gentle bearing. Had the historian lived to describe the reign of the Thirty and the restoration which followed it, we cannot doubt that his expressions would have been still warmer and more emphatic in the same sense. Few events in history, either ancient or modern, are more astonishing than the behaviour of the Athenian people, on recovering their democracy, after the overthrow of the Thirty: and when we view it in conjunction with the like phenomenon after the deposition of the Four Hundred, we see that neither the one nor the other arose from peculiar caprice or accident of the moment; both depended upon permanent attributes of the popular character. If we knew nothing else except the events of these two periods, we should be warranted in dismissing, on that evidence alone, the string of contemptuous predicates,--giddy, irascible, jealous, unjust, greedy, etc.--one or other of which have been so frequently pronounced by unsympathetic or hostile critics respecting the Athenian people. A people, whose habitual temper and morality merited these epithets, could not have acted as the Athenians acted both after the Four Hundred and after the Thirty. Particular acts may be found in their history which justify severe censure; but as to the permanent elements of character, both moral and intellectual, no population in history has ever afforded stronger evidence than the Athenians on these two memorable occasions.

If we follow the acts of the Thirty, we shall see that the horsemen and the privileged three thousand hoplites in the city had made themselves partisans in every species of flagitious crime which could possibly be imagined to exasperate the feelings of the exiles. The latter on returning saw before them men who had handed in their relatives to be put to death without trial; who had seized upon and enjoyed their property; who had expelled them all from the city, and a large portion of them even from Attica; and who had held themselves in mastery not merely by the overthrow of the constitution, but also by inviting and subsidising foreign guards. Such atrocities, conceived and ordered by the Thirty, had been executed by the aid, and for the joint benefit (as Critias justly remarked) of those occupants of the city whom the exiles found on returning. Now Thrasybulus, Anytus, and the rest of these exiles, saw their property all pillaged and appropriated by others during the few months of their absence: we may presume that their lands--which had probably not been sold, but granted to individual members or partisans of the Thirty--were restored to them; but the movable property could not be reclaimed, and the losses to which they remained subject were prodigious.

[Sidenote: [403-402 B.C.]]

The men who had caused and profited by these losses--often with great brutality towards the families of the exiles, as we know by the case of Lysias--were now at Athens, all individually well known to the sufferers. In like manner, the sons and brothers of Leon and the other victims of the Thirty, saw before them the very citizens by whose hands their innocent relatives had been consigned without trial to prison and execution. The amount of wrong suffered had been infinitely greater than in the time of the Four Hundred, and the provocation, on every ground, public and private, violent to a degree never exceeded in history. Yet with all this sting fresh in their bosoms, we find the victorious multitude, on the latter occasion as well as on the former, burying the past in an indiscriminate amnesty, and anxious only for the future harmonious march of the renovated and all-comprehensive democracy. We see the sentiment of commonwealth in the demos, twice contrasted with the sentiment of faction in an ascendant oligarchy; twice triumphant over the strongest counter-motives, over the most bitter recollections of wrongful murder and spoliation, over all that passionate rush of reactionary appetite which characterises the moment of political restoration.

“Bloody will be the reign of that king who comes back to his kingdom from exile”--says the Latin poet: bloody indeed had been the rule of Critias and those oligarchs who had just come back from exile: “harsh is a demos (observes Æschylus) which has just got clear of misery.” But the Athenian demos, on coming back from Piræus, exhibited the rare phenomenon of a restoration after cruel wrong suffered, sacrificing all the strong impulse of retaliation to a generous and deliberate regard for the future march of the commonwealth. Thucydides remarks that the moderation of political antipathy which prevailed at Athens after the victory of the people over the Four Hundred, was the main cause which revived Athens from her great public depression and danger. Much more forcibly does this remark apply to the restoration after the Thirty, when the public condition of Athens was at the lowest depth of abasement, from which nothing could have rescued her except such exemplary wisdom and patriotism on the part of her victorious demos. Nothing short of this could have enabled her to accomplish that partial resurrection--into an independent and powerful single state, though shorn of her imperial power--which will furnish material for the subsequent portion of our history.

If we wanted any further proof of their capacity for taking the largest and soundest views on a difficult political situation, we should find it in another of their measures at this critical period. The Ten who had succeeded to oligarchical presidency of Athens after the death of Critias and the expulsion of the Thirty, had borrowed from Sparta the sum of one hundred talents [£20,000 or $100,000] for the express purpose of making war on the exiles in Piræus. After the peace, it was necessary that such sum should be repaid, and some persons proposed that recourse should be had to the property of those individuals and that party who had borrowed the money. The apparent equity of the proposition was doubtless felt with peculiar force at a time when the public treasury was in the extreme of poverty. Put nevertheless both the democratical leaders and the people decidedly opposed it, resolving to recognise the debt as a public charge; in which capacity it was afterwards liquidated, after some delay arising from an unsupplied treasury.

