TWENTY-FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR.—OLIGARCHY OF FOUR HUNDRED AT ATHENS.
About a year elapsed between the catastrophe of the Athenians near
Syracuse and the victory which they gained over the Milêsians, on
landing near Milêtus (from September 413 B.C., to September 412
B.C.). After the first of those two events, the complete ruin of
Athens had appeared both to her enemies and to herself, impending
and irreparable. But so astonishing, so rapid, and so energetic had
been her rally, that, at the time of the second, she was found again
carrying on a tolerable struggle, though with impaired resources
and on a purely defensive system, against enemies both bolder and
more numerous than ever. Nor is there any reason to doubt that her
foreign affairs might have gone on thus improving, had they not been
endangered at this critical moment by the treason of a fraction of
her own citizens, bringing her again to the brink of ruin, from which
she was only rescued by the incompetence of her enemies.
That treason took its first rise from the exile Alkibiadês. I have
already recounted how this man, alike unprincipled and energetic,
had thrown himself with his characteristic ardor into the service of
Sparta, and had indicated to her the best means of aiding Syracuse,
of inflicting positive injury upon Athens, and lastly, of provoking
revolt among the Ionic allies of the latter. It was by his boldness
and personal connections in Ionia that the revolt of Chios and
Milêtus had been determined.
In the course of a few months, however, he had greatly lost the
confidence of the Spartans. The revolt of the Asiatic dependencies
of Athens had not been accomplished so easily and rapidly as he had
predicted; Chalkideus, the Spartan commander with whom he had acted
was defeated and slain near Milêtus; the ephor Endius, by whom he
was chiefly protected, retained his office only for one year, and
was succeeded by other ephors,[1] just about the end of September,
or beginning of October, when the Athenians gained their second
victory near Milêtus, and were on the point of blocking up the town;
while his personal enemy king Agis still remained to persecute him.
Moreover, there was in the character of this remarkable man something
so essentially selfish, vain, and treacherous, that no one could
ever rely upon his faithful coöperation. And as soon as any reverse
occurred, that very energy and ability, which seldom failed him, made
those with whom he acted the more ready to explain the mischance, by
supposing that he had betrayed them.
[1] See Thucyd. v, 36.
It was thus that, after the defeat of Milêtus, king Agis was enabled
to discredit Alkibiadês as a traitor to Sparta; upon which the new
ephors sent out at once an order to the general Astyochus, to put
him to death.[2] Alkibiadês had now an opportunity of tasting the
difference between Spartan and Athenian procedure. Though his enemies
at Athens were numerous and virulent, with all the advantage, so
unspeakable in political warfare, of being able to raise the cry
of irreligion against him, yet the utmost which they could obtain
was that he should be summoned home to take his trial before the
dikastery. At Sparta, without any positive ground of crimination, and
without any idea of judicial trial, his enemies procure an order that
he shall be put to death.
[2] Thucyd. viii, 45. Καὶ ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν ἀφικομένης ἐπιστολῆς πρὸς
Ἀστύοχον ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος ὥστ᾽ ἀποκτεῖναι (ἦν γὰρ καὶ τῷ Ἄγιδι
ἐχθρὸς ~καὶ ἄλλως ἄπιστος~ ἐφαίνετο), etc.
Alkibiadês, however, got intimation of the order in time to retire
to Tissaphernês. Probably he was forewarned by Astyochus himself, not
ignorant that so monstrous a deed would greatly alienate the Chians
and Milêsians, nor foreseeing the full mischief which his desertion
would bring upon Sparta. With that flexibility of character which
enabled him at once to master and take up a new position, Alkibiadês
soon found means to insinuate himself into the confidence of the
satrap. He began now to play a game neither Spartan nor Athenian, but
Persian and anti-Hellenic: a game of duplicity to which Tissaphernês
himself was spontaneously disposed, but to which the intervention
of a dexterous Grecian negotiator was indispensable. It was by no
means the interest of the Great King, Alkibiadês urged, to lend such
effective aid to either of the contending parties as would enable
it to crush the other: he ought neither to bring up the Phenician
fleet to the aid of the Lacedæmonians, nor to furnish that abundant
pay which would procure for them indefinite levies of new Grecian
force. He ought so to feed and prolong the war, as to make each party
an instrument of exhaustion and impoverishment against the other,
and thus himself to rise on the ruins of both: first to break down
the Athenian empire by means of the Peloponnesians, and afterwards
to expel the Peloponnesians themselves; which might be effected
with little trouble if they were weakened by a protracted previous
struggle.[3]
[3] Thucyd. viii, 45, 46.
Thus far Alkibiadês gave advice, as a Persian counsellor, not
unsuitable to the policy of the court of Susa. But he seldom
gave advice without some view to his own profit, ambition, or
antipathies. Cast off unceremoniously by the Lacedæmonians, he was
now driven to seek restoration in his own country. To accomplish
this object, it was necessary not only that he should preserve her
from being altogether ruined, but that he should present himself
to the Athenians as one who could, if restored, divert the aid of
Tissaphernês from Lacedæmon to Athens. Accordingly, he farther
suggested to the satrap, that while it was essential to his interest
not to permit land power and maritime power to be united in the same
hands, whether Lacedæmonian or Athenian, it would nevertheless be
found easier to arrange matters with the empire and pretensions of
Athens than with those of Lacedæmon. The former, he argued, neither
sought nor professed any other object than the subjection of her own
maritime dependencies, in return for which she would willingly leave
all the Asiatic Greeks in the hands of the Great King; while the
latter, forswearing all idea of empire, and professing ostentatiously
to aim at the universal enfranchisement of every Grecian city, could
not with the smallest consistency conspire to deprive the Asiatic
Greeks of the same privilege. This view appeared to be countenanced
by the objection which Theramenês and many of the Peloponnesian
officers had taken to the first convention concluded by Chalkideus
and Alkibiadês with Tissaphernês: objections afterwards renewed by
Lichas even against the second modified convention of Theramenês,
and accompanied with an indignant protest against the idea of
surrendering to the Great King all the territory which had been ever
possessed by his predecessors.[4]
[4] Thucyd. viii, 46-52.
All these latter arguments, whereby Alkibiadês professed to create in
the mind of the satrap a preference for Athens, were either futile or
founded on false assumptions. For on the one hand, even Lichas never
refused to concur in surrendering the Asiatic Greeks to Persia; while
on the other hand, the empire of Athens, so long as she retained any
empire, was pretty sure to be more formidable to Persia than any
efforts undertaken by Sparta under the disinterested pretence of
liberating generally the Grecian cities. Nor did Tissaphernês at all
lend himself to any such positive impression; though he felt strongly
the force of the negative recommendations of Alkibiadês, that he
should do no more for the Peloponnesians than was sufficient to feed
the war, without insuring to them either a speedy or a decisive
success: or rather, this duplicity was so congenial to his Oriental
mind, that there was no need of Alkibiadês to recommend it. The real
use of the Athenian exile, was to assist the satrap in carrying it
into execution; and to provide for him those plausible pretences and
justifications, which he was to issue as a substitute for effective
supplies of men and money. Established along with Tissaphernês at
Magnesia,—the same place which had been occupied about fifty years
before by another Athenian exile, equally unprincipled, and yet
abler, Themistoklês,—Alkibiadês served as interpreter of his views in
all his conversations with the Greeks, and appeared to be thoroughly
in his confidence: an appearance of which he took advantage to pass
himself off falsely upon the Athenians at Samos, as having the power
of turning Persian wealth to the aid of Athens.
The first payment made by Tissaphernês, immediately after the
capture of Iasus and of the revolted Amorgês, to the Peloponnesians
at Milêtus, was at the rate of one drachma per head. But notice was
given that for the future it would be reduced one half, and for this
reduction Alkibiadês undertook to furnish a reason. The Athenians,
he urged, gave no more than half a drachma; not because they could
not afford more, but because, from their long experience of nautical
affairs, they had found that higher pay spoiled the discipline of the
seamen by leading them into excesses and over-indulgence, as well as
by inducing too ready leave of absence to be granted, in confidence
that the high pay would induce them to return when called for.[5]
As he probably never expected that such subterfuges, employed at a
moment when Athens was so poor that she could not even pay the half
drachma per head, would carry conviction to any one, so he induced
Tissaphernês to strengthen their effect by individual bribes to the
generals and trierarchs: a mode of argument which was found effectual
in silencing the complaints of all, with the single exception of the
Syracusan Hermokratês. In regard to other Grecian cities who sent
to ask pecuniary aid, and especially Chios, Alkibiadês spoke out
with less reserve. They had been hitherto compelled to contribute to
Athens, he said, and now that they had shaken off this payment, they
must not shrink from imposing upon themselves equal or even greater
burdens in their own defence. Nor was it anything less, he added,
than sheer impudence in the Chians, the richest people in Greece,
if they required a foreign military force for their protection, to
require at the same time that others should furnish the means of
paying it.[6] At the same time, however, he intimated,—by way of
keeping up hopes for the future,—that Tissaphernês was at present
carrying on the war at his own cost; but if hereafter remittances
should arrive from Susa, the full rate of pay would be resumed, with
the addition of aid to the Grecian cities in any other way which
could be reasonably asked. To this promise was added an assurance
that the Phenician fleet was now under equipment, and would shortly
be brought up to their aid, so as to give them a superiority which
would render resistance hopeless: an assurance not merely deceitful
but mischievous, since it was employed to dissuade them from all
immediate action, and to paralyze their navy during its moments
of fullest vigor and efficiency. Even the reduced rate of pay was
furnished so irregularly, and the Peloponnesian force kept so
starved, that the duplicity of the satrap became obvious to every
one, and was only carried through by his bribery to the officers.[7]
[5] Thucyd. viii, 45. Οἱ δὲ τὰς ναῦς ἀπολείπωσιν, οὐχ ὑπολιπόντες
ἐς ὁμήρειαν τὸν προσοφειλόμενον μισθόν.
This passage is both doubtful in the text and difficult in
the translation. Among the many different explanations given
by the commentators, I adopt that of Dr. Arnold as the least
unsatisfactory, though without any confidence that it is right.
[6] Thucyd. viii, 45. Τὰς τε πόλεις δεομένας χρημάτων ἀπήλασεν,
αὐτὸς ἀντιλέγων ὑπὲρ τοῦ Τισσαφέρνους, ὡς οἱ μὲν Χῖοι ἀναίσχυντοι
εἶεν, πλουσιώτατοι ὄντες τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ἐπικουρίᾳ δὲ ὅμως σωζόμενοι
ἀξιοῦσι καὶ τοῖς σώμασι καὶ τοῖς χρήμασιν ἄλλους ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐκείνων
ἐλευθερίας κινδυνεύειν.
[7] Thucyd. viii, 46. Τήν τε τροφὴν κακῶς ἐπόριζε τοῖς
Πελοποννησίοις καὶ ναυμαχεῖν οὐκ εἴα· ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς Φοινίσσας ναῦς
φάσκων ἥξειν καὶ ἐκ περιόντος ἀγωνιεῖσθαι ἔφθειρε τὰ πράγματα
καὶ τὴν ἀκμὴν τοῦ ναυτικοῦ αὐτῶν ἀφείλετο, γενομένην καὶ πάνυ
ἰσχυρὰν, τά τε ἄλλα, καταφανέστερον ἢ ὥστε λανθάνειν, οὐ προθύμως
ξυνεπολέμει.
While Alkibiadês, as the confidential agent and interpreter of
Tissaphernês, was carrying on this anti-Peloponnesian policy through
the autumn and winter of 412-411 B.C.,—partly during the stay of the
Peloponnesian fleet at Milêtus, partly after it had moved to Knidus
and Rhodes,—he was at the same time opening correspondence with the
Athenian officers at Samos. His breach with the Peloponnesians, as
well as his ostensible position in the service of Tissaphernês, were
facts well known among the Athenian armament; and his scheme was,
to procure both restoration and renewed power in his native city,
by representing himself as competent to bring over to her the aid
and alliance of Persia, through his ascendency over the mind of the
satrap. His hostility to the democracy, however, was so generally
known, that he despaired of accomplishing his return, unless he
could connect it with an oligarchical revolution; which, moreover,
was not less gratifying to his sentiment of vengeance for the past,
than to his ambition for the future. Accordingly, he sent over a
private message to the officers and trierarchs at Samos, several
of them doubtless his personal friends, desiring to be remembered
to the “best men” in the armament,[8] such was one of the standing
phrases by which oligarchical men knew and described each other; and
intimating his anxious wish to come again as a citizen among them,
bringing with him Tissaphernês as their ally. But he would do this
only on condition of the formation of an oligarchical government; nor
would he ever again set foot amidst the odious democracy to whom he
owed his banishment.[9]
[8] Thucyd. viii, 47. Τὰ μὲν καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδου προσπέμψαντος λόγους
ἐς τοὺς δυνατωτάτους αὐτῶν (Ἀθηναίων) ἄνδρας, ὥστε μνησθῆναι
περὶ αὐτοῦ ἐς ~τοὺς βελτίστους~ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὅτι ἐπ᾽ ὀλιγαρχίᾳ
βούλεται, καὶ οὐ πονηρίᾳ οὐδὲ δημοκρατίᾳ τῇ ἑαυτὸν ἐκβαλούσῃ,
κατελθὼν, etc.
[9] Thucyd. viii, 47.
