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.
[Illustration: GREEK SEALS]
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.
[Illustration: GREEK FIRE IRONS
(In the British Museum)]
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.
[Illustration: A GREEK RELIGIOUS PROCESSION]
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.
[Illustration: DRINKING HORNS]
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.
[Illustration: FORTUNE
(After Hope)]
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.
[Illustration: ARISTOPHANES]
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]
[Illustration: REMAINS OF A TEMPLE AT METAPONTUM]