The necessity of a fresh collection and publication (if we may use that word) of the laws, had been felt prior to the time of the Thirty. But such a project could hardly be realised without at the same time revising the laws, as a body, removing all flagrant contradictions, and rectifying what might glaringly displease the age either in substance or in style. Now the psephism of Tisamenus, one of the first measures of the renewed democracy after the Thirty, both prescribed such revision and set in motion a revising body; but an additional decree was now proposed and carried by Archinus, relative to the alphabet in which the revised laws should be drawn up. The Ionic alphabet, that is, the full Greek alphabet of twenty-four letters, as now written and printed, had been in use at Athens universally, for a considerable time--apparently for two generations; but from tenacious adherence to ancient custom, the laws had still continued to be consigned to writing in the old Attic alphabet of only sixteen or eighteen letters. It was now ordained that this scanty alphabet should be discontinued, and that the revised laws, as well as all future public acts, should be written up in the full Ionic alphabet.

Partly through this important reform, partly through the revising body, partly through the agency of Nicomachus, who was still continued as Anagrapheus [“Writer-up” of the old laws], the revision, inscription, and publication of the laws in their new alphabet was at length completed. But it seems to have taken two years to perform--or at least two years elapsed before Nicomachus went through his trial of accountability. He appears to have made various new propositions of his own, which were among those adopted by the nomothetæ: for these he was attacked, on a trial of accountability, as well as on the still graver allegation of having corruptly falsified the decisions of that body--writing up what they had not sanctioned, or suppressing that which they had sanctioned.

The archonship of Euclides, succeeding immediately to the Anarchy (as the period of the Thirty was denominated), became thus a cardinal point or epoch in Athenian history. We cannot doubt that the laws came forth out of this revision considerably modified, though unhappily we possess no particulars on the subject. We learn that the political franchise was, on the proposition of Aristophon, so far restricted for the future, that no person could be a citizen by birth except the son of citizen parents on both sides; whereas previously, it had been sufficient if the father alone was a citizen. The rhetor Lysias, by station a metic, had not only suffered great loss, narrowly escaping death from the Thirty (who actually put to death his brother Polemarchus) but had contributed a large sum to assist the armed efforts of the exiles under Thrasybulus in Piræus. As a reward and compensation for such antecedents, the latter proposed that the franchise of citizen should be conferred upon him; but we are told that this decree, though adopted by the people, was afterwards indicted by Archinus as illegal or informal, and cancelled. Lysias, thus disappointed of the citizenship, passed the remainder of his life as an _isoteles_, or non-freeman on the best condition, exempt from the peculiar burdens upon the class of metics.

Such refusal of citizenship to an eminent man like Lysias, who had both acted and suffered in the cause of the democracy, when combined with the decree of Aristophon above noticed, implies a degree of augmented strictness which we can only partially explain. It was not merely the renewal of her democracy for which Athens had now to provide. She had also to accommodate her legislation and administration to her future march as an isolated state, without empire or foreign dependencies. For this purpose material changes must have been required: among others, we know that the Board of Hellenotamiæ (originally named for the collection and management of the tribute at Delos, but attracting to themselves gradually more extended functions, until they became ultimately, immediately before the Thirty, the general paymasters of the state) was discontinued, and such among its duties as did not pass away along with the loss of the foreign empire, were transferred to two new officers--the treasurer at war, and the manager of the theoricon, or religious festival-fund.

While the Athenian empire lasted, the citizens of Athens were spread over the Ægean in every sort of capacity--as settlers, merchants, navigators, soldiers, etc., which must have tended materially to encourage intermarriages between them and the women of other Grecian insular states. Indeed we are even told that an express permission of _connubium_ with Athenians was granted to the inhabitants of Eubœa--a fact (noticed by Lysias) of some moment in illustrating the tendency of the Athenian empire to multiply family ties between Athens and the allied cities. Now, according to the law which prevailed before Euclides, the son of every such marriage was by birth an Athenian citizen; an arrangement at that time useful to Athens, as strengthening the bonds of her empire--and eminently useful in a larger point of view, among the causes of Panhellenic sympathy. But when Athens was deprived both of her empire and her fleet, and confined within the limits of Attica--there no longer remained any motive to continue such a regulation, so that the exclusive city-feeling, instinctive in the Grecian mind, again became predominant. Such is perhaps the explanation of the new restrictive law proposed by Aristophon.

