Works, vol. iii. pp. 69-74), in discussing the proposition of
prosecuting the acts of the refractory colonies as criminal: “The
thing seems a great deal too big for my ideas of jurisprudence.
It should seem, to my way of conceiving such matters, that there
is a wide difference in reason and policy, between the mode of
proceeding on the irregular conduct of scattered individuals, or
even of bands of men who disturb order within the state,—and the
civil dissensions which may from time to time agitate the several
communities which compose a great empire. It looks to me to be
narrow and pedantic, to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal
justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method
of drawing up an indictment against a whole people,” etc.—“My
consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly limited to the
policy of the question.”
He begins by vindicating[419] the necessity of reconsidering the
resolution just passed, and insists on the mischief of deciding so
important a question in haste or under strong passion; he enters
a protest against the unwarrantable insinuations of corruption or
self-conceit by which Kleon had sought to silence or discredit his
opponents;[420] and then, taking up the question on the ground of
public wisdom and prudence, he proceeds to show that the rigorous
sentence decreed on the preceding day was not to be defended. That
sentence would not prevent any other among the subject-allies from
revolting, if they saw, or fancied that they saw, a fair chance of
success: but it might perhaps drive them,[421] if once embarked in
revolt, to persist even to desperation, and bury themselves under
the ruins of their city. While every means ought to be employed to
prevent them from revolting, by precautions beforehand, it was a
mistaken reckoning to try to deter them by enormity of punishment,
inflicted afterwards upon such as were reconquered. In developing
this argument, the speaker gives some remarkable views on the
theory of punishment generally, and on the small addition obtained
in the way of preventive effect even by the greatest aggravation
of the suffering inflicted upon the condemned criminal,—views
which might have passed as rare and profound even down to the last
century.[422] And he farther supports his argument by emphatically
setting forth the impolicy of confounding the Mitylenæan Demos in
the same punishment with their oligarchy: the revolt had been the
act exclusively of the latter, and the former had not only taken
no part in it, but, as soon as they obtained possession of arms,
had surrendered the city spontaneously. In all the allied cities,
it was the commons who were well-affected to Athens, and upon whom
her hold chiefly depended against the doubtful fidelity of the
oligarchies:[423] but this feeling could not possibly continue,
if it were now seen that all the Mitylenæans indiscriminately
were confounded in one common destruction. Diodotus concludes by
recommending that those Mitylenæans whom Pachês had sent to Athens as
chiefs of the revolt, should be put upon their trial separately; but
that the remaining population should be spared.[424]
[419] Thucyd. iii, 42.
[420] Thucyd. iii, 43.
[421] Thucyd. iii, 45, 46.
[422] Compare this speech of Diodotus with the views of
punishment implied by Xenophon in his Anabasis, where he is
describing the government of Cyrus the younger:—
“Nor can any man contend, that Cyrus suffered criminals and
wrong-doers to laugh at him: he punished them with the most
unmeasured severity (ἀφειδέστατα πάντων ἐτιμωρεῖτο). And you
might often see along the frequented roads men deprived of their
eyes, their hands, and their feet: so that in his government
either Greek or barbarian, if he had no criminal purpose, might
go fearlessly through and carry whatever he found convenient.”
(Anabasis, i, 9, 13.)
The severity of the punishment is, in Xenophon’s mind, the
measure both of its effects in deterring criminals, and of the
character of the ruler inflicting it.
[423] Thucyd. iii, 47. Νῦν μὲν γὰρ ὑμῖν ὁ δῆμος ἐν πάσαις ταῖς
πόλεσιν εὔνους ἐστὶ, καὶ ἢ οὐ ξυναφίσταται τοῖς ὀλίγοις, ἢ
ἐὰν βιασθῇ, ὑπάρχει τοῖς ἀποστήσασι πολέμιος εὐθὺς, καὶ τῆς
ἀντικαθισταμένης πόλεως τὸ πλῆθος ξύμμαχον ἔχοντες ἐς πόλεμον
ἐπέρχεσθε.
[424] Thucyd. iii, 48.