Such was the first originating germ of that temporary calamity, which
so nearly brought Athens to absolute ruin, called the Oligarchy of
Four Hundred: a suggestion from the same exile who had already so
deeply wounded his country by sending Gylippus to Syracuse, and
the Lacedæmonian garrison to Dekeleia. As yet, no man in Samos had
thought of a revolution; but the moment that the idea was thus
started, the trierarchs and wealthy men in the armament caught at
it with avidity. To subvert the democracy for their own profit, and
to be rewarded for doing so with the treasures of Persia as a means
of carrying on the war against the Peloponnesians, was an extent of
good fortune greater than they could possibly have hoped. Amidst
the exhaustion of the public treasure at Athens, and the loss of
tribute from her dependencies, it was now the private proprietors,
and most of all, the wealthy proprietors, upon whom the cost of
military operations fell: from which burden they here saw the
prospect of relief, coupled with increased chance of victory. Elate
with so tempting a promise, a deputation of them crossed over from
Samos to the mainland to converse personally with Alkibiadês, who
again renewed his assurances in person, that he would bring not only
Tissaphernês, but the Great King himself, into active alliance and
coöperation with Athens, provided they would put down the Athenian
democracy, which he affirmed that the king could not possibly
trust.[10] He doubtless did not omit to set forth the other side of
the alternative; that, if the proposition were refused, Persian aid
would be thrown heartily into the scale of the Peloponnesians, in
which case, there was no longer any hope of safety for Athens.
[10] Thucyd. viii, 48.
On the return of the deputation with these fresh assurances, the
oligarchical men in Samos came together, both in greater number
and with redoubled ardor, to take their measures for subverting
the democracy. They even ventured to speak of the project openly
among the mass of the armament, who listened to it with nothing but
aversion, but who were silenced at least, though not satisfied, by
being told that the Persian treasury would be thrown open to them on
condition, and only on condition, that they would relinquish their
democracy. Such was at this time the indispensable need of foreign
money for the purposes of the war, such was the certainty of ruin,
if the Persian treasure went to the aid of the enemy, that the most
democratical Athenian might well hesitate when the alternative was
thus laid before him. The oligarchical conspirators, however, knew
well that they had the feeling of the armament altogether against
them, that the best which they could expect from it was a reluctant
acquiescence, and that they must accomplish the revolution by their
own hands and management. They formed themselves into a political
confederacy, or hetæria, for the purpose of discussing the best
measures towards their end. It was resolved to send a deputation
to Athens, with Peisander[11] at the head, to make known the new
prospects, and to put the standing oligarchical clubs, or hetæries,
into active coöperation for the purpose of violently breaking up
the democracy, and farther to establish oligarchical governments
in all the remaining dependencies of Athens. They imagined that
these dependencies would be thus induced to remain faithful to her,
perhaps even that some of those which had already revolted might come
back to their allegiance, when once she should be relieved from her
democracy, and placed under the rule of her “best and most virtuous
citizens.”
[11] It is asserted in an Oration of Lysias (Orat. xxv, Δήμου
Καταλύσεως Ἀπολογία, c. 3, p. 766, Reisk.) that Phrynichus and
Peisander embarked in this oligarchical conspiracy for the
purpose of getting clear of previous crimes committed under the
democracy. But there is nothing to countenance this assertion,
and the narrative of Thucydidês gives quite a different color to
their behavior.
Peisander was now serving with the armament at Samos; moreover,
his forwardness and energy—presently to be described—in taking
the formidable initiative of putting down the Athenian democracy,
is to me quite sufficient evidence that the taunts of the
comic writers against his cowardice are unfounded. Xenophon in
the Symposion repeats this taunt (ii, 14) which also appears
in Aristophanês, Eupolis, Plato Comicus, and others: see the
passages collected in Meineke, Histor. Critic. Comicor. Græcorum,
vol. i, p. 178, etc.
Modern writers on Grecian history often repeat such bitter jests
as if they were so much genuine and trustworthy evidence against
the person libelled.
Hitherto, the bargain tendered for acceptance had been, subversion
of the Athenian democracy and restoration of Alkibiadês, on one
hand, against hearty coöperation, and a free supply of gold from
Persia, on the other. But what security was there that such bargain
would be realized, or that when the first part should have been
brought to pass, the second would follow? There was absolutely no
security except the word of Alkibiadês,—very little to be trusted,
even when promising what was in his own power to perform, as we may
recollect from his memorable dealing with the Lacedæmonian envoys at
Athens,—and on the present occasion, vouching for something in itself
extravagant and preposterous. For what reasonable motive could be
imagined to make the Great King shape his foreign policy according
to the interests of Alkibiadês, or to inspire him with such lively
interest in the substitution of oligarchy for democracy at Athens?
This was a question which the oligarchical conspirators at Samos not
only never troubled themselves to raise, but which they had every
motive to suppress. The suggestion of Alkibiadês coincided fully with
their political interest and ambition. Their object was to put down
the democracy, and get possession of the government for themselves;
and the promise of Persian gold, if they could get it accredited,
was inestimable as a stepping-stone towards this goal, whether it
afterwards turned out to be a delusion or not. The probability is,
that having a strong interest in believing it themselves, and a still
stronger interest in making others believe it, they talked each other
into a sincere persuasion. Without adverting to this fact, we should
be at a loss to understand how the word of such a man as Alkibiadês,
on such a matter, could be so implicitly accepted as to set in motion
a whole train of novel and momentous events.
There was one man, and one man alone, so far as we know, who
ventured openly to call it in question. This was Phrynichus, one of
the generals of the fleet, who had recently given valuable counsel
after the victory of Milêtus; a clear-sighted and sagacious man,
but personally hostile to Alkibiadês, and thoroughly seeing through
his character and projects. Though Phrynichus was afterwards one of
the chief organizers of the oligarchical movement, when it became
detached from, and hostile to Alkibiadês, yet under the actual
circumstances he discountenanced it altogether.[12] Alkibiadês, he
said, had no attachment to oligarchical government rather than to
democratical; nor could he be relied on for standing by it after it
should have been set up. His only purpose was, to make use of the
oligarchical conspiracy now forming, for his own restoration; which,
if brought to pass, could not fail to introduce political discord
into the camp, the greatest misfortune that could at present happen.
As to the Persian king, it was unreasonable to expect that he would
put himself out of his way to aid the Athenians, his old enemies,
in whom he had no confidence, while he had the Peloponnesians
present as allies, with a good naval force and powerful cities in
his own territory, from whom he had never experienced either insult
or annoyance. Moreover, the dependencies of Athens—upon whom it
was now proposed to confer simultaneously with Athens herself, the
blessing of oligarchical government—would receive that boon with
indifference. Those who had already revolted would not come back,
those who yet remained faithful, would not be the more inclined to
remain so longer. Their object would be to obtain autonomy, either
under oligarchy or democracy, as the case might be. Assuredly, they
would not expect better treatment from an oligarchical government
at Athens, than from a democratical; for they knew that those
self-styled “good and virtuous” men, who would form the oligarchy,
were, as ministers of democracy, the chief advisers and instigators
of the people to iniquitous deeds, most commonly for nothing but
their own individual profit. From an Athenian oligarchy, the citizens
of these dependencies had nothing to expect but violent executions
without any judicial trial; but under the democracy, they could
obtain shelter and the means of appeal, while their persecutors were
liable to restraint and chastisement, from the people and the popular
dikasteries. Such, Phrynichus affirmed on his own personal knowledge,
was the genuine feeling among the dependencies of Athens.[13] Having
thus shown the calculations of the conspirators—as to Alkibiadês,
as to Persia, and as to the allied dependencies—to be all illusory,
Phrynichus concluded by entering his decided protest against adopting
the propositions of Alkibiadês.
[12] Phrynichus is affirmed, in an Oration of Lysias, to have
been originally poor, keeping sheep in the country part of
Attica; then, to have resided in the city, and practised what was
called _sycophancy_, or false and vexatious accusation before
the dikastery and the public assembly, (Lysias, Orat. xx. pro
Polystrato, c. 3, p. 674, Reisk.)
[13] Thucyd. viii, 48. Τάς τε ξυμμαχίδας πόλεις, αἷς ὑπεσχῆσθαι
δὴ σφᾶς ὀλιγαρχίαν, ὅτι δὴ καὶ αὐτοὶ οὐ δημοκρατήσονται,
εὖ εἰδέναι ἔφη ὅτι οὐδὲν μᾶλλον σφίσιν οὔθ᾽ αἱ ἀφεστηκυῖαι
προσχωρήσονται, οὔθ᾽ αἱ ὑπάρχουσαι βεβαιότεραι ἔσονται· οὐ γὰρ
βουλήσεσθαι αὐτοὺς μετ᾽ ὀλιγαρχίας ἢ δημοκρατίας δουλεύειν
μᾶλλον, ἢ μεθ᾽ ὁποτέρου ἂν τύχωσι τούτων ἐλευθέρους εἶναι. Τούς
~τε καλοὺς κἀγαθοὺς ὀνομαζομένους~ οὐκ ἐλάσσω αὐτοὺς νομίζειν
σφίσι πράγματα παρέξειν τοῦ ~δήμου, ποριστὰς ὄντας καὶ ἐσηγητὰς
τῶν κακῶν τῷ δήμῳ, ἐξ ὧν τὰ πλείω αὐτοὺς ὠφελεῖσθαι~· καὶ τὸ μὲν
ἐπ᾽ ἐκείνοις εἶναι, καὶ ἄκριτοι ἂν καὶ βιαιότερον ἀποθνήσκειν,
τὸν τε ~δῆμον σφῶν τε καταφυγὴν εἶναι καὶ ἐκείνων σωφρονιστήν~.
Καὶ ταῦτα ~παρ᾽ αὐτῶν τῶν ἔργων ἐπισταμένας~ τὰς πόλεις σαφῶς
αὐτὸς εἰδέναι, ὅτι οὕτω νομίζουσι.
In taking the comparison between oligarchy and democracy in
Greece, there is hardly any evidence more important than this
passage: a testimony to the comparative merit of democracy,
pronounced by an oligarchical conspirator, and sanctioned by an
historian himself unfriendly to the democracy.
But in this protest, borne out afterwards by the result, he
stood nearly alone. The tide of opinion, among the oligarchical
conspirators, ran so furiously the other way, that it was resolved
to despatch Peisander and others immediately to Athens to consummate
the oligarchical revolution as well as the recall of Alkibiadês; and
at the same time to propose to the people their new intended ally,
Tissaphernês.
Phrynichus knew well what would be the consequence to himself—if
this consummation were brought about, as he foresaw that it probably
would be—from the vengeance of his enemy Alkibiadês against his
recent opposition. Satisfied that the latter would destroy him,
he took measures for destroying Alkibiadês beforehand, even by a
treasonable communication to the Lacedæmonian admiral Astyochus at
Milêtus, to whom he sent a secret account of the intrigues which
the Athenian exile was carrying on at Samos to the prejudice of the
Peloponnesians, prefaced with an awkward apology for this sacrifice
of the interests of his country to the necessity of protecting
himself against a personal enemy. But Phrynichus was imperfectly
informed of the real character of the Spartan commander, or of his
relations with Tissaphernês and Alkibiadês. Not merely was the latter
now at Magnesia, under the protection of the satrap, and out of the
power of the Lacedæmonians, but Astyochus, a traitor to his duty
through the gold of Tissaphernês, went up thither to show the letter
of Phrynichus to the very person whom it was intended to expose.
Alkibiadês forthwith sent intelligence to the generals and officers
at Samos, of the step taken by Phrynichus, and pressed them to put
him to death.
The life of Phrynichus now hung by a thread, and was probably
preserved only by that respect for judicial formalities so deeply
rooted in the Athenian character. In the extremity of danger,
he resorted to a still more subtle artifice to save himself.
He despatched a second letter to Astyochus, complaining of the
violation of confidence in regard to the former, but at the same time
intimating that he was now willing to betray to the Lacedæmonians the
camp and armament at Samos. He invited Astyochus to come and attack
the place, which was as yet unfortified, explaining minutely in what
manner the attack could be best conducted. And he concluded by saying
that this, as well as every other means of defence, must be pardoned
to one whose life was in danger from a personal enemy. Foreseeing
that Astyochus would betray this letter as he had betrayed the
former, Phrynichus waited a proper time, and then revealed to the
camp the intention of the enemy to make an attack, as if it had
reached him by private information. He insisted on the necessity of
immediate precautions, and himself, as general, superintended the
work of fortification, which was soon completed. Presently arrived
a letter from Alkibiadês, communicating to the army that Phrynichus
had betrayed them, and that the Peloponnesians were on the point of
making an attack. But this letter, arriving after the precautions
taken by order of Phrynichus himself had been already completed, was
construed as a mere trick on the part of Alkibiadês himself, through
his acquaintance with the intentions of the Peloponnesians, to raise
a charge of treasonable correspondence against his personal enemy.
The impression thus made by his second letter effaced the taint which
had been left upon Phrynichus by the first, insomuch that the latter
stood exculpated on both charges.[14]
[14] Thucyd. viii, 50, 51.