Thrasybulus and the gallant handful of exiles who had first seized Phyle received no larger reward than a thousand drachmæ [£40 or $200] for a common sacrifice and votive offering, together with wreaths of olive as a token of gratitude from their countrymen. The debt which Athens owed to Thrasybulus was indeed such as could not be liquidated by money. To his individual patriotism, in great degree, we may ascribe not only the restoration of the democracy, but its good behaviour when restored. How different would have been the consequences of the restoration and the conduct of the people, had the event been brought about by a man like Alcibiades, applying great abilities principally to the furtherance of his own cupidity and power!

THE END OF ALCIBIADES

[Sidenote: [405-403 B.C.]]

At the restoration of the democracy, Alcibiades was already no more. Shortly after the catastrophe at Ægospotami, he had sought shelter in the satrapy of Pharnabazus, no longer thinking himself safe from Lacedæmonian persecution in his forts on the Thracian Chersonesus. He carried with him a good deal of property, though he left still more behind him in these forts: how acquired we do not know. But having crossed apparently to Asia by the Bosporus, he was plundered by the Thracians in Bithynia, and incurred much loss before he could reach Pharnabazus in Phrygia. Renewing the tie of personal hospitality which he had contracted with Pharnabazus four years before, he now solicited from the satrap a safe conduct up to Susa. The Athenian envoys--whom Pharnabazus, after his former pacification with Alcibiades, 408 B.C., had engaged to escort to Susa, but had been compelled by the mandate of Cyrus to detain as prisoners--were just now released from their three years’ detention, and enabled to come down to the Propontis; and Alcibiades, by whom this mission had originally been projected, tried to prevail on the satrap to perform the promise which he had originally given, but had not been able to fulfil. The hopes of the sanguine exile, reverting back to the history of Themistocles, led him to anticipate the same success at Susa as had fallen to the lot of the latter: nor was the design impracticable, to one whose ability was universally renowned, and who had already acted as minister to Tissaphernes.

The court of Susa was at this time in a peculiar position. King Darius Nothus, having recently died, had been succeeded by his eldest son Artaxerxes Mnemon; but the younger son Cyrus, whom Darius had sent for during his last illness, tried after the death of the latter to supplant Artaxerxes in the succession--or at least was suspected of so trying. Cyrus being seized and about to be slain, the queen-mother, Parysatis, prevailed upon Artaxerxes to pardon him, and send him again down to his satrapy along the coast of Ionia, where he laboured strenuously, though secretly, to acquire the means of dethroning his brother; a memorable attempt, of which we shall speak more fully hereafter. But his schemes, though carefully masked, did not escape the observation of Alcibiades, who wished to make a merit of revealing them at Susa, and to become the instrument of defeating them. He communicated his suspicions as well as his purpose to Pharnabazus; whom he tried to awaken by alarm of danger to the empire, in order that he might thus get himself forwarded to Susa as informant and auxiliary.

Pharnabazus was already jealous and unfriendly in spirit towards Lysander and the Lacedæmonians (of which we shall soon see plain evidence)--and perhaps towards Cyrus also, since such were the habitual relations of neighbouring satraps in the Persian empire. But the Lacedæmonians and Cyrus were now all-powerful on the Asiatic coast, so that he probably did not dare to exasperate them, by identifying himself with a mission so hostile, and an enemy so dangerous, to both. Accordingly he refused compliance with the request of Alcibiades; granting him nevertheless permission to live in Phrygia, and even assigning to him a revenue. But the objects at which the exile was aiming soon became more or less fully divulged to those against whom they were intended. His restless character, enterprise, and capacity, were so well known as to raise exaggerated fears as well as exaggerated hopes. Not merely Cyrus, but the Lacedæmonians, closely allied with Cyrus, and the decarchies, whom Lysander had set up in the Asiatic Grecian cities, and who held their power only through Lacedæmonian support--all were uneasy at the prospect of seeing Alcibiades again in action and command, amidst so many unsettled elements. Nor can we doubt that the exiles whom these decarchies had banished, and the disaffected citizens who remained at home under their government in fear of banishment or death, kept up correspondence with him, and looked to him as a probable liberator. Moreover the Spartan king Agis still retained the same personal antipathy against him, which had already (some years before) procured the order to be despatched, from Sparta to Asia, to assassinate him. Here are elements enough, of hostility, vengeance, and apprehension, afloat against Alcibiades--without believing the story of Plutarch, that Critias and the Thirty sent to apprise Lysander that the oligarchy at Athens could not stand so long as Alcibiades was alive.