This speech is that of a man who feels that he has the reigning
and avowed sentiment of the audience against him, and that he must
therefore win his way by appeals to their reason. The same appeals,
however, might have been made, and perhaps had been made, during the
preceding discussion, without success; but Diodotus knew that the
reigning sentiment, though still ostensibly predominant, had been
silently undermined during the last few hours, and that the reaction
towards pity and moderation, which had been growing up under it,
would work in favor of his arguments, though he might disclaim all
intention of invoking its aid. After several other discourses, both
for and against,—the assembly came to a vote, and the proposition of
Diodotus was adopted; but adopted by so small a majority, that the
decision seemed at first doubtful.[425]
[425] Thucyd. iii, 49. ἐγένοντο ἐν τῇ χειροτονίᾳ ἀγχώμαλοι,
ἐκράτησε δ᾽ ἡ τοῦ Διοδότου.
But the trireme carrying the first vote had started the day before,
and was already twenty-four hours on its way to Mitylênê. A second
trireme was immediately put to sea, bearing the new decree; yet
nothing short of superhuman exertions could enable it to reach the
condemned city before the terrific sentence now on its way might be
actually in course of execution. The Mitylenæan envoys stored the
vessel well with provisions, promising large rewards to the crew
if they arrived in time; and an intensity of effort was manifested,
without parallel in the history of Athenian seamanship,—the oar
being never once relaxed between Athens and Mitylênê, and the rowers
merely taking turns for short intervals of rest, with refreshment
of barley-meal steeped with wine and oil swallowed on their seats.
Luckily, there was no unfavorable wind to retard them: but the object
would have been defeated, if it had not happened that the crew of the
first trireme were as slow and averse in the transmission of their
rigorous mandate, as those of the second were eager for the delivery
of the reprieve in time. And, after all, it came no more than just
in time; the first trireme had arrived, the order for execution
was actually in the hands of Pachês, and his measures were already
preparing. So near was the Mitylenæan population to this wholesale
destruction:[426] so near was Athens to the actual perpetration of
an enormity which would have raised against her throughout Greece a
sentiment of exasperation more deadly than that which she afterwards
incurred even from the proceedings at Melos, Skiônê, and elsewhere.
Had the execution been realized, the person who would have suffered
most by it, and most deservedly, would have been the proposer,
Kleon. For if the reaction in Athenian sentiment was so immediate
and sensible after the mere passing of the sentence, far more
violent would it have been when they learned that the deed had been
irrevocably done, and when all its painful details were presented to
their imaginations: and Kleon would have been held responsible as the
author of that which had so disgraced them in their own eyes. As the
case turned out, he was fortunate enough to escape this danger; and
his proposition, to put to death those Mitylenæans whom Pachês had
sent home as the active revolting party, was afterwards adopted and
executed. It doubtless appeared so moderate after the previous decree
passed but rescinded, as to be adopted with little resistance, and to
provoke no after-repentance: yet the men so slain were rather more
than one thousand in number.[427]
[426] Thucyd. iii, 49. παρὰ τοσοῦτον μὲν ἡ Μυτιλήνη ἦλθε κινδύνου.
[427] Thucyd. iii, 50.
Besides this sentence of execution, the Athenians razed the
fortifications of Mitylênê, and took possession of all her ships of
war. In lieu of tribute, they farther established a new permanent
distribution of the land of the island; all except Methymna, which
had remained faithful to them. They distributed it into three
thousand lots, of which three hundred were reserved for consecration
to the gods, and the remainder assigned to Athenian kleruchs, or
proprietary settlers, chosen by lot among the citizens; the Lesbian
proprietors still remaining on the land as cultivating tenants, and
paying to the Athenian kleruch an annual rent of two minæ, near four
pounds sterling, for each lot. We should have been glad to learn more
about this new land-settlement than the few words of the historian
suffice to explain. It would seem that two thousand seven hundred
Athenian citizens, with their families must have gone to reside,
for the time at least, in Lesbos, as kleruchs; that is, without
abnegating their rights as Athenian citizens, and without being
exonerated either from Athenian taxation, or from personal military
service. But it seems certain that these men did not continue long
to reside in Lesbos: and we may even suspect that the kleruchic
allotment of the island must have been subsequently abrogated. There
was a strip on the opposite mainland of Asia, which had hitherto
belonged to Mitylênê; this was now separated from that town, and
henceforward enrolled among the tributary subjects of Athens.[428]
[428] Thucyd. iii, 50; iv, 52. About the Lesbian kleruchs,
see Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, B. iii, c. 18; Wachsmuth,
Hell. Alt. i. 2, p. 36. These kleruchs must originally have
gone thither as a garrison, as M. Boeckh remarks; and may
probably have come back, either all or a part, when needed for
military service at home, and when it was ascertained that the
island might be kept without them. Still, however, there is
much which is puzzling in this arrangement. It seems remarkable
that the Athenians, at a time when their accumulated treasure
had been exhausted, and when they were beginning to pay direct
contributions from their private property, should sacrifice
five thousand four hundred minæ (ninety talents) annual revenue
capable of being appropriated by the state, unless that sum were
required to maintain the kleruchs as resident garrison for the
maintenance of Lesbos. And as it turned out afterwards that their
residence was not necessary, we may doubt whether the state did
not convert the kleruchic grants into a public tribute, wholly or
partially.