But Phrynichus, though successful in extricating himself, failed
thoroughly in his manœuvre against the influence and life of
Alkibiadês; in whose favor the oligarchical movement not only
went on, but was transferred from Samos to Athens. On arriving
at the latter place, Peisander and his companions laid before
the public assembly the projects which had been conceived by the
oligarchs at Samos. The people were invited to restore Alkibiadês
and renounce their democratical constitution; in return for which,
they were assured of obtaining the Persian king as an ally, and
of overcoming the Peloponnesians.[15] Violent was the storm which
these propositions raised in the public assembly. Many speakers
rose in animated defence of the democracy; few, if any, distinctly
against it. The opponents of Alkibiadês indignantly denounced the
mischief of restoring him, in violation of the laws, and in reversal
of a judicial sentence, while the Eumolpidæ and Kerykes, the sacred
families connected with the Eleusinian mysteries which Alkibiadês had
violated, entered their solemn protest on religious grounds to the
same effect. Against all these vehement opponents, whose impassioned
invectives obtained the full sympathy of the assembly, Peisander had
but one simple reply. He called them forward successively by name,
and put to each the question: “What hope have you of salvation for
the city, when the Peloponnesians have a naval force against us fully
equal to ours, together with a greater number of allied cities, and
when the king as well as Tissaphernês are supplying them with money,
while we have no money left? What hope have you of salvation, unless
we can persuade the king to come over to our side?” The answer was a
melancholy negative, or perhaps not less melancholy silence. “Well,
then, rejoined Peisander, that object cannot possibly be attained,
unless we conduct our political affairs for the future in a more
moderate way, and put the powers of government more in the hands of a
few, and unless we recall Alkibiadês, the only man now living who is
competent to do the business. Under present circumstances, we surely
shall not lay greater stress upon our political constitution than
upon the salvation of the city; the rather as what we now enact may
be hereafter modified, if it be found not to answer.”
[15] In the speech made by Theramenês (the Athenian) during the
oligarchy of Thirty, seven years afterwards, it is affirmed that
the Athenian people voted the adoption of the oligarchy of Four
Hundred, from being told that the _Lacedæmonians_ would never
trust a democracy (Xenoph. Hellen. ii, 3, 45).
This is thoroughly incorrect, a specimen of the loose assertion
of speakers in regard to facts even not very long past. At
the moment when Theramenês said this, the question, what
political constitution at Athens the Lacedæmonians would please
to tolerate, was all-important to the Athenians. Theramenês
transfers the feelings of the present to the incidents of the
past.
Against the proposed oligarchical change, the repugnance of the
assembly was alike angry and unanimous. But they were silenced by
the imperious necessity of the case, as the armament at Samos had
been before; and admitting the alternative laid down by Peisander,
as I have observed already, the most democratical citizen might be
embarrassed as to his vote. Whether any speaker, like Phrynichus at
Samos, arraigned the fallacy of the alternative, and called upon
Peisander for some guarantee, better than mere asseveration, of the
benefits to come, we are not informed. But the general vote of the
assembly, reluctant and only passed in the hope of future change,
sanctioned his recommendation.[16] He and ten other envoys, invested
with full powers of negotiating with Alkibiadês and Tissaphernês,
were despatched to Ionia immediately. Peisander at the same time
obtained from the assembly a vote deposing Phrynichus from his
command; under the accusation of having traitorously caused the loss
of Iasus and the capture of Amorgês, after the battle of Milêtus,
but from the real certainty that he would prove an insuperable bar
to all negotiations with Alkibiadês. Phrynichus, with his colleague
Skironidês, being thus displaced, Leon and Diomedon were sent to
Samos as commanders in their stead; an appointment of which, as
will be presently seen, Peisander was far from anticipating the
consequences.
[16] Thucyd. viii, 54. Ὁ δὲ δῆμος τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἀκούων χαλεπῶς
ἔφερε τὸ περὶ τῆς ὀλιγαρχίας· σαφῶς δὲ διδασκόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ
Πεισάνδρου μὴ εἶναι ἄλλην σωτηρίαν, ~δείσας, καὶ ἅμα ἐλπίζων ὡς
καὶ μεταβαλεῖται, ἐνέδωκε~.
“Atheniensibus, imminente periculo belli, major salutis quam
dignitatis cura fuit. Itaque, permittente populo, imperium ad
Senatum transfertur,” (Justin, v, 3).
Justin is correct, so far as this vote goes: but he takes
no notice of the change of matters afterwards, when the
establishment of the Four Hundred was consummated _without_ the
promised benefit of Persian alliance, and by simple terrorism.
Before his departure for Asia, he took a step yet more important. He
was well aware that the recent vote—a result of fear inspired by the
war, representing a sentiment utterly at variance with that of the
assembly, and only procured as the price of Persian aid against a
foreign enemy—would never pass into a reality by the spontaneous act
of the people themselves. It was, indeed, indispensable as a first
step; partly as an authority to himself, partly also as a confession
of the temporary weakness of the democracy, and as a sanction and
encouragement for the oligarchical forces to show themselves. But
the second step yet remained to be performed; that of calling these
forces into energetic action, organizing an amount of violence
sufficient to extort from the people actual submission in addition
to verbal acquiescence, and thus, as it were, tying down the patient
while the process of emasculation was being consummated. Peisander
visited all the various political clubs, conspiracies, or hetæries,
which were habitual and notorious at Athens; associations, bound
together by oath, among the wealthy citizens, partly for purposes of
amusement, but chiefly pledging the members to stand by each other
in objects of political ambition, in judicial trials, in accusation
or defence of official men after the period of office had expired,
in carrying points through the public assembly, etc. Among these
clubs were distributed most of “the best citizens, the good and
honorable men, the elegant men, the well known, the temperate, the
honest and moderate men,”[17] etc., to employ that complimentary
phraseology by which wealthy and anti-popular politicians have chosen
to designate each other, in ancient as well as in modern times. And
though there were doubtless individuals among them who deserved
these appellations in their best sense, yet the general character
of the clubs was not the less exclusive and oligarchical. In the
details of political life, they had different partialities as well
as different antipathies, and were oftener in opposition than in
coöperation with each other. But they furnished, when taken together,
a formidable anti-popular force; generally either in abeyance or
disseminated in the accomplishment of smaller political measures
and separate personal successes; but capable, at a special crisis,
of being evoked, organized, and put in conjoint attack, for the
subversion of the democracy. Such was the important movement now
initiated by Peisander. He visited separately each of these clubs,
put them into communication with each other, and exhorted them all
to joint aggressive action against their common enemy the democracy,
at a moment when it was already intimidated and might be finally
overthrown.[18]
[17] Οἱ βέλτιστοι, οἱ καλοκἀγαθοὶ, οἱ χαριέντες, οἱ γνώριμοι, οἱ
σώφρονες, etc.: le parti honnête et modéré, etc.
[18] About these ξυνωμοσίαι ἐπὶ δίκαις καὶ ἀρχαῖς, political and
judicial associations, see above, in this History, vol. iv, ch.
xxxvii, pp. 399, 400; vol. vi, ch. li. pp. 290, 291: see also
Hermann Büttner, Geschichte der politischen Hetærieen zu Athen.
pp. 75, 79, Leipsic, 1840.
There seem to have been similar political clubs or associations
at Carthage, exercising much influence, and holding perpetual
banquets as a means of largess to the poor, Aristotel. Polit. ii,
8, 2; Livy, xxxiii, 46; xxxiv, 61; compare Kluge, ad Aristotel.
De Polit. Carthag. pp. 46-127, Wratisl. 1824.
The like political associations were both of long duration
among the nobility of Rome, and of much influence for political
objects as well as judicial success: “coitiones (compare Cicero
pro Cluentio, c. 54, s. 148) honorum adipiscendorum causâ factæ,
factiones, sodalitates.” The incident described in Livy (ix.
26) is remarkable. The senate, suspecting the character and
proceedings of these clubs, appointed the dictator Mænius (in
312 B.C.) as commissioner with full power to investigate and
deal with them. But such was the power of the clubs, in a case
where they had a common interest and acted in coöperation (as was
equally the fact under Peisander at Athens), that they completely
frustrated the inquiry, and went on as before. “Nec diutius,
_ut fit, quam dum recens erat, quæstio per clara nomina reorum
viguit_: inde labi cœpit ad viliora capita, _donec coitionibus
factionibusque, adversus quas comparata erat, oppressa est_.”
(Livy. ix, 26.) Compare Dio. Cass. xxxvii, 57, about the ἑταιρικὰ
of the Triumvirs at Rome. Quintus Cicero (de Petition. Consulat.
c. 5) says to his brother, the orator: “Quod si satis grati
homines essent, hæc omnia (_i.e._ all the _subsidia_ necessary
for success in his coming election) tibi parata esse debebant,
sicut parata esse confido. Nam hoc biennio quatuor _sodalitates_
civium ad ambitionem gratiosissimorum tibi obligasti.... Horum in
causis ad te deferundis _quidnam eorum sodales tibi receperint et
confirmarint_, scio; nam interfui.”
See Th. Mommsen, De Collegiis et Sodaliciis Romanorum, Kiel,
1843, ch. iii, sects. 5, 6, 7; also the Dissertation of Wunder,
inserted in the Onomasticon Tullianum of Orelli and Baiter, in
the last volume of their edition of Cicero, pp. 200-210, ad Ind.
Legum; _Lex Licinia de Sodalitiis_.
As an example of these clubs or conspiracies for mutual support
in ξυνωμοσίαι ἐπὶ δίκαις (not including ἀρχαῖς, so far as we can
make out), we may cite the association called οἱ Εἰκαδεῖς, made
known to us by an Inscription recently discovered in Attica, and
published first in Dr. Wordsworth’s Athens and Attica, p. 223;
next in Ross, Die Demen von Attica, Preface, p. v. These Εἰκαδεῖς
are an association, the members of which are bound to each other
by a common oath, as well as by a curse which the mythical hero
of the association, Eikadeus, is supposed to have imprecated
(ἐνάντιον τῇ ἄρᾳ ἣν Εἰκαδεὺς ἐπηράσατο); they possess common
property, and it was held contrary to the oath for any of the
members to enter into a pecuniary process against the κοινόν:
compare analogous obligations among the Roman Sodales, Mommsen,
p. 4. Some members had violated their obligation upon this point:
Polyxenus had attacked them at law for false witness: and the
general body of the Eikadeis pass a vote of thanks to him for so
doing, and choose three of their members to assist him in the
cause before the dikastery (οἳτινες συναγωνιοῦνται τῷ ἐπεσκημμένῳ
τοῖς μάρτυσι): compare the ἑταιρίαι alluded to in Demosthenês
(cont. Theokrin. c. 11, p. 1335) as assisting Theokrinês before
the dikastery, and intimidating the witnesses.
The Guilds in the European cities during the Middle Ages, usually
sworn to by every member, and called _conjurationes Amicitiæ_,
bear in many respects a resemblance to these ξυνωμοσίαι; though
the judicial proceedings in the mediæval cities, being so much
less popular than at Athens, narrowed their range of interference
in this direction: their political importance, however, was quite
equal. (See Wilda, Das Gilden Wesen des Mittelalters, Abschn. ii,
p. 167, etc.)
“Omnes autem ad Amicitiam pertinentes villæ per _fidem et
sacramentum_ firmaverunt, quod unus subveniat alteri tanquam
fratri suo in utili et honesto,” (ib. p. 148.)
Having taken other necessary measures towards the same purpose,
Peisander left Athens with his colleagues to enter upon his
negotiation with Tissaphernês. But the coöperation and aggressive
movement of the clubs which he had originated was prosecuted with
increased ardor during his absence, and even fell into hands more
organizing and effective than his own. The rhetorical teacher
Antiphon, of the deme Rhamnus, took it in hand especially, acquired
the confidence of the clubs, and drew the plan of campaign against
the democracy. He was a man estimable in private life, and not open
to pecuniary corruption: in other respects, of preëminent ability,—in
contrivance, judgment, speech, and action. The profession to which
he belonged, generally unpopular among the democracy, excluding him
from taking rank as a speaker either in the public assembly or the
dikastery: for a rhetorical teacher, contending in either of them
against a private speaker, to repeat a remark already once made, was
considered to stand at the same unfair advantage, as a fencing-master
fighting a duel with a gentleman would be held to stand in modern
times. Thus debarred himself from the showy celebrity of Athenian
political life, Antiphon became only the more consummate, as a master
of advice, calculation, scheming, and rhetorical composition,[19] to
assist the celebrity of others; insomuch that his silent assistance
in political and judicial debates, as a sort of chamber-counsel, was
highly appreciated and largely paid. Now such were precisely the
talents required for the present occasion; while Antiphon, who hated
the democracy for having hitherto kept him in the shade, gladly bent
his full talents towards its subversion.
[19] The person described by Krito, in the Euthydêmus of Plato
(c. 31, p. 305, C.), as having censured Sokratês for conversing
with Euthydêmus and Dionysodorus, is presented exactly like
Antiphon in Thucydidês: ἥκιστα νὴ τὸν Δία ῥήτωρ· οὐδὲ οἶμαι
πώποτε αὐτὸν ἐπὶ δικαστήριον ἀναβεβηκέναι· ἀλλ᾽ ἐπαΐειν αὐτόν
φασι περὶ τοῦ πράγματος, νὴ τὸν Δία, καὶ δεινὸν εἶναι καὶ δεινοὺς
λόγους ξυντιθέναι.
Heindorf thinks that Isokratês is here meant: Groen van
Prinsterer talks of Lysias; Winkelmann, of Thrasymachus. The
description would fit Antiphon as well as either of these three:
though Stallbaum may perhaps be right in supposing no particular
individual to have been in the mind of Plato.
Οἱ συνδικεῖν ἐπιστάμενοι, whom Xenophon specifies as being so
eminently useful to a person engaged in a lawsuit, are probably
the persons who knew how to address the dikastery effectively in
support of his case (Xenoph. Memorab. i, 2, 51).
Such was the man to whom Peisander, in departing, chiefly confided
the task of organizing the anti-popular clubs, for the consummation
of the revolution already in immediate prospect. His chief auxiliary
was Theramenês, another Athenian, now first named, of eminent ability
and cunning. His father (either natural or by adoption), Agnon, was
one of the probûli, and had formerly been founder of Amphipolis.