[Sidenote: [404 B.C.]]

A special despatch (or scytale) was sent out by the Spartan authorities to Lysander in Asia, enjoining him to procure that Alcibiades should be put to death. Accordingly Lysander communicated this order to Pharnabazus, within whose satrapy Alcibiades was residing, and requested that it might be put in execution. Pharnabazus therefore despatched his brother Magæus and his uncle Sisamithres, with a band of armed men, to assassinate Alcibiades in the Phrygian village where he was residing. These men, not daring to force their way into his house, surrounded it and set it on fire. Yet Alcibiades, having contrived to extinguish the flames, rushed out upon his assailants with a dagger in his right hand, and a cloak wrapped around his left to serve as a shield. None of them dared to come near him; but they poured upon him showers of darts and arrows until he perished, undefended as he was either by shield or by armour. A female companion with whom he lived--Timandra--wrapped up his body in garments of her own, and performed towards it all the last affectionate solemnities.

Such was the deed which Cyrus and the Lacedæmonians did not scruple to enjoin, nor the uncle and brother of a Persian satrap to execute; and by which this celebrated Athenian perished before he had attained the age of fifty. Had he lived, we cannot doubt that he would again have played some conspicuous part--for neither his temper nor his abilities would have allowed him to remain in the shade--but whether to the advantage of Athens or not is more questionable. Certain it is that, taking his life throughout, the good which he did to her bore no proportion to the far greater evil. Of the disastrous Sicilian expedition, he was more the cause than any other individual; though that enterprise cannot properly be said to have been caused by any individual: it emanated rather from a national impulse. Having first, as a counsellor, contributed more than any other man to plunge the Athenians into this imprudent adventure, he next, as an exile, contributed more than any other man (except Nicias) to turn that adventure into ruin, and the consequences of it into still greater ruin. Without him, Gylippus would not have been sent to Syracuse, Decelea would not have been fortified, Chios and Miletus would not have revolted, the oligarchical conspiracy of the Four Hundred would not have been originated. Nor can it be said that his first three years of political action as Athenian leader, in a speculation peculiarly his own--the alliance with Argos, and the campaigns in Peloponnesus--proved in any way advantageous to his country. On the contrary, by playing an offensive game where he had hardly sufficient force for a defensive, he enabled the Lacedæmonians completely to recover their injured reputation and ascendency through the important victory of Mantinea. The period of his life really serviceable to his country, and really glorious to himself, was that of three years ending with his return to Athens in 407 B.C. The results of these three years of success were frustrated by the unexpected coming down of Cyrus as satrap: but just at the moment when it behoved Alcibiades to put forth a higher measure of excellence, in order to realise his own promises in the face of this new obstacle--at that critical moment we find him spoiled by the unexpected welcome which had recently greeted him at Athens, and falling miserably short even of the former merit whereby that welcome had been earned.

If from his achievements we turn to his dispositions, his ends, and his means--there are few characters in Grecian history who present so little to esteem, whether we look at him as a public or as a private man. His ends are those of exorbitant ambition and vanity; his means rapacious as well as reckless, from his first dealing with Sparta and the Spartan envoys, down to the end of his career. The manœuvres whereby his political enemies first procured his exile were indeed base and guilty in a high degree. But we must recollect that if his enemies were more numerous and violent than those of any other politician in Athens, the generating seed was sown by his own overweening insolence and contempt of restraints, legal as well as social. On the other hand, he was never once defeated either by land or sea. In courage, in ability, in enterprise, in power of dealing with new men and new situations, he was never wanting; qualities which, combined with his high birth, wealth, and personal accomplishments, sufficed to render him for the time the first man in every successive party which he espoused--Athenian, Spartan, or Persian--oligarchical or democratical. But in none of them did he ever inspire any lasting confidence; all successively threw him off. On the whole, we shall find few men in whom eminent capacities for action and command are so thoroughly marred by an assemblage of bad moral qualities as Alcibiades.[b]

LIFE AT ATHENS

[Sidenote: [404-403 B.C.]]

The state of Athens after the expulsion of the Thirty was in some respects apparently less desolate than that in which she had been left after the battle of Platæa. It is possible indeed that the invasions of Xerxes and Mardonius may have inflicted less injury on her territory than the methodical and lingering ravages of the Peloponnesians during the Decelean war. But in 479 the city, as well as the country, had been, for a part of two consecutive years, in the power of an irritated enemy. All that it required both for ornament and defence was to be raised afresh from the ground. Yet the treasury was empty: commerce had probably never yet yielded any considerable supplies, and it had been deeply disturbed by the war; the state possessed no dependent colonies or tributary allies, and was watched with a jealous eye by the most powerful of its confederates.