We may farther remark, that if the kleruch be supposed a citizen
resident at Athens, but receiving rent from his lot of land in
some other territory,—the analogy between him and the Roman
colonist fails. The Roman colonists, though retaining their
privileges as citizens, were sent out to reside on their grants
of land, and to constitute a sort of resident garrison over
the prior inhabitants, who had been despoiled of a portion of
territory to make room for them.
See, on this subject and analogy, the excellent Dissertation of
Madwig: De jure et conditione coloniarum Populi Romani quæstio
historica,—Madwig, Opuscul. Copenhag. 1834. Diss. viii, p. 246.
M. Boeckh and Dr. Arnold contend justly that at the time of the
expedition of Athens against Syracuse and afterwards (Thucyd.
vii, 57; viii, 23), there could have been but few, if any,
Athenian kleruchs resident in Lesbos. We might even push this
argument farther, and apply the same inference to an earlier
period, the eighth year of the war (Thucyd. iv, 75), when the
Mitylenæan exiles were so active in their aggressions upon
Antandrus and the other towns, originally Mitylenæan possessions,
on the opposite mainland. There was no force near at hand on the
part of Athens to deal with these exiles except the ἀργυρόλογαι
νῆες,—had there been kleruchs at Mitylênê, they would probably
have been able to defeat the exiles in their first attempts, and
would certainly have been among the most important forces to put
them down afterwards,—whereas Thucydidês makes no allusion to
them.
Farther, the oration of Antipho (De Cæde Herod. c. 13) makes
no allusion to Athenian kleruchs, either as resident in the
island, or even as absentees receiving the annual rent mentioned
by Thucydidês. The Mitylenæan citizen, father of the speaker
of that oration, had been one of those implicated—as he says,
unwillingly—in the past revolt of the city against Athens: since
the deplorable termination of that revolt he had continued
possessor of his Lesbian property, and continued also to
discharge his obligations as well (choregic obligations—χορηγίας)
towards Mitylênê as (his obligations of pecuniary payment—τέλη)
towards Athens. If the arrangement mentioned by Thucydidês had
been persisted in, this Mitylenæan proprietor would have paid
nothing towards the city of Athens, but merely a rent of two
minæ to some Athenian kleruch, or citizen; which can hardly be
reconciled with the words of the speaker as we find them in
Antipho.
To the misfortunes of Mitylênê belongs, as a suitable appendix, the
fate of Pachês, the Athenian commander, whose perfidy at Notium has
been recently recounted. It appears, that having contracted a passion
for two beautiful free women at Mitylênê, Hellânis and Lamaxis, he
slew their husbands, and got possession of them by force. Possibly,
they may have had private friends at Athens, which must of course
have been the case with many Mitylenæan families: at all events they
repaired thither, bent on obtaining redress for this outrage, and
brought their complaint against Pachês before the Athenian dikastery,
in that trial of accountability to which every officer was liable
at the close of his command. So profound was the sentiment which
their case excited, in this open and numerous assembly of Athenian
citizens, that the guilty commander, not waiting for sentence, slew
himself with his sword in open court.[429]
[429] See the Epigram of Agathias, 57, p. 377. Agathias, ed. Bonn.
Ἑλλανὶς τριμάκαιρα, καὶ ἁ χαρίεσσα Λάμαξις,
ἤστην μὲν πάτρας φέγγεα Λεσβιάδος.