Even Phrynichus—whose sagacity we have already had occasion to
appreciate, and who, from hatred towards Alkibiadês, had pronounced
himself decidedly against the oligarchical movement at Samos—became
zealous in forwarding the movement at Athens, after his dismissal
from the command. He brought to the side of Antiphon and Theramenês
a contriving head not inferior to theirs, coupled with daring and
audacity even superior. Under such skilful leaders, the anti-popular
force of Athens was organized with a deep skill, and directed with a
dexterous wickedness, never before witnessed in Greece.
At the time when Peisander and the other envoys reached Ionia,
seemingly about the end of January or beginning of February 411
B.C., the Peloponnesian fleet had already quitted Milêtus and gone
to Knidus and Rhodes, on which latter island Leon and Diomedon made
some hasty descents, from the neighboring island of Chalkê. At the
same time the Athenian armament at Chios was making progress in the
siege of that place and the construction of the neighboring fort
at Delphinium. Pedaritus, the Lacedæmonian governor of the island,
had sent pressing messages to solicit aid from the Peloponnesians
at Rhodes, but no aid arrived; and he therefore resolved to attempt
a general sally and attack upon the Athenians with his whole
force, foreign as well as Chian. Though at first he obtained some
success, the battle ended in his complete defeat and death, with
great slaughter of the Chian troops, and with the loss of many whose
shields were captured in the pursuit.[20] The Chians, now reduced to
greater straits than before, and beginning to suffer severely from
famine, were only enabled to hold out by a partial reinforcement soon
afterwards obtained from the Peloponnesian guardships at Milêtus. A
Spartan named Leon, who had come out in the vessel of Antisthenês as
one of the epibatæ, or marines, conducted this reinforcing squadron
of twelve triremes, chiefly Thurian and Syracusan, succeeding
Pedaritus in the general command of the island.[21]
[20] Thucyd. viii, 55, 56.
[21] Thucyd. viii, 61. ἔτυχον δὲ ἔτι ἐν Ῥόδῳ ὄντος Ἀστυόχου ἐκ
τῆς Μιλήτου Λέοντά τε ἄνδρα Σπαρτιάτην, ~ὃς Ἀντισθένει ἐπιβάτης~
ξυνέπλει, τοῦτον κεκομισμένοι μετὰ τὸν Πεδαρίτου θάνατον ἄρχοντα,
etc.
I do not see why the word ἐπιβάτης should not be construed here,
as elsewhere, in its ordinary sense of _miles classiarius_. The
commentators, see the notes of Dr. Arnold, Poppo, and Göller
start difficulties which seem to me of little importance; and
they imagine divers new meanings, for none of which any authority
is produced. We ought not to wonder that a common _miles
classiarius_, or marine, being a Spartan citizen, should be
appointed commander at Chios, when, a few chapters afterwards, we
find Thrasybulus at Samos promoted, from being a common hoplite
in the ranks, to be one of the Athenian generals (viii. 73).
The like remark may be made on the passage cited from Xenophon
(Hellenic. i. 3, 17), about Hegesandridas—ἐπιβάτης ὢν Μινδάρου,
where also the commentators reject the common meaning (see
Schneider’s note in the Addenda to his edition of 1791, p. 97).
The participle ὢν in that passage must be considered as an
inaccurate substitute for γεγενημένος, since Mindarus was dead at
the time. Hegesandridas _had been_ among the epibatæ of Mindarus,
and was _now_ in command of a squadron on the coast of Thrace.
It was while Chios seemed thus likely to be recovered by Athens—and
while the superior Peloponnesian fleet was paralyzed at Rhodes by
Persian intrigues and bribes—that Peisander arrived in Ionia to open
his negotiations with Alkibiadês and Tissaphernês. He was enabled to
announce that the subversion of the democracy at Athens was already
begun, and would soon be consummated: and he now required the price
which had been promised in exchange, Persian alliance and aid to
Athens against the Peloponnesians. But Alkibiadês knew well that
he had promised what he had not the least chance of being able to
perform. The satrap had appeared to follow his advice,—or had rather
followed his own inclination, employing Alkibiadês as an instrument
and auxiliary,—in the endeavor to wear out both parties, and to keep
them nearly on an equality until each should ruin the other. But he
was no way disposed to identify himself with the cause of Athens, and
to break decidedly with the Peloponnesians, especially at a moment
when their fleet was both the greater of the two, and in occupation
of an island close to his own satrapy. Accordingly Alkibiadês, when
summoned by the Athenian envoys to perform his engagement, found
himself in a dilemma from which he could only escape by one of his
characteristic manœuvres.
Receiving the envoys himself in conjunction with Tissaphernês, and
speaking on behalf of the latter, he pushed his demands to an extent
which he knew that the Athenians would never concede, in order that
the rupture might seem to be on their side, and not on his. First,
he required the whole of Ionia to be conceded to the Great King;
next, all the neighboring islands, with some other items besides.[22]
Large as these requisitions were, comprehending the cession of Lesbos
and Samos as well as Chios, and replacing the Persian monarchy in
the condition in which it had stood in 496 B.C., before the Ionic
revolt, Peisander and his colleagues granted them all: so that
Alkibiadês was on the point of seeing his deception exposed and
frustrated. At last, he bethought himself of a fresh demand, which
touched Athenian pride, as well as Athenian safety, in the tenderest
place. He required that the Persian king should be held free to build
ships of war in unlimited number, and to keep them sailing along
the coast as he might think fit, through all these new portions of
territory. After the immense concessions already made, the envoys
not only rejected this fresh demand at once, but resented it as an
insult, which exposed the real drift and purpose of Alkibiadês.
Not merely did it cancel the boasted treaty, called the Peace of
Kallias, concluded about forty years before between Athens and
Persia, and limiting the Persian ships of war to the sea eastward
of Phasêlis, but it extinguished the maritime empire of Athens, and
compromised the security of all the coasts and islands of the Ægean.
To see Lesbos, Chios, and Samos, etc., in possession of Persia, was
sufficiently painful; but if there came to be powerful Persian fleets
on these islands it would be the certain precursor and means of
farther conquests to the westward, and would revive the aggressive
dispositions of the Great King, as they had stood at the beginning of
the reign of Xerxes. Peisander and his comrades, abruptly breaking
off the debate, returned to Samos; indignant at the discovery, which
they now made for the first time, that Alkibiadês had juggled them
from the outset, and was imposing conditions which he knew to be
inadmissible.[23] They still appear, however, to have thought that
Alkibiadês acted thus, not because he _could_ not, but because he
_would_ not, bring about the alliance under discussion.[24] They
suspected him of playing false with the oligarchical movement which
he had himself instigated, and of projecting the accomplishment of
his own restoration, coupled with the alliance of Tissaphernês,
into the bosom of the democracy which he had begun by denouncing.
Such was the light in which they presented his conduct, venting
their disappointment in invectives against his duplicity, and in
asseverations that he was after all unsuitable for a place in
oligarchical society. Such declarations, circulated at Samos, to
account for their unexpected failure in realizing the hopes which
they had raised, created among the armament an impression that
Alkibiadês was really favorable to the democracy, at the same time
leaving unabated the prestige of his unbounded ascendency over
Tissaphernês and the Great King. We shall presently see the effects
resulting from this belief.
[22] Thucyd. viii, 56. Ἰωνίαν τε γὰρ πᾶσαν ἠξίουν δίδοσθαι, καὶ
αὖθις νήσους τε ἐπικειμένας ~καὶ ἄλλα~, οἷς οὐκ ἐναντιουμένων τῶν
Ἀθηναίων, etc.
What this _et cetera_ comprehended, we cannot divine. The demand
was certainly ample enough without it.
[23] Thucyd. viii, 56. ναῦς ἠξίου ἐᾷν βασιλέα ποιεῖσθαι, καὶ
παραπλεῖν τὴν ~ἑαυτοῦ~ γῆν, ὅπη ἂν καὶ ὅσαις ἂν βούληται.
In my judgment ἑαυτοῦ is decidedly the proper reading here, not
ἑαυτῶν. I agree in this respect with Dr. Arnold, Bekker, and
Göller.
In a former volume of this History, I have shown reasons for
believing, in opposition to Mitford, Dahlmann, and others, that
the treaty called by the name of Kallias, and sometimes miscalled
by the name of Kimon, was a real fact and not a boastful fiction:
see vol. v, ch. xlv, p. 340.
The note of Dr. Arnold, though generally just, gives an
inadequate representation of the strong reasons of Athens for
rejecting and resenting this third demand.
[24] Thucyd. viii, 63. Καὶ ἐν σφίσιν αὐτοῖς ἅμα οἱ ἐν τῇ Σάμῳ τῶν
Ἀθηναίων κοινολογούμενοι ἐσκέψαντο, Ἀλκιβιάδην μέν, ~ἐπειδήπερ
οὐ βούλεται~, ἐᾷν (καὶ γὰρ οὐκ ἐπιτήδειον αὐτὸν εἶναι ~ἐς
ὀλιγαρχίαν~ ἐλθεῖν), etc.
Immediately after the rupture of the negotiations, however, the
satrap took a step well calculated to destroy the hopes of the
Athenians altogether, so far as Persian aid was concerned. Though
persisting in his policy of lending no decisive assistance to either
party and of merely prolonging the war so as to enfeeble both, he
yet began to fear that he was pushing matters too far against the
Peloponnesians, who had now been two months inactive at Rhodes, with
their large fleet hauled ashore. He had no treaty with them actually
in force, since Lichas had disallowed the two previous conventions;
nor had he furnished them with pay or maintenance. His bribes to
the officers had hitherto kept the armament quiet; yet we do not
distinctly see how so large a body of men found subsistence.[25]
He was now, however, apprized that they could find subsistence no
longer, and that they would probably desert, or commit depredations
on the coast of his satrapy, or perhaps be driven to hasten on a
general action with the Athenians, under desperate circumstances.
Under such apprehensions he felt compelled to put himself again in
communication with them, to furnish them with pay, and to conclude
with them a third convention, the proposition of which he had refused
to entertain at Knidus. He therefore went to Kaunus, invited the
Peloponnesian leaders to Milêtus, and concluded with them near that
town a treaty to the following effect:—
[25] Thucyd. viii, 44-57. In two parallel cases, one in Chios,
the other in Korkyra, the seamen of an unpaid armament found
subsistence by hiring themselves out for agricultural labor. But
this was only during the summer (see Xenoph. Hellen. ii, 1, 1;
vi, 2, 37), while the stay of the Peloponnesians at Rhodes was
from January to March.
“In this thirteenth year of the reign of Darius, and in the ephorship
of Alexippidas at Lacedæmon, a convention is hereby concluded by the
Lacedæmonians and their allies, with Tissaphernês and Hieramenês and
the sons of Pharnakês, respecting the affairs of the king and of the
Lacedæmonians and their allies. The territory of the king, as much of
it as is in Asia, shall belong to the king. Let the king determine as
he chooses respecting his own territory. The Lacedæmonians and their
allies shall not approach the king’s territory with any mischievous
purpose, nor shall the king approach that of the Lacedæmonians
and their allies with any like purpose. If any one among the
Lacedæmonians or their allies shall approach the king’s territory
with mischievous purpose, the Lacedæmonians and their allies shall
hinder him: if any one from the king’s territory shall approach the
Lacedæmonians or their allies with mischievous purpose, the king
shall hinder him. Tissaphernês shall provide pay and maintenance,
for the fleet now present, at the rate already stipulated, until the
king’s fleet shall arrive; after that, it shall be at the option of
the Lacedæmonians to maintain their own fleet, if they think fit; or,
if they prefer, Tissaphernês shall furnish maintenance, and at the
close of the war the Lacedæmonians shall repay to him what they have
received. After the king’s fleet shall have arrived, the two fleets
shall carry on war conjointly, in such manner as shall seem good to
Tissaphernês and the Lacedæmonians and their allies. If they choose
to close the war with the Athenians, they shall close it only by
joint consent.”[26]
[26] Thucyd. viii, 58.
In comparing this third convention with the two preceding, we
find that nothing is now stipulated as to any territory except
the continent of Asia; which is insured unreservedly to the king,
of course with all the Greek residents planted upon it. But by a
diplomatic finesse, the terms of the treaty imply that this is not
_all_ the territory which the king is entitled to claim, though
nothing is covenanted as to any remainder.[27] Next, this third
treaty includes Pharnabazus, the son of Pharnakês, with his satrapy
of Daskylium, and Hieramenês, with his district, the extent and
position of which we do not know; while in the former treaties
no other satrap except Tissaphernês had been concerned. We must
recollect that the Peloponnesian fleet included those twenty-seven
triremes, which had been brought across by Kalligeitus expressly for
the aid of Pharnabazus; and therefore that the latter now naturally
became a party to the general operations. Thirdly, we here find, for
the first time, formal announcement of a Persian fleet about to be
brought up as auxiliary to the Peloponnesians. This was a promise
which the satrap now set forth more plainly than before, to amuse
them, and to abate the mistrust which they had begun to conceive of
his sincerity. It served the temporary purpose of restraining them
from any immediate act of despair hostile to his interests, which was
all that he looked for. While he renewed his payments, therefore, for
the moment, he affected to busy himself in orders and preparations
for the fleet from Phenicia.[28]
[27] Thucyd. viii, 58. χώραν τὴν βασιλέως, ~ὅση τῆς Ἀσίας ἐστὶ~,
βασιλέως εἶναι· καὶ περὶ τῆς χώρας τῆς ἑαυτοῦ βουλευέτω βασιλεὺς
ὅπως βούλεται.