[Sidenote: [403-402 B.C.]]

Commerce had not only been interrupted by the blockade, but had sustained still greater detriment from the tyranny of the Thirty, which had crushed or scared away the most opulent and industrious of the aliens: and the cloud which continued to hang over the prospects of the state, even after freedom and tranquillity had been restored, tended to discourage those who might have been willing to return. The public distress was such that it was with the greatest difficulty the council could provide ways and means for the ordinary expenses. Even the ancient sacrifices prescribed by the sacred canons were intermitted, because the treasury could not furnish three talents [£600 or $8000] for their celebration: and the repayment of a loan of two talents which had been advanced by the Thebans, probably in aid of the exiles, was so long delayed through the same cause, that hostilities were threatened for the purpose of recovering the debt. The navy of Athens had now sunk to a fourth of that which she had maintained before the time of Solon, and it was limited to this footing by a compact which could not be broken or eluded without imminent danger; Piræus was again unfortified: the arsenal was in ruins: even the city walls needed repairs, which could not be undertaken for want of money; and on all sides were enemies who rejoiced in her humiliation, and were urged both by their passions and interests to prevent her from again lifting up her head.

The corruption of the Athenian courts of justice probably began with that great extension of their business which took place when the greater part of the allies had lost their independence and were compelled to resort to Athens for the determination of all important causes. At the same time the increase of wealth and the enlargement of commerce, multiplied the occasions of litigation at home. The taste of the people began to be more and more interested in forensic proceedings, even before it was attracted towards them by any other inducement. The pay of the jurors introduced by Pericles strengthened this impulse by a fresh motive, which, when Cleon had tripled its amount, acted more powerfully, and on a larger class. A considerable number of citizens then began to look to the exercise of their judicial functions as a regular source both of pleasure and profit.

But the prevalence of this frivolous habit was not the worst fault of the Athenian courts. In the most important class of cases, the criminal prosecutions, they were seldom perfectly impartial, and their ordinary bias was against the defendant. The juror in the discharge of his office did not forget his quality of citizen, and was not indifferent to the manner in which the issue of a trial might affect the public revenue, and thus he leaned towards decisions which replenished the treasury with confiscations and pecuniary penalties, while they also served to terrify and humble the wealthy class, which he viewed with jealousy and envy. On this notorious temper of the courts was grounded the power of the infamous sycophants who lived by extortion, and generally singled out, as the objects of their attacks, the opulent citizens of timid natures and quiet habits, who were both unable to plead for themselves, and shrank from a public appearance. Such persons might indeed procure the aid of an advocate, but they commonly thought it better to purchase the silence of the informer, than to expose themselves to the risk and the certain inconvenience of a trial. The resident aliens were not exempt from this annoyance; and, though they were not objects of fear or jealousy, they were placed under many disadvantages in a contest with an Athenian prosecutor. But the noble and affluent citizens of the subject states, above all, had reason to tremble at the thought of being summoned to Athens, to meet any of the charges which it was easy to devise against them, and to connect with an imputation of hostile designs or disloyal sentiments, and were ready to stop the mouths of the orators with gold.

There is no room for doubt as to the existence of the evils and vices we have been describing, though the most copious information we possess on the subject is drawn not from purely historical sources, but from the dramatic satires of Aristophanes. But there may still be a question as to the measure of allowance to be made for comic exaggeration, or political prejudices, in the poet; and it seems probable that the colours in which he has painted his countrymen are in some respects too dark. That the mass of the people had not sunk to this degree of depravity, may we think be inferred from the grief and indignation which it is recorded to have shown on some occasions, where it had been misled into an unjust sentence, by which it stained itself with innocent blood: as Callixenus, who however was not worse than other sycophants, though he was among those who returned after the expulsion of the Thirty, and enjoyed the benefit of the amnesty, died, universally hated, of hunger.

ARISTOPHANES

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 425-400 B.C.]]