Ὅκκα δ᾽ Ἀθηναίῃσι σὺν ὅλκασιν ἔνθαδε κέλσας
τὰν Μιτυληναίαν γᾶν ἀλάπαξε Πάχης,
Τᾶν κουρᾶν αδίκως ἡράσσατο, τὼς δὲ συνεύνως
ἔκτανεν, ὡς τήνας τῇδε βιησόμενος.
Ταὶ δὲ κατ᾽ Αἰγαίοιο ῥόου πλατὺ λαῖτμα φερέσθην,
καὶ ποτὶ τὰν κραναὰν Μοψοπίαν δραμέτην,
Δάμῳ δ᾽ ἀγγελέτην ἀλιτήμονος ἔργα Πάχητος
μέσφα μιν εἰς ὀλοὴν κῆρα συνηλασάτην.
Τοῖα μὲν, ὦ κούρα, πεπονήκατον· ἄψ δ᾽ ἐπὶ πάτραν
ἥκετον, ἐν δ᾽ αὐτᾷ κεῖσθον ἀποφθιμένα.
Εὖ δὲ πόνων ἀπόνασθον, ἐπεὶ ποτὶ σᾶμα συνεύνων
εὕδετον, ἐς κλεινᾶς μνᾶμα σαοφροσύνας·
Ὑμνεῦσιν δ᾽ ἔτι πάντες ὁμόφρονας ἡρωΐνας,
πάτρας καὶ ποσίων πήματα τισαμένας.
Plutarch (Nikias, 6: compare Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 26) states
the fact of Pachês having slain himself before the dikastery
on occasion of his trial of accountability. Πάχητα τὸν ἕλοντα
Λέσβον, ὃς, εὐθύνας δίδους τῆς στρατηγίας, ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ δικαστηρίῳ
σπασάμενος ξίφος ἀνεῖλεν ἑαυτὸν, etc.
The statement in Plutarch, and that in the Epigram, hang together
so perfectly well, that each lends authority to the other, and
I think there is good reason for crediting the Epigram. The
suicide of Pachês, and that too before the dikasts, implies
circumstances very different from those usually brought in
accusation against a general on trial: it implies an intensity
of anger in the numerous dikasts greater than that which acts
of peculation would be likely to raise, and such as to strike a
guilty man with insupportable remorse and humiliation. The story
of Lamaxis and Hellânis would be just of a nature to produce
this vehement emotion among the Athenian dikasts. Moreover, the
words of the Epigram,—μέσφα μιν εἰς ὀλοὴν κῆρα συνηλασάτην,—are
precisely applicable to a self-inflicted death. It would seem by
the Epigram, moreover, that, even in the time of Agathias (A.D.
550—the reign of Justinian), there must have been preserved at
Mitylênê a sepulchral monument commemorating this incident.
Schneider (ad Aristotel. Politic. v, 3, 2) erroneously identifies
this story with that of Doxander and the two ἐπίκληροι whom he
wished to obtain in marriage for his two sons.
The surrender of Platæa to the Lacedæmonians took place not long
after that of Mitylênê to the Athenians,—somewhat later in the same
summer. Though the escape of one-half of the garrison had made the
provisions last longer for the rest, still they had now come to be
exhausted, and the remaining defenders were enfeebled and on the
point of perishing by starvation. The Lacedæmonian commander of the
blockading force, knowing their defenceless condition, could easily
have taken the town by storm, had he not been forbidden by express
orders from Sparta. For the Spartan government, calculating that
peace might one day be concluded with Athens on terms of mutual
cession of places acquired by war, wished to acquire Platæa, not by
force but by capitulation and voluntary surrender, which would serve
as an excuse for not giving it up: though such a distinction, between
capture by force and by capitulation, not admissible in modern
diplomacy, was afterwards found to tell against the Lacedæmonians
quite as much as in their favor.[430] Acting upon these orders, the
Lacedæmonian commander sent in a herald, summoning the Platæans to
surrender voluntarily, and submit themselves to the Lacedæmonians
as judges,—with a stipulation “that the wrong-doers[431] should
be punished, but that none should be punished unjustly.” To the
besieged, in their state of hopeless