[28] Thucyd. viii, 59.
The Peloponnesian fleet was now ordered to move from Rhodes. Before
it quitted that island, however, envoys came thither from Eretria and
from Orôpus; which latter place, a dependency on the northeastern
frontier of Attica, though protected by an Athenian garrison, had
recently been surprised and captured by the Bœotians. The loss of
Orôpus much increased the facilities for the revolt of Eubœa; and
these envoys came to entreat aid from the Peloponnesian fleet, to
second that island in that design. The Peloponnesian commanders,
however, felt themselves under prior obligation to relieve the
sufferers at Chios, towards which island they first bent their
course. But they had scarcely passed the Triopian cape, when they
saw the Athenian squadron from Chalkê dogging their motions. Though
there was no wish on either side for a general battle, yet they saw
evidently that the Athenians would not permit them to pass by Samos,
and get to the relief of Chios, without one. Renouncing, therefore,
the project of relieving Chios, they again concentrated their force
at Milêtus, while the Athenian fleet was also again united at
Samos.[29] It was about the end of March, 411 B.C., that the two
fleets were thus replaced in the stations which they had occupied
four months previously.
[29] Thucyd. viii, 60.
After the breach with Alkibiadês, and still more after this manifest
reconciliation of Tissaphernês with the Peloponnesians, Peisander
and the oligarchical conspirators at Samos had to reconsider their
plan of action. They would not have begun the movement at first,
had they not been instigated by Alkibiadês, and furnished by him
with the treacherous delusion of Persian alliance to cheat and
paralyze the people. They had, indeed, motives enough, from their
own personal ambition, to originate it of themselves, apart from
Alkibiadês; but without the hopes—equally useful for their purpose,
whether false or true—connected with his name, they would have had
no chance of achieving the first step. Now, however, that first step
had been achieved, before the delusive expectation of Persian gold
was dissipated. The Athenian people had been familiarized with the
idea of a subversion of their constitution, in consideration of a
certain price: it remained to extort from them at the point of the
sword, without paying the price, what they had thus consented to
sell.[30] Moreover, the leaders of the scheme felt themselves already
compromised, so that they could not recede with safety. They had set
in motion their partisans at Athens, where the system of murderous
intimidation, though the news had not as yet reached Samos, was
already in full swing: so that they felt constrained to persevere,
as the only chance of preservation to themselves. At the same time,
all that faint pretence of public benefit, in the shape of Persian
alliance, which had been originally attached to it, and which might
have been conceived to enlist in the scheme some timid patriots, was
now entirely withdrawn; and nothing remained except a naked, selfish,
and unscrupulous scheme of ambition, not only ruining the freedom of
Athens at home, but crippling and imperiling her before the foreign
enemy, at a moment when her entire strength was scarcely adequate to
the contest. The conspirators resolved to persevere, at all hazards,
both in breaking down the constitution and in carrying on the foreign
war. Most of them being rich men, they were content, Thucydidês
observes, to defray the cost out of their own purses, now that they
were contending, not for their country, but for their own power and
profit.[31]
[30] See Aristotel. Politic. v, 3, 8. He cites this revolution
as an instance of one begun by deceit and afterwards consummated
by force: οἷον ἐπὶ τῶν τετρακοσίων τὸν δῆμον ἐξηπάτησαν,
φάσκοντες τὸν βασιλέα χρήματα παρέξειν πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον τὸν πρὸς
Λακεδαιμονίους· ψευσάμενοι δὲ, κατέχειν ἐπειρῶντο τὴν πολιτείαν.
[31] Thucyd. viii, 63. Αὐτοὺς δὲ ἐπὶ σφῶν αὐτῶν, ~ὡς ἤδη καὶ
κινδυνεύοντας~, ὁρᾷν ὅτῳ τρόπῳ μὴ ἀνεθήσεται τὰ πράγματα, καὶ
τὰ τοῦ πολέμου ἅμα ἀντέχειν, καὶ ἐσφέρειν αὐτοὺς προθύμως
χρήματα καὶ ἤν τι ἄλλο δέῃ, ὡς οὐκέτι ~ἄλλοις ἢ σφίσιν αὐτοῖς~
ταλαιπωροῦντας.
They lost no time in proceeding to execution, immediately after
returning to Samos from the abortive conference with Alkibiadês.
While they despatched Peisander with five of the envoys back to
Athens, to consummate what was already in progress there, and the
remaining five to oligarchize the dependent allies, they organized
all their partisan force in the armament, and began to take measures
for putting down the democracy in Samos itself. That democracy had
been the product of a forcible revolution, effected about ten months
before, by the aid of three Athenian triremes. It had since preserved
Samos from revolting like Chios: it was now the means of preserving
the democracy at Athens itself. The partisans of Peisander, finding
it an invincible obstacle to their views, contrived to gain over
a party of the leading Samians now in authority under it. Three
hundred of these latter, a portion of those who ten months before
had risen in arms to put down the preëxisting oligarchy, now
enlisted as conspirators along with the Athenian oligarchs, to put
down the Samian democracy, and get possession of the government for
themselves. The new alliance was attested and cemented, according to
genuine oligarchical practice, by a murder without judicial trial,
or an assassination, for which a suitable victim was at hand. The
Athenian Hyperbolus, who had been ostracized some years before by the
coalition of Nikias and Alkibiadês, together with their respective
partisans,—ostracized as Thucydidês tells us, not from any fear of
his power and over-ascendent influence, but from his low character,
and from his being a disgrace to the city, and thus ostracized by an
abuse of the institution,—was now resident at Samos. As he was not a
Samian, and had, moreover, been in banishment during the last five
or six years, he could have had no power either in the island or the
armament, and therefore his death served no prospective purpose.
But he represented the demagogic and accusatory eloquence of the
democracy, the check upon official delinquency; so that he served as
a common object of antipathy to Athenian and Samian oligarchs. Some
of the Athenian partisans, headed by Charmînus, one of the generals,
in concert with the Samian conspirators, seized Hyperbolus and put
him to death, seemingly with some other victims at the same time.[32]
[32] Thucyd. viii, 73. Καὶ Ὑπέρβολόν τέ τινα τῶν Ἀθηναίων,
μοχθηρὸν ἄνθρωπον, ὠστρακισμένον οὐ διὰ δυνάμεως καὶ ἀξιώματος
φόβον, ἀλλὰ διὰ πονηρίαν καὶ αἰσχύνην τῆς πόλεως, ἀποκτείνουσι
μετὰ Χαρμίνου τε ἑνὸς τῶν στρατηγῶν καί τινων τῶν παρὰ σφίσιν
Ἀθηναίων, πίστιν διδόντες αὐτοῖς, ~καὶ ἄλλα μετ᾽ αὐτῶν τοιαῦτα
ξυνέπραξαν~, τοῖς τε πλείοσιν ὥρμηντο ἐπιτίθεσθαι.
I presume that the words, ἄλλα τοιαῦτα ξυνέπραξαν, must mean that
other persons were assassinated along with Hyperbolus.
The incorrect manner in which Mr. Mitford recounts these
proceedings at Samos has been properly commented on by Dr.
Thirlwall (Hist. Gr. ch. xxviii, vol. iv, p. 30). It is the more
surprising, since the phrase μετὰ Χαρμίνου, which Mr. Mitford has
misunderstood, is explained in a special note of Duker.
But though these joint assassinations served as a pledge to each
section of the conspirators for the fidelity of the other, in
respect to farther operations, they at the same time gave warning
to opponents. Those leading men at Samos who remained attached to
the democracy, looking abroad for defence against the coming attack,
made earnest appeal to Leon and Diomedon, the two generals most
recently arrived from Athens in substitution for Phrynichus and
Skironidês,—men sincerely devoted to the democracy, and adverse to
all oligarchical change, as well as to the trierarch Thrasyllus, to
Thrasybulus, son of Lykus, then serving as an hoplite, and to many
others of the pronounced democrats and patriots in the Athenian
armament. They made appeal not simply in behalf of their own personal
safety and of their own democracy, now threatened by conspirators of
whom a portion were Athenians, but also on grounds of public interest
to Athens; since, if Samos became oligarchized, its sympathy with
the Athenian democracy and its fidelity to the alliance would be at
an end. At this moment the most recent events which had occurred at
Athens, presently to be told, were not known, and the democracy was
considered as still subsisting there.[33]
[33] Thucyd. viii, 73, 74. οὐκ ἠξίουν περιϊδεῖν αὐτοὺς σφᾶς τε
διαφθαρέντας, καὶ Σάμον Ἀθηναίοις ἀλλοτριωθεῖσαν, etc.
... οὐ γὰρ ᾔδεσάν πω τοὺς τετρακοσίους ἄρχοντας, etc.
To stand by the assailed democracy of Samos, and to preserve the
island itself, now the mainstay of the shattered Athenian empire,
were motives more than sufficient to awaken the Athenian leaders
thus solicited. Commencing a personal canvass among the soldiers
and seamen, and invoking their interference to avert the overthrow
of the Samian democracy, they found the general sentiment decidedly
in their favor, but most of all, among the parali, or crew of the
consecrated public trireme, called the paralus. These men were the
picked seamen of the state,—each of them not merely a freeman, but a
full Athenian citizen, receiving higher pay than the ordinary seamen,
and known as devoted to the democratical constitution, with an active
repugnance to oligarchy itself as well as to everything which scented
of it.[34] The vigilance of Leon and Diomedon on the defensive side,
counteracted the machinations of their colleague Charmînus, along
with the conspirators, and provided for the Samian democracy faithful
auxiliaries constantly ready for action. Presently, the conspirators
made a violent attack to overthrow the government; but though they
chose their own moment and opportunity, they still found themselves
thoroughly worsted in the struggle, especially through the energetic
aid of the parali. Thirty of their number were slain in the contest,
and three of the most guilty afterwards condemned to banishment. The
victorious party took no farther revenge, even upon the remainder of
the three hundred conspirators, granted a general amnesty, and did
their best to reëstablish constitutional and harmonious working of
the democracy.[35]
[34] Thucyd. viii, 73. καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα τοὺς Παράλους, ἄνδρας
Ἀθηναίους τε καὶ ἐλευθέρους πάντας ἐν τῇ νηῒ πλέοντας, καὶ ~ἀεὶ
δήποτε ὀλιγαρχίᾳ καὶ μὴ παρούσῃ ἐπικειμένους~.
Peitholaus called the paralus ῥόπαλον τοῦ δήμου, “the club,
staff, or mace of the people.” (Aristotel. Rhetoric, iii, 3.)
[35] Thucyd. viii, 73. Καὶ τριάκοντα μέν τινας ἀπέκτειναν τῶν
τριακοσίων, τρεῖς δὲ τοὺς αἰτιωτάτους φυγῇ ἐζημίωσαν· τοῖς δ᾽
ἄλλοις οὐ μνησικακοῦντες δημοκρατούμενοι τὸ λοιπὸν ξυνεπολίτευον.
Chæreas, an Athenian trierarch, who had been forward in the contest,
was sent in the paralus itself to Athens, to make communication of
what had occurred. But this democratical crew, on reaching their
native city, instead of being received with that welcome which they
doubtless expected, found a state of things not less odious than
surprising. The democracy of Athens had been subverted: instead of
the senate of Five Hundred, and the assembled people, an oligarchy
of Four Hundred self-installed persons were enthroned with sovereign
authority in the senate-house. The first order of the Four Hundred,
on hearing that the paralus had entered Peiræus, was to imprison
two or three of the crew, and to remove all the rest from their own
privileged trireme aboard a common trireme, with orders to depart
forthwith and to cruise near Eubœa. The commander, Chæreas, found
means to escape, and returned back to Samos to tell the unwelcome
news.[36]
[36] Thucyd. viii. 74.
The steps, whereby this oligarchy of Four Hundred had been gradually
raised up to their new power, must be taken up from the time
when Peisander quitted Athens,—after having obtained the vote of
the public assembly authorizing him to treat with Alkibiadês and
Tissaphernês,—and after having set on foot a joint organization
and conspiracy of all the anti-popular clubs, which fell under the
management especially of Antiphon and Theramenês, afterwards aided by
Phrynichus. All the members of that Board of Elders called Probûli,
who had been named after the defeat in Sicily, with Agnon, father
of Theramenês, at their head,[37]—together with many other leading
citizens, some of whom had been counted among the firmest friends of
the democracy, joined the conspiracy; while the oligarchical and the
neutral rich came into it with ardor; so that a body of partisans was
formed both numerous and well provided with money. Antiphon did not
attempt to bring them together, or to make any public demonstration,
armed or unarmed, for the purpose of overawing the actual
authorities. He permitted the senate and the public assembly to go
on meeting and debating as usual; but his partisans, neither the
names nor the numbers of whom were publicly known, received from him
instructions both when to speak and what language to hold. The great
topic upon which they descanted, was the costliness of democratical
institutions in the present distressed state of the finances, the
heavy tax imposed upon the state by paying the senators, the dikasts,
the ekklesiasts, or citizens who attended the public assembly, etc.
The state could now afford to pay only those soldiers who fought in
its defence, nor ought any one else to touch the public money. It was
essential, they insisted, to exclude from the political franchise all
except a select body of Five Thousand, composed of those who were
best able to do service to the city by person and by purse.
[37] Thucyd. viii, 1. About the countenance which _all_ these
probûli lent to the conspiracy, see Aristotle, Rhetoric, iii, 18,
2.