The patriotism of Aristophanes was honest, bold, and generally wise. He was still below the age at which the law permitted a poet to contend for a dramatic prize, and was therefore compelled to use a borrowed name, when, in the year after the death of Pericles, he produced his first work, in which his chief aim seems to have been to exhibit the contrast between the ancient and the modern manners. In his next, his ridicule was pointed more at the defects or the perversion of political institutions, and perhaps at the democratical system of filling public offices by lot. In both, however, he had probably assailed many of the most conspicuous persons of the day, and either by personal satire, or by attacks on the abuses by which the demagogues throve, he provoked the hostility of Cleon, who endeavoured to crush him by a prosecution. Its nominal ground was, it seems, the allegation, that the poet, who in fact according to some accounts was of Dorian origin, was not legally entitled to the franchise. But the real charge was that in his recent comedy he had exposed the Athenian magistracy to the derision of the foreign spectators. Cleon, however, was baffled; and though the attempt was once or twice renewed, perhaps by other enemies of Aristophanes, it failed so entirely, that he seems to have been soon left in the unmolested enjoyment of public favour; and he not only was encouraged to revenge himself on Cleon by a new piece, in which the demagogue was exhibited in person, and was represented by the poet himself,--who it is said could not find an actor to undertake the part, nor even get a suitable mask made for it,--but he at the same time ventured on an experiment which it seems had never been tried before on the comic stage.

The people had been accustomed to see the most eminent Athenian statesmen and generals brought forward there and placed in a ludicrous light; but it had never yet beheld its own image set before its eyes as in a mirror, which reflected the principal features of its character, not indeed without the exaggeration which belonged to the occasion, but yet with a truth which could not be mistaken or evaded. This was done in the same play which exposed Cleon’s impudence and rapacity; and the follies and faults of the assembled multitude, which appears under its proper name of Demos, as an old dotard, not void of cunning, though incapable of governing himself, are placed in the strongest relief by the presence of its unworthy favourite, who is introduced, not indeed by name, but so as to be immediately recognised, as a lying, thievish, greedy, fawning, Paphlagonian slave. The poet’s boldness was so far successful, that instead of offending the audience he gained the first prize: but in every other respect he failed of attaining his object; for Cleon, as we have seen, maintained his influence unimpaired to the end of his life, and the people showed as little disposition to reform its habits, and change its measures, as if the portrait it had seen of itself had been no less amiable than diverting. But the issue of this attempt did not deter him from another, which, but for the applause which had crowned the first, might have appeared equally dangerous. As in the _Knights_ he had levelled his satire against the sovereign assembly; in the _Wasps_, which he exhibited in the year before Cleon’s death, he attacked the other stronghold of his power, the courts of justice, with still keener ridicule.

The vehicles in which Aristophanes conveyed his political lessons, strange as they appear to us, were probably judiciously chosen, as well with the view of pointing the attention of the audience more forcibly to his practical object, as of relieving the severity of his admonitions and censures. As time has spared only a few fragments of the earlier and the contemporary productions of the comic drama, it is only from the report of the ancient critics that we can form any notion of the relation in which he stood to his theatrical competitors. He is said not only to have introduced several improvements in the structure of the old political comedy, by which he brought it to its highest perfection, but to have tempered the bitterness and the grossness of his elder rival Cratinus, who is described as the comic Æschylus. It is not quite clear in what sense this account is to be understood, for it is difficult to conceive that the satire of Cratinus can have been either freer or more licentious. But the difference seems to have consisted in the inimitable grace with which Aristophanes handled every subject which he touched. We are informed, indeed, that even in this quality he was surpassed by Eupolis, who is also said to have shown more vigour of imagination in the invention of his plots. Yet another account represents Eupolis as more nearly resembling Cratinus in the violence and homeliness of his invectives; and the testimony of the philosopher Plato, who in an epitaph called the soul of Aristophanes a sanctuary of the Graces, studied his works as a model of style for the composition of his own dialogues, and honoured him with a place in one of his masterpieces, seems sufficient to prove that at least in the elegance of his taste, and the gracefulness of his humour, he had no equal.

How much Aristophanes was in earnest with his subject, how far he was from regarding it merely as an occasion for the exercise of his art, and how little he was swayed by personal prejudices, which have sometimes been imputed to him, is proved less by the keenness of his ridicule than by the warmth of his affection for Athens, which is manifest even under the comic mask. In his extant plays he nowhere intimates a wish for any change in the form of the Athenian institutions. He only deplores the corruption of the public spirit, points out its signs and causes, and assails the persons who minister to it. It is indeed the Athens of another age that he heartily loves; but that age is no remote antiquity; it is, if not within his own memory, near enough to be remembered by the elder part of his audience. He looks back indeed to the days of Miltiades and Aristides, as the period when the glory of Athens was at its height. But those of Myronides and Thucydides, the rival of Pericles, likewise belong, in his view, to the good old times, which he sighs for; and the evils of his own are of still more recent origin. He traces them to the measures of Pericles; to the position in which he had placed Athens with regard to the subject states, and above all to the war in which he had involved her.

The Peloponnesian War he treats as entirely the work of Pericles, and he chooses to ascribe it to his fears for his own safety, or to the influence of Aspasia; and to consider the quarrel with Megara as only the occasion or colour for it. The war he regards as the main foundation of the power of such demagogues as Cleon and Hyperbolus. If peace were only restored, he hopes that the mass of the people would return to its rural occupations and to its ancient tastes and habits; that the assembly and the courts of justice would no longer hold out the same attractions; that litigation would abate, and the trade of the sycophants decay. Cleon is reproached in the _Knights_ with having caused the Spartan overtures to be rejected, because he knew that it was by the war he was enabled to plunder the subject cities, and that if the people were released from the confinement of the city walls, and once more to taste the blessings of peace and of a country life, he should no longer find it subservient to his ends. Hence we may perhaps conclude that when, at the end of the same play, Demos (the personified people) is introduced as newly risen out of a magic cauldron, restored to the vigour and comeliness of youth, in a garb and port worthy of the companion of Aristides and Miltiades, his eyes opened to his past errors, and with the purpose of correcting them, the poet did not conceive the change thus represented as hopeless, and still less meant to intimate that it was impossible.

It was not without reason that Aristophanes, in common with all Athenians who loved and regretted the ancient times, regarded the sophistical circles with abhorrence, not only as seminaries of demagogues and sycophants, but as schools of impiety and licentiousness. That the attention of the Athenian youth should be diverted from military and athletic exercises, from the sports of the field, and from the enjoyment of that leisure which had once been esteemed the most precious privilege of a Greek freeman, to sedentary studies, which at the best only inflated them with self-conceit, and stimulated them to lay aside the diffidence which befitted their age, and come forward prematurely in public, to exhibit their new acquirements and to supplant the elder and graver citizens on the bema, or to harass them before the popular tribunals: this in itself he deemed a great evil.

In the last scene of the _Knights_, one of the resolutions which Demos adopts is that he will bar the agora and the Pnyx against the beardless youths who now pass so much of their time in places of public resort, where they amuse themselves with discussing the merits of the orators in technical language, and will force them to go a-hunting, instead of making decrees. But it was a still more alarming evil, that, by way of preparation for this pernicious result, the religious belief of the young Athenians should be unsettled, their moral sentiments perverted, their reverence for the maxims and usages of antiquity extinguished; that subjects which had never before been contemplated but at an awful distance--the being and nature of the gods, the obligations arising from domestic and civil relations--should be submitted to close and irreverent inspection. It was according to the view of Aristophanes a matter of comparatively little moment, what turn such discussions happened to take, or what was the precise nature of the sophistical theories. The mischief was already done, when things so sacred had once been treated as subjects for inquiry and argument. But he perceived the evil much more clearly than the remedy. He would fain have carried his countrymen half a century backward, and have forced them to remain stationary at the stage which they had then reached in their intellectual progress; and it seems as if he wished to see the schools of the new philosophy forcibly suppressed, and with this view attempted to direct popular indignation against them. The only case in which this attempt succeeded was one in which the poet himself, if he had been better informed, must have desired it should fail.

EURIPIDES

Aristophanes closely watched all the workings of the sophistical spirit, and was sagacious enough to perceive that they were not confined to any particular sphere, but pervaded every province of thought and action. He was naturally led to observe its influence with peculiar attention in the branches of literature or art which were most nearly allied to his own. He was able to trace it in the innovations which had taken place in music and lyrical poetry, but above all in the tragic drama: and Euripides, the last of the three tragic poets who are known to us by their works, appeared to him as one of the most dangerous sophists, and was on this account among the foremost objects of his bitterest ridicule. The earnestness with which Aristophanes assailed him seems to have increased with the growth of his reputation; for of the three comedies in which he is introduced, the last, which was exhibited after his death, contains by far the most severe as well as elaborate censure of his poetry. It is not however quite certain that Euripides, even in the latter part of his career, was so popular as Sophocles. In answer to a question of Socrates, in a conversation which Xenophon probably heard during the latter part of the Peloponnesian War, Sophocles is mentioned as indisputably the most admirable in his art.

It has often been observed, that the success of Euripides, if it is measured by the prizes which he is said to have gained, would not seem to have been very great: and perhaps there may be reason to suspect, that he owed much of the applause which he obtained in his life-time to the favour of a party, which was strong rather in rank and fortune than in numbers; the same which is said to have been headed by Alcibiades, and to have deprived Aristophanes of the prize.