Respecting the activity of Agnon, as one of the probûli, in the
same cause, see Lysias, Orat. xii, cont. Eratosthen. c. 11, p.
426, Reisk. sect. 66.
The extensive disfranchisement involved in this last proposition was
quite sufficiently shocking to the ears of an Athenian assembly.
But in reality the proposition was itself a juggle, never intended
to become reality, and representing something far short of what
Antiphon and his partisans intended. Their design was to appropriate
the powers of government to themselves simply, without control
or partnership, leaving this body of Five Thousand not merely
unconvened, but non-existent, as a mere empty name to impose upon
the citizens generally. Of this real intention, however, not a word
was as yet spoken. The projected body of Five Thousand was the theme
preached upon by all the party orators; yet without submitting any
substantive motion for the change, which could not be yet done
without illegality.
Even thus indirectly advocated, the project of cutting down the
franchise to Five Thousand, and of suppressing all the paid civil
functions, was a change sufficiently violent to call forth abundant
opponents. For such opponents Antiphon was fully prepared. Of the men
who thus stood forward in opposition, either all, or at least all the
most prominent, were successively taken off by private assassination.
The first of them who thus perished was Androklês, distinguished as
a demagogue, or popular speaker, and marked out to vengeance not
only by that circumstance, but by the farther fact that he had been
among the most vehement accusers of Alkibiadês before his exile.
For at this time, the breach of Peisander with Tissaphernês and
Alkibiadês had not yet become known at Athens, so that the latter
was still supposed to be on the point of returning home as a member
of the contemplated oligarchical government. After Androklês, many
other speakers of similar sentiments perished in the same way, by
unknown hands. A band of Grecian youths, strangers, and got together
from different cities,[38] was organized for the business: the
victims were all chosen on the same special ground, and the deed
was so skilfully perpetrated that neither director nor instrument
ever became known. After these assassinations—sure, special, secret,
and systematic, emanating from an unknown directory, like a Vehmic
tribunal—had continued for some time, the terror which they inspired
became intense and universal. No justice could be had, no inquiry
could be instituted, even for the death of the nearest and dearest
relative. At last, no man dared to demand or even to mention inquiry,
looking upon himself as fortunate that he had escaped the same fate
in his own person. So finished an organization, and such well-aimed
blows, raised a general belief that the conspirators were much
more numerous than they were in reality. And as it turned out that
there were persons among them who had before been accounted hearty
democrats,[39] so at last dismay and mistrust became universally
prevalent. Nor did any one dare even to express indignation at
the murders going on, much less to talk about redress or revenge,
for fear that he might be communicating with one of the unknown
conspirators. In the midst of this terrorism, all opposition ceased
in the senate and public assembly, so that the speakers of the
conspiring oligarchy appeared to carry an unanimous assent.[40]
[38] Thucyd. viii, 69. Οἱ εἴκοσι καὶ ἑκατὸν μετ᾽ αὐτῶν (that is,
along with the Four Hundred) Ἕλληνες νεανίσκοι, οἷς ἐχρῶντο εἴ τί
που δέοι χειρουργεῖν.
Dr. Arnold explains the words Ἕλληνες νεανίσκοι to mean some of
the members of the aristocratical clubs, or unions, formerly
spoken of. But I cannot think that Thucydidês would use such an
expression to designate Athenian citizens: neither is it probable
that Athenian citizens would be employed in repeated acts of such
a character.
[39] Even Peisander himself had professed the strongest
attachment to the democracy, coupled with exaggerated violence
against parties suspected of oligarchical plots, four years
before, in the investigations which followed on the mutilation of
the Hermæ at Athens (Andokidês de Myster. c. 9, 10, sects. 36-43).
It is a fact that Peisander was one of the prominent movers on
both these two occasions, four years apart. And if we could
believe Isokratês (de Bigis, sects. 4-7, p. 347), the second of
the two occasions was merely the continuance and consummation of
a plot which had been projected and begun on the first, and in
which the conspirators had endeavored to enlist Alkibiadês. The
latter refused, so his son, the speaker in the above-mentioned
oration, contends, in consequence of his attachment to the
democracy; upon which the oligarchical conspirators, incensed
at his refusal, got up the charge of irreligion against him and
procured his banishment.
Though Droysen and Wattenbach (De Quadringentorum Athenis
Factione, pp. 7, 8, Berlin, 1842) place confidence, to a
considerable extent, in this manner of putting the facts, I
consider it to be nothing better than complete perversion;
irreconcilable with Thucydidês, confounding together facts
unconnected in themselves as well as separated by a long interval
of time, and introducing unreal causes, for the purpose of making
out, what was certainly not true, that Alkibiadês was a faithful
friend of the democracy, and even a sufferer in its behalf.
[40] Thucyd. viii, 66.
Such was the condition to which things had been brought in Athens,
by Antiphon and the oligarchical conspirators acting under his
direction, at the time when Peisander and the five envoys arrived
thither returning from Samos. It is probable that they had previously
transmitted home from Samos news of the rupture with Alkibiadês, and
of the necessity of prosecuting the conspiracy without farther view
either to him or to the Persian alliance. Such news would probably
be acceptable both to Antiphon and Phrynichus, both of them personal
enemies of Alkibiadês; especially Phrynichus, who had pronounced him
to be incapable of fraternizing with an oligarchical revolution.[41]
At any rate, the plans of Antiphon had been independent of all view
to Persian aid, and had been directed to carry the revolution by
means of naked, exorbitant, and well-directed fear, without any
intermixture of hope or any prospect of public benefit. Peisander
found the reign of terror fully matured. He had not come direct from
Samos to Athens, but had halted in his voyage at various allied
dependencies, while the other five envoys, as well as a partisan
named Diotrephês, had been sent to Thasos and elsewhere;[42] all
for the same purpose, of putting down democracies in those allied
cities where they existed, and establishing oligarchies in their
room. Peisander made this change at Tênos, Andros, Karystus, Ægina,
and elsewhere; collecting from these several places a regiment of
three hundred hoplites, which he brought with him to Athens as a
sort of body-guard to his new oligarchy.[43] He could not know until
he reached Peiræus the full success of the terrorism organized by
Antiphon and the rest; so that he probably came prepared to surmount
a greater resistance than he actually found. As the facts stood, so
completely had the public opinion and spirit been subdued, that he
was enabled to put the finishing stroke at once, and his arrival was
the signal for consummating the revolution, first, by an extorted
suspension of the tutelary constitutional sanction, next, by the more
direct employment of armed force.
[41] Thucyd. viii. 68. νομίζων οὐκ ἄν ποτε αὐτὸν (Alkibiadês)
κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ὑπ᾽ ὀλιγαρχίας κατελθεῖν, etc.
[42] Thucyd. viii, 64.
[43] Thucyd. viii, 65. Οἱ δὲ ἀμφὶ τὸν Πείσανδρον ~παραπλέοντές~
τε, ὥσπερ ἐδέδοκτο, ~τοὺς δήμους ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι κατέλυον~, καὶ
ἅμα ~ἔστιν ἀφ᾽ ὧν χωρίων~ καὶ ὁπλίτας ἔχοντες σφίσιν αὐτοῖς
ξυμμάχους ἦλθον ἐς τὰς Ἀθήνας. Καὶ καταλαμβάνουσι τὰ πλεῖστα τοῖς
ἑταίροις προειργασμένα.
We may gather from c. 69 that the places which I have named in
the text were among those visited by Peisander: all of them lay
very much in his way from Samos to Athens.
First, he convoked a public assembly, in which he proposed a decree,
naming ten commissioners with full powers, to prepare propositions
for such political reform as they should think advisable, and to be
ready by a given day.[44] According to the usual practice, this
decree must previously have been approved in the senate of Five
Hundred, before it was submitted to the people. Such was doubtless
the case in the present instance, and the decree passed without any
opposition. On the day fixed, a fresh assembly met, which Peisander
and his partisans caused to be held, not in the usual place, called
the Pnyx, within the city walls, but at a place called Kolônus, ten
stadia, rather more than a mile, without the walls,[45] north of
the city. Kolônus was a temple of Poseidon, within the precinct of
which the assembly was inclosed for the occasion. Such an assembly
was not likely to be numerous, wherever held,[46] since there could
be little motive to attend, when freedom of debate was extinguished;
but the oligarchical conspirators now transferred it without the
walls; selecting a narrow area for the meeting, in order that they
might lessen still farther the chance of numerous attendance, an
assembly which they fully designed should be the last in the history
of Athens. They were thus also more out of the reach of an armed
movement in the city, as well as enabled to post their own armed
partisans around, under color of protecting the meeting against
disturbance by the Lacedæmonians from Dekeleia.
[44] Thucyd. viii, 67. Καὶ πρῶτον μὲν τὸν δῆμον ξυλλέξαντες εἶπον
γνώμην, δέκα ἄνδρας ἑλέσθαι ~ξυγγραφέας αὐτοκράτορας~, τούτους δὲ
ξυγγράψαντας γνώμην ἐσενεγκεῖν ἐς τὸν δῆμον ἐς ἡμέραν ῥητὴν, καθ᾽
ὅτι ἄριστα ἡ πόλις οἰκήσεται.
In spite of certain passages found in Suidas and Harpokration
(see K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staats Alterthümer,
sect. 167, note 12: compare also Wattenbach, De Quadringentor.
Factione, p. 38), I cannot think that there was any connection
between these ten ξυγγραφεῖς, and the Board of πρόβουλοι
mentioned as having been before named (Thucyd. viii, 1). Nor
has the passage in Lysias, to which Hermann makes allusion,
anything to do with these ξυγγραφεῖς. The mention of Thirty
persons by Androtion and Philochorus, seems to imply that they,
or Harpokration, confounded the proceedings ushering in this
oligarchy of Four Hundred, with those before the subsequent
oligarchy of Thirty. The σύνεδροι, or ξυγγραφεῖς, mentioned by
Isokratês (Areopagit. Or. vii, sect. 67) might refer either to
the case of the Four Hundred or to that of the Thirty.
[45] Thucyd. viii, 67. Ἔπειτα, ἐπειδὴ ἡ ἡμέρα ἐφῆκε, ~ξυνέκλῃσαν~
τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἐς τὸν Κόλωνον (ἔστι δ᾽ ἱερὸν Ποσειδῶνος ἔξω
πόλεως, ἀπέχον σταδίους μάλιστα δέκα), etc.
The very remarkable word ξυνέκλῃσαν, here used respecting the
assembly, appears to me to refer (not, as Dr. Arnold supposes in
his note, to any existing practice observed even in the usual
assemblies which met in the Pnyx, but rather) to a departure
from the usual practice, and the employment of a stratagem in
reference to this particular meeting.
Kolônus was one of the Attic demes: indeed, there seems reason to
imagine that two distinct demes bore this same name (see Boeckh,
in the Commentary appended to his translation of the Antigonê of
Sophoklês, pp. 190, 191: and Ross, Die Demen von Attika, pp. 10,
11). It is in the grove of the Eumenides, hard by this temple
of Poseidon, that Sophoklês has laid the scene of his immortal
drama, the Œdipus Koloneus.
[46] Compare the statement in Lysias (Orat. xii, cont. Eratosth.
s. 76, p. 127) respecting the small numbers who attended and
voted at the assembly by which the subsequent oligarchy of Thirty
was named.
The proposition of the newly-appointed commissioners—probably
Peisander, Antiphon, and other partisans themselves—was exceedingly
short and simple. They merely moved the abolition of the celebrated
Graphê Paranomôn; that is, they proposed that every Athenian
citizen should have full liberty of making any anti-constitutional
proposition that he chose, and that every other citizen should be
interdicted, under heavy penalties, from prosecuting him by graphê
paranomôn indictment on the score of informality, illegality, or
unconstitutionality, or from doing him any other mischief. This
proposition was adopted without a single dissentient. It was thought
more formal by the directing chiefs to sever this proposition
pointedly from the rest, and to put it, singly and apart, into the
mouth of the special commissioners; since it was the legalizing
condition of every other positive change which they were about to
move afterwards. Full liberty being thus granted to make any motion,
however anti-constitutional, and to dispense with all the established
formalities, such as preliminary authorization by the senate,
Peisander now came forward with his substantive propositions to the
following effect:—
1. All the existing democratical magistracies were suppressed at
once, and made to cease for the future. 2. No civil functions
whatever were hereafter to be salaried. 3. To constitute a new
government, a committee of five persons were named forthwith, who
were to choose a larger body of one hundred; that is, one hundred
including the five choosers themselves. Each individual out of this
body of one hundred, was to choose three persons. 4. A body of Four
Hundred was thus constituted, who were to take their seat in the
senate-house, and to carry on the government with unlimited powers,
according to their own discretion. 5. They were to convene the Five
Thousand, whenever they might think fit.[47] All was passed without a
dissentient voice.
[47] Thucyd. viii, 68. Ἐλθόντας δὲ αὐτοὺς τετρακοσίους
ὄντας ἐς τὸ βουλευτήριον, ἄρχειν ὅπῃ ἂν ἄριστα γιγνώσκωσιν,
~αὐτοκράτορας~, καὶ ~τοὺς πεντακισχιλίους~ δὲ ξυλλέγειν, ὁπόταν
αὐτοῖς δοκῇ.
The invention and employment of this imaginary aggregate of Five
Thousand was not the least dexterous among the combinations of
Antiphon. No one knew who these Five Thousand were: yet the
resolution just adopted purported,—not that such a number of citizens
should be singled out and constituted, either by choice, or by lot,
or in some determinate manner which should exhibit them to the view
and knowledge of others,—but that the Four Hundred should convene
_The Five Thousand_, whenever they thought proper: thus assuming
the latter to be a list already made up and notorious, at least
to the Four Hundred themselves. The real fact was, that the Five
Thousand existed nowhere except in the talk and proclamations of
the conspirators, as a supplement of fictitious auxiliaries. They
did not even exist as individual names on paper, but simply as an
imposturous nominal aggregate. The Four Hundred, now installed,
formed the entire and exclusive rulers of the state.[48] But the mere
name of the Five Thousand, though it was nothing more than a name,
served two important purposes for Antiphon and his conspiracy. First,
it admitted of being falsely produced, especially to the armament at
Samos, as proof of a tolerably numerous and popular body of equal,
qualified, concurrent citizens, all intended to take their turn by
rotation in exercising the powers of government; thus lightening
the odium of extreme usurpation to the Four Hundred, and passing
them off merely as the earliest section of the Five Thousand, put
into office for a few months, and destined at the end of that period
to give place to another equal section.[49] Next, it immensely
augmented the means of intimidation possessed by the Four Hundred
at home, by exaggerating the impression of their supposed strength.
For the citizens generally were made to believe that there were five
thousand real and living partners in the conspiracy; while the fact
that these partners were not known and could not be individually
identified, rather aggravated the reigning terror and mistrust; since
every man, suspecting that his neighbor might possibly be among
them, was afraid to communicate his discontent or propose means for
joint resistance.[50] In both these two ways, the name and assumed
existence of the Five Thousand lent strength to the real Four Hundred
conspirators. It masked their usurpation, while it increased their
hold on the respect and fears of the citizens.
[48] Thucyd. viii, 66. ἦν δὲ τοῦτο εὐπρεπὲς πρὸς τοὺς πλείους,
ἐπεὶ ἕξειν γε τὴν πόλιν οἵπερ καὶ μεθιστάναι ἔμελλον.
Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 26.
[49] Thucyd. viii, 72. Πέμπουσι δὲ ἐς τὴν Σάμον δέκα ἄνδρας ...
διδάξοντας—~πεντακισχίλιοι δὲ ὅτι εἶεν~, καὶ οὐ τετρακόσιοι
μόνον, οἱ πράσσοντες.
viii, 86. Οἱ δ᾽ ἀπήγγελλον ὡς οὔτε ἐπὶ διαφθορᾷ ~τῆς πόλεως~ ἡ
μετάστασις γένοιτο, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ ... ~τῶν δὲ πεντακισχιλίων
ὅτε πάντες ἐν τῷ μέρει μεθέξουσιν~, etc.
viii, 89. ἀλλὰ ~τοὺς πεντακισχιλίους~ ἔργῳ καὶ μὴ ὀνόματι χρῆναι
ἀποδεικνύναι, καὶ τὴν πολιτείαν ἰσαιτέραν καθιστάναι.
viii, 92. (After the Four Hundred had already been much opposed
and humbled, and were on the point of being put down)—ἦν δὲ πρὸς
τὸν ὄχλον ἡ παράκλησις ὡς χρὴ, ὅστις ~τοὺς πεντακισχιλίους~
βούλεται ἄρχειν ἀντὶ τῶν τετρακοσίων, ἰέναι ἐπὶ τὸ ἔργον.
Ἐπεκρύπτοντο γὰρ ὅμως ἔτι ~τῶν πεντακισχιλίων~ τῷ ὀνόματι, μὴ
ἄντικρυς δῆμον ὅστις βούλεται ἄρχειν ὀνομάζειν—~φοβούμενοι μὴ
τῷ ὄντι ὦσι, καὶ πρός τινα εἰπών τίς τι δι᾽ ἀγνοίαν σφαλῇ~. Καὶ
οἱ τετρακόσιοι διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἤθελον ~τοὺς πεντακισχιλίους οὔτε
εἶναι, οὔτε μὴ ὄντας δήλους εἶναι~· τὸ μὲν καταστῆσαι μετόχους
τοσούτους, ἄντικρυς ἂν δῆμον ἡγούμενοι, ~τὸ δ᾽ αὖ ἀφανὲς φόβον ἐς
ἀλλήλους παρέξειν~.
viii, 93. λέγοντες ~τούς τε πεντακισχιλίους~ ἀποφανεῖν, καὶ
ἐκ ~τούτων ἐν μέρει~, ᾗ ἂν τοῖς πεντακισχιλίοις δοκῇ, τοὺς
τετρακοσίους ἔσεσθαι, τέως δὲ τὴν πόλιν μηδενὶ τρόπῳ διαφθείρειν,
etc.
Compare also c. 97.
[50] Compare the striking passage (Thucyd. viii, 92) cited in my
previous note.
As soon as the public assembly at Kolônus had, with such seeming
unanimity, accepted all the propositions of Peisander, they were
dismissed; and the new regiment of Four Hundred were chosen and
constituted in the form prescribed. It now only remained to install
them in the senate-house. But this could not be done without force,
since the senators were already within it; having doubtless gone
thither immediately from the assembly, where their presence, at
least the presence of the prytanes, or senators of the presiding
tribe, was essential as legal presidents. They had to deliberate
what they would do under the decree just passed, which divested them
of all authority. Nor was it impossible that they might organize
armed resistance; for which there seemed more than usual facility
at the present moment, since the occupation of Dekeleia by the
Lacedæmonians kept Athens in a condition like that of a permanent
camp, with a large proportion of the citizens day and night under
arms.[51] Against this chance the Four Hundred made provision. They
selected that hour of the day when the greater number of citizens
habitually went home, probably to their morning meal, leaving the
military station, with the arms piled and ready, under comparatively
thin watch. While the general body of hoplites left the station at
this hour, according to the usual practice, the hoplites—Andrian,
Tenian, and others—in the immediate confidence of the Four Hundred,
were directed, by private order, to hold themselves prepared and in
arms, at a little distance off; so that if any symptoms should appear
of resistance being contemplated, they might at once interfere and
forestall it. Having taken this precaution, the Four Hundred marched
in a body to the senate-house, each man with a dagger concealed under
his garment, and followed by their special body-guard of one hundred
and twenty young men from various Grecian cities, the instruments of
the assassinations ordered by Antiphon and his colleagues. In this
array they marched into the senate-house, where the senators were
assembled, and commanded them to depart; at the same time tendering
to them their pay for all the remainder of the year,—seemingly
about three months or more down to the beginning of Hecatombæon,
the month of new nominations,—during which their functions ought
to have continued. The senators were no way prepared to resist the
decree just passed under the forms of legality with an armed body now
arrived to enforce its execution. They obeyed and departed, each man
as he passed the door receiving the salary tendered to him. That they
should yield obedience to superior force, under the circumstances,
can excite neither censure nor surprise; but that they should accept,
from the hands of the conspirators, this anticipation of an unearned
salary, was a meanness which almost branded them as accomplices, and
dishonored the expiring hour of the last democratical authority.
The Four Hundred now found themselves triumphantly installed in the
senate-house; without the least resistance, either within its walls,
or even without, by any portion of the citizens.[52]
[51] See the jests of Aristophanês, about the citizens all in
armor, buying their provisions in the market-place and carrying
them home, in the Lysistrata, 560: a comedy represented about
December 412 or January 411 B.C., three months earlier than the
events here narrated.
[52] Thucyd. viii, 69, 70.
Thus perished, or seemed to perish, the democracy of Athens, after
an uninterrupted existence of nearly one hundred years since the
revolution of Kleisthenês. So incredible did it appear that the
numerous, intelligent, and constitutional citizens of Athens should
suffer their liberties to be overthrown by a band of four hundred
conspirators, while the great mass of them not only loved their
democracy, but had arms in their hands to defend it, that even their
enemy and neighbor Agis, at Dekeleia, could hardly imagine the
revolution to be a fact accomplished. We shall see presently that it
did not stand,—nor would it probably have stood, had circumstances
even been more favorable,—but the accomplishment of it at all, is an
incident too extraordinary to be passed over without some words in
explanation.
We must remark that the tremendous catastrophe and loss of blood in
Sicily had abated the energy of the Athenian character generally,
but especially had made them despair of their foreign relations; of
the possibility that they could make head against enemies, increased
in number by revolts among their own allies, and farther sustained
by Persian gold. Upon this sentiment of despair is brought to bear
the treacherous delusion of Alkibiadês, offering them the Persian
aid; that is, means of defence and success against foreign enemies,
at the price of their democracy. Reluctantly the people are brought,
but they _are_ brought, to entertain the proposition: and thus the
conspirators gain their first capital point, of familiarizing the
people with the idea of such a change of constitution. The ulterior
success of the conspiracy—when all prospect of Persian gold, or
improved foreign position, was at an end—is due to the combinations,
alike nefarious and skilful, of Antiphon, wielding and organizing
the united strength of the aristocratical classes at Athens;
strength always exceedingly great, but under ordinary circumstances
working in fractions disunited and even reciprocally hostile to each
other,—restrained by the ascendant democratical institutions,—and
reduced to corrupt what it could not overthrow. Antiphon, about to
employ this anti-popular force in one systematic scheme, and for the
accomplishment of a predetermined purpose, keeps still within the
same ostensible constitutional limits. He raises no open mutiny:
he maintains inviolate the cardinal point of Athenian political
morality, respect to the decision of the senate and political
assembly, as well as to constitutional maxims. But he knows well that
the value of these meetings, as political securities, depends upon
entire freedom of speech; and that, if that freedom be suppressed,
the assembly itself becomes a nullity, or rather an instrument of
positive imposture and mischief. Accordingly, he causes all the
popular orators to be successively assassinated, so that no man
dares to open his mouth on that side; while on the other hand, the
anti-popular speakers are all loud and confident, cheering one
another on, and seeming to represent all the feeling of the persons
present. By thus silencing each individual leader, and intimidating
every opponent from standing forward as spokesman, he extorts the
formal sanction of the assembly and the senate to measures which
the large majority of the citizens detest. That majority, however,
are bound by their own constitutional forms; and when the decision
of these, by whatever means obtained, is against them, they have
neither the inclination nor the courage to resist. In no part of the
world has this sentiment of constitutional duty, and submission to
the vote of a legal majority, been more keenly and universally felt,
than it was among the citizens of democratical Athens.[53] Antiphon
thus finds means to employ the constitutional sentiment of Athens as
a means of killing the constitution: the mere empty form, after its
vital and protective efficacy has been abstracted, remains simply as
a cheat to paralyze individual patriotism.
[53] This striking and deep-seated regard of the Athenians for
all the forms of an established constitution, makes itself felt
even by Mr. Mitford (Hist. Gr. ch. xix. sect. v, vol. iv, p. 235).
It was this cheat which rendered the Athenians indisposed to stand
forward with arms in defence of that democracy to which they were
attached. Accustomed as they were to unlimited pacific contention
within the bounds of their constitution, they were in the highest
degree averse to anything like armed intestine contention. This
is the natural effect of an established free and equal polity, to
substitute the contests of the tongue for those of the sword, and
sometimes, even to create so extreme a disinclination to the latter,
that if liberty be energetically assailed, the counter-energy
necessary for its defence may probably be found wanting. So difficult
is it for the same people to have both the qualities requisite for
making a free constitution work well in ordinary times, together
with those very different qualities requisite for upholding it
against exceptional dangers and under trying emergencies. None
but an Athenian of extraordinary ability, like Antiphon, would
have understood the art of thus making the constitutional feeling
of his countrymen subservient to the success of his conspiracy,
and of maintaining the forms of legal dealing towards assembled
and constitutional bodies, while he violated them in secret
and successive stabs directed against individuals. Political
assassination had been unknown at Athens, as far as our information
reaches, since it was employed, about fifty years before, by the
oligarchical party against Ephialtês, the coadjutor of Periklês.[54]
But this had been an individual case, and it was reserved for
Antiphon and Phrynichus to organize a band of assassins working
systematically, and taking off a series of leading victims one after
the other. As the Macedonian kings in after-times required the
surrender of the popular orators in a body, so the authors of this
conspiracy found the same enemies to deal with, and adopted another
way of getting rid of them; thus reducing the assembly into a tame
and lifeless mass, capable of being intimidated into giving its
collective sanction to measures which its large majority detested.
[54] See Plutarch, Periklês, c. 10; Diodor. xi, 77; and vol. v,
of this History chap. xlvi, p. 370.
As Grecian history has been usually written, we are instructed to
believe that the misfortunes, and the corruption, and the degradation
of the democratical states are brought upon them by the class of
demagogues, of whom Kleon, Hyperbolus, Androklês, etc., stand forth
as specimens. These men are represented as mischief-makers and
revilers, accusing without just cause, and converting innocence into
treason. Now the history of this conspiracy of the Four Hundred
presents to us the other side of the picture. It shows that the
political enemies—against whom the Athenian people were protected
by their democratical institutions, and by the demagogues as living
organs of those institutions—were not fictitious but dangerously
real. It reveals the continued existence of powerful anti-popular
combinations, ready to come together for treasonable purposes when
the moment appeared safe and tempting. It manifests the character and
morality of the leaders, to whom the direction of the anti-popular
force naturally fell. It proves that these leaders, men of uncommon
ability, required nothing more than the extinction or silence of
the demagogues, to be enabled to subvert the popular securities
and get possession of the government. We need no better proof to
teach us what was the real function and intrinsic necessity of these
demagogues in the Athenian system, taking them as a class, and apart
from the manner in which individuals among them may have performed
their duty. They formed the vital movement of all that was tutelary
and public-spirited in democracy. Aggressive in respect to official
delinquents, they were defensive in respect to the public and the
constitution. If that anti-popular force, which Antiphon found
ready-made, had not been efficient, at a much earlier moment, in
stifling the democracy, it was because there were demagogues to cry
aloud, as well as assemblies to hear and sustain them. If Antiphon’s
conspiracy was successful, it was because he knew where to aim his
blows, so as to strike down the real enemies of the oligarchy and
the real defenders of the people. I here employ the term demagogues
because it is that commonly used by those who denounce the class of
men here under review: the proper neutral phrase, laying aside odious
associations, would be to call them popular speakers, or opposition
speakers. But, by whatever name they may be called, it is impossible
rightly to conceive their position in Athens, without looking at them
in contrast and antithesis with those anti-popular forces against
which they formed the indispensable barrier, and which come forth
into such manifest and melancholy working under the organizing hands
of Antiphon and Phrynichus.