Alcibiades employed Euripides to celebrate his Olympic victories; and his patronage was sufficient to spread the poet’s fame at home and abroad. The anecdote about the celebrity which he had acquired in Sicily is perfectly consistent with this view; as is the invitation which he received a little before his death from Archelaus of Macedon, at whose court he ended his life; and the admiration which Dionysius of Syracuse expressed for him, by buying his tablets and pen at a high price, to dedicate them in the temple of the Muses.

Aristophanes was so far from being blind to the poetical merits of Euripides, that he was himself charged by his rivals with borrowing from him, and in one of his lost plays acknowledged that in his diction he had imitated the terseness of the tragic poet, but asserted that his thoughts were less vulgar. How accurately he had studied the works of the tragic drama, how vividly he perceived the genuine character of Greek tragedy, and the peculiar genius of each poet, is sufficiently proved by the mode in which he has conducted the contest which he feigns between Æschylus and Euripides. But his criticism would probably have been less severe, if he had not considered Euripides less in his poetical character than in his connection with the sophistical school. Euripides had in fact been a hearer of Anaxagoras, and probably both of Protagoras and Prodicus. In his house Protagoras was said to have read one of his works by which he incurred a charge of atheism. He was also on intimate terms with Socrates, who was therefore reported to have aided him in the composition of his tragedies, and perhaps may have done so, in the same way as Prodicus and Anaxagoras; and this connection was, as we shall see, of itself a sufficient ground with Aristophanes for suspicion and aversion. The strength of Euripides lay in passionate and moving scenes, and he sought like other poets for situations and characters which afforded the best opportunity for the display of his powers. But he was too frequently tempted to work upon the feelings of his audience by an exhibition of sufferings which were quite foreign to the heroic dignity of the persons who endured them, who were therefore degraded by the pity they excited. The misery of his heroes often consisted chiefly in bodily privations, which could only awaken the sympathy of the spectator’s animal nature.

His irreligion is contrasted with the piety of Æschylus, who invokes the goddess of the Eleusinian mysteries; a hint which, after the prosecution of Alcibiades, was easily understood, as to the party to which Euripides belonged. It was probably in the same point of view that Aristophanes considered the plays which he founded on tales of criminal passion.

Euripides was undoubtedly induced to select such subjects, some of which were new to the Greek stage, chiefly by the opportunity they afforded him of displaying his peculiar dramatic talent. But in his hands they seldom failed to give occasion for a sophistical defence of conduct repugnant to Greek usages and feelings, which to Aristophanes would appear much more pernicious than the example itself. But his plays were likewise interspersed with moral paradoxes, which in more than one instance are said to have excited the indignation of the audience. A line in which the most pious of his heroes distinguishes between the oath of the tongue and that of the mind, in terms which might serve to justify any perjury, became very celebrated, and Aristophanes dwells upon it, apparently as a striking illustration of the sophistical spirit. It seems clear that these, and others of the novelties just mentioned, cannot have been designed to gain the general applause of the audience. Though we must reject a story told by some of his Greek biographers, which indeed is at variance with chronology, that the fate of his master Anaxagoras deterred him from philosophical pursuits, and led him to turn his thoughts to the drama, we might still wonder at his indiscretion, if it had not appeared probable that he aimed at gratifying the taste, not so much of the multitude, as of that class of persons which took pleasure in the new learning, and was in fact the favourite poet, not so much of the common people, as of a party, which was growing more and more powerful throughout his dramatic career.

Euripides, however, occupies only a subordinate place among the disciples and supporters of the sophistical school, whom Aristophanes attacked. The person whom he selected as its representative, and on whom he endeavoured to throw the whole weight of the charges which he brought against it, was Socrates. In the _Clouds_, a comedy exhibited in 423, a year after the _Knights_ had been received with so much applause, Socrates was brought on the stage under his own name, as the arch-sophist, the master of the free-thinking school. The story is of a young spendthrift, who has involved his father in debt by his passion for horses, and having been placed under the care of Socrates is enabled by his instructions to defraud his creditors, but also learns to regard filial obedience and respect, and piety to the gods, as groundless and antiquated prejudices; and it seems hardly possible to doubt that under this character the poet meant to represent Alcibiades, whom it perfectly suits in its general outline, and who may have been suggested to the thoughts of the spectators in many ways not now perceived by the reader. It seems at first sight as if in this work Aristophanes must stand convicted either of the foulest motives or of a gross mistake. For the character of Socrates was in most points directly opposed to the principles and practice which he attributes here and elsewhere to the sophists and their followers. Yet in the _Clouds_ this excellent person appears in the most odious as well as ridiculous aspect; and the play ends with the preparations made by the father of the misguided youth to consume him and his school.[c]