As soon as the Four Hundred found themselves formally installed
in the senate-house, they divided themselves by lot into separate
prytanies,—probably ten in number, consisting of forty members
each, like the former senate of Five Hundred, in order that the
distribution of the year to which the people were accustomed might
not be disturbed,—and then solemnized their installation by prayer
and sacrifice. They put to death some political enemies, though not
many: they farther imprisoned and banished others, and made large
changes in the administration of affairs, carrying everything with a
strictness and rigor unknown under the old constitution.[55] It seems
to have been proposed among them to pass a vote of restoration to
all persons under sentence of exile. But this was rejected by the
majority in order that Alkibiadês might not be among the number;
nor did they think it expedient, notwithstanding, to pass the law,
reserving him as a special exception.
[55] Thucyd. viii, 70. I imagine that this must be the meaning of
the words τὰ τε ἄλλα ἔνεμον κατὰ κράτος τὴν πόλιν.
They farther despatched a messenger to Agis at Dekeleia, intimating
their wish to treat for peace; which, they affirmed, he ought to be
ready to grant to them, now that “the faithless Demos” was put down.
Agis, however, not believing that the Athenian people would thus
submit to be deprived of their liberty, anticipated that intestine
dissension would certainly break out, or at least that some portion
of the Long Walls would be found unguarded, should a foreign army
appear. While therefore he declined the overtures for peace, he
at the same time sent for reinforcements out of Peloponnesus,
and marched with a considerable army, in addition to his own
garrison, up to the very walls of Athens. But he found the ramparts
carefully manned: no commotion took place within: even a sally was
made, in which some advantage was gained over him. He therefore
speedily retired, sending back his newly-arrived reinforcements to
Peloponnesus; while the Four Hundred, on renewing their advances to
him for peace, now found themselves much better received, and were
even encouraged to despatch envoys to Sparta itself.[56]
[56] Thucyd. viii, 71.
As soon as they had thus got over the first difficulties, and
placed matters on a footing which seemed to promise stability, they
despatched ten envoys to Samos. Aware beforehand of the danger
impending over them in that quarter from the known aversion of the
soldiers and seamen to anything in the nature of oligarchy, they had,
moreover, just heard, by the arrival of Chæreas and the paralus,
of the joint attack made by the Athenian and Samian oligarchs, and
of its complete failure. Had this event occurred a little earlier,
it might perhaps have deterred even some of their own number from
proceeding with the revolution at Athens, which was rendered thereby
almost sure of failure, from the first. Their ten envoys were
instructed to represent at Samos that the recent oligarchy had been
established with no views injurious to the city, but on the contrary
for the general benefit; that though the Council now installed
consisted of Four Hundred only, yet the total number of partisans
who had made the revolution, and were qualified citizens under it,
was Five Thousand; a number greater, they added, than had ever been
actually assembled in the Pnyx under the democracy, even for the most
important debates,[57] in consequence of the unavoidable absences of
numerous individuals on military service and foreign travel.
[57] Thucyd. viii, 72. This allegation, respecting the number of
citizens who attended in the Athenian democratical assemblies,
has been sometimes cited as if it carried with it the authority
of Thucydidês; which is a great mistake, duly pointed out by all
the best recent critics. It is simply the allegation of the Four
Hundred, whose testimony, as a guarantee for truth, is worth
little enough.
That _no_ assembly had ever been attended by so many as five
thousand (οὐδεπώποτε) I certainly am far from believing. It is
not improbable, however, that five thousand was an unusually
large number of citizens to attend.
Dr. Arnold, in his note, opposes the allegation in part, by
remarking that “the law required not only the presence but the
sanction of at least six thousand citizens to some particular
decrees of the assembly.” It seems to me, however, quite possible
that, in cases where this large number of votes was required,
as in the ostracism, and where there was no discussion carried
on immediately before the voting, the process of voting may
have lasted some hours, like our keeping open of a poll. So
that though more than six thousand citizens must have _voted_,
altogether, it was not necessary that all should have been
present in the same assembly.
What satisfaction might have been given, by this allusion to the
fictitious Five Thousand, or by the fallacious reference to the
numbers, real or pretended, of the past democratical assemblies,
had these envoys carried to Samos the first tidings of the Athenian
revolution, we cannot say. They were forestalled by Chæreas, the
officer of the paralus; who, though the Four Hundred tried to detain
him, made his escape and hastened to Samos to communicate the
fearful and unexpected change which had occurred at Athens. Instead
of hearing that change described under the treacherous extenuations
prescribed by Antiphon and Phrynichus, the armament first learned it
from the lips of Chæreas, who told them at once the extreme truth,
and even more than the truth. He recounted, with indignation, that
every Athenian who ventured to say a word against the Four Hundred
rulers of the city, was punished with the scourge; that even the
wives and children of persons hostile to them were outraged; that
there was a design of seizing and imprisoning the relatives of
the democrats at Samos, and putting them to death, if the latter
refused to obey orders from Athens. The simple narrative of what had
really occurred would have been quite sufficient to provoke in the
armament a sentiment of detestation against the Four Hundred. But
these additional details of Chæreas, partly untrue, filled them with
uncontrollable wrath, which they manifested by open menace against
the known partisans of the Four Hundred at Samos, as well as against
those who had taken part in the recent oligarchical conspiracy in the
island. It was not without difficulty that their hands were arrested
by the more reflecting citizens present, who remonstrated against the
madness of such disorderly proceedings when the enemy was close upon
them.
But though violence and aggressive insult were thus seasonably
checked, the sentiment of the armament was too ardent and unanimous
to be satisfied without some solemn, emphatic, and decisive
declaration against the oligarchs at Athens. A great democratical
manifestation, of the most earnest and imposing character, was
proclaimed, chiefly at the instance of Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus.
The Athenian armament, brought together in one grand assembly, took
an oath by the most stringent sanctions: to maintain their democracy;
to keep up friendship and harmony with each other; to carry on the
war against the Peloponnesians with energy; to be at enmity with the
Four Hundred at Athens, and to enter into no amicable communication
with them whatever. The whole armament swore to this compact
with enthusiasm, and even those who had before taken part in the
oligarchical movements were forced to be forward in the ceremony.[58]
What lent double force to this touching scene was, that the entire
Samian population, every male of the military age, took the oath
along with the friendly armament. Both pledged themselves to mutual
fidelity and common suffering or triumph, whatever might be the issue
of the contest. Both felt that the Peloponnesians at Milêtus, and
the Four Hundred at Athens, were alike their enemies, and that the
success of either would be their common ruin.
[58] Thucyd. viii, 75. Μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο, λαμπρῶς ἤδη ἐς δημοκρατίαν
βουλόμενοι μεταστῆσαι τὰ ἐν τῇ Σάμῳ ὅ τε Θρασύβουλος καὶ
Θράσυλλος, ὥρκωσαν πάντας τοὺς στρατιώτας τοὺς μεγίστους ὅρκους,
καὶ αὐτοὺς τοὺς ἐκ τῆς ὀλιγαρχίας μάλιστα, ἦ μὴν δημοκρατήσεσθαι
τε καὶ ὁμονοήσειν, καὶ τὸν πρὸς Πελοποννησίους πόλεμον προθύμως
διοίσειν, καὶ τοῖς τετρακοσίοις πολέμιοί τε ἔσεσθαι καὶ οὐδὲν
ἐπικηρυκεύεσθαι. Ξυνώμνυσαν δὲ καὶ Σαμίων πάντες τὸν αὐτὸν ὅρκον
οἱ ἐν τῇ ἡλικίᾳ, καὶ τὰ πράγματα πάντα καὶ τὰ ἀποβησόμενα ἐκ τῶν
κινδύνων ξυνεκοινώσαντο οἱ στρατιῶται τοῖς Σαμίοις, νομίζοντες
οὔτε ἐκείνοις ἀποστροφὴν σωτηρίας οὔτε σφίσιν εἶναι, ἀλλ᾽ ἐάν
τε οἱ τετρακόσιοι κρατήσωσιν ἐάν τε οἱ ἐκ Μιλήτου πολέμιοι,
διαφθαρήσεσθαι.
Pursuant to this resolution,—of upholding their democracy and at
the same time sustaining the war against the Peloponnesians, at all
cost or peril to themselves,—the soldiers of the armament now took
a step unparalleled in Athenian history. Feeling that they could no
longer receive orders from Athens under her present oligarchical
rulers, with whom Charmînus and others among their own leaders were
implicated, they constituted themselves into a sort of community
apart, and held an assembly as citizens to choose anew their generals
and trierarchs. Of those already in command, several were deposed as
unworthy of trust; others being elected in their places, especially
Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus. Nor was the assembly held for election
alone; it was a scene of effusive sympathy, animating eloquence, and
patriotism generous as well as resolute. The united armament felt
that _they_ were the real Athens; the guardians of her constitution,
the upholders of her remaining empire and glory, the protectors of
her citizens at home against those conspirators who had intruded
themselves wrongfully into the senate-house; the sole barrier, even
for those conspirators themselves, against the hostile Peloponnesian
fleet. “_The city has revolted from us_,” exclaimed Thrasybulus
and others in pregnant words, which embodied a whole train of
feeling.[59] “But let not this abate our courage: for they are only
the lesser force, we are the greater and the self-sufficing. We have
here the whole navy of the state, whereby we can insure to ourselves
the contributions from our dependencies just as well as if we started
from Athens. We have the hearty attachment of Samos, second in power
only to Athens herself, and serving us as a military station against
the enemy, now as in the past. We are better able to obtain supplies
for ourselves, than those in the city for themselves; for it is only
through our presence at Samos that they have hitherto kept the mouth
of Peiræus open. If they refuse to restore to us our democratical
constitution, we shall be better able to exclude them from the sea
than they to exclude us. What, indeed, does the city do now for us
to second our efforts against the enemy? Little or nothing. We have
lost nothing by their separation. They send us no pay, they leave us
to provide maintenance for ourselves; they are now out of condition
for sending us even good counsel, which is the great superiority of a
city over a camp.[60] As counsellors, we here are better than they;
for they have just committed the wrong of subverting the constitution
of our common country, while we are striving to maintain it, and
will do our best to force them into the same track. Alkibiadês,
if we insure to him a safe restoration, will cheerfully bring the
alliance of Persia to sustain us; and, even if the worst comes to
the worst, if all other hopes fail us, our powerful naval force will
always enable us to find places of refuge in abundance, with city and
territory adequate to our wants.”
[59] Thucyd. viii, 76. Καὶ παραινέσεις ἄλλας τε ἐποιοῦντο ἐν
σφίσιν αὐτοῖς ἀνιστάμενοι, καὶ ὡς οὐ δεῖ ἀθυμεῖν ὅτι ~ἡ πόλις
αὐτῶν ἀφέστηκε~· τοὺς γὰρ ἐλάσσους ~ἀπὸ σφῶν τῶν~ πλεόνων καὶ ἐς
πάντα ποριμωτέρων ~μεθεστάναι~.
[60] Thucyd. viii, 76. Βραχὺ δέ τι εἶναι καὶ οὐδενὸς ἄξιον, ᾧ
πρὸς τὸ περιγίγνεσθαι τῶν πολεμίων ἡ πόλις χρήσιμος ἦν, καὶ
οὐδὲν ἀπολωλεκέναι, οἵ γε μήτε ἀργύριον ἔτι εἶχον πέμπειν, ἀλλ᾽
αὐτοὶ ἐπορίζοντο οἱ στρατιῶται, μήτε βούλευμα χρηστὸν, οὗπερ
ἕνεκα πόλις στρατοπέδων κρατεῖ· ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τούτοις τοὺς μὲν
ἡμαρτηκέναι, τοὺς πατρίους νόμους καταλύσαντας, αὐτοὶ δὲ σώζειν
καὶ ἐκείνους πειράσεσθαι προσαναγκάζειν. Ὥστε οὐδὲ τούτους, οἵπερ
ἂν βουλεύοιέν τι χρηστὸν, παρὰ σφίσι χείρους εἶναι.
Such was the encouraging language of Thrasyllus and Thrasybulus,
which found full sympathy in the armament, and raised among them
a spirit of energetic patriotism and resolution, not unworthy of
their forefathers when refugees at Salamis under the invasion of
Xerxês. To regain their democracy and to sustain the war against the
Peloponnesians, were impulses alike ardent and blended in the same
tide of generous enthusiasm; a tide so vehement as to sweep before it
the reluctance of that minority who had before been inclined to the
oligarchical movement. But besides these two impulses, there was also
a third, tending towards the recall of Alkibiadês; a coadjutor, if in
many ways useful, yet bringing with him a spirit of selfishness and
duplicity uncongenial to the exalted sentiment now all-powerful at
Samos.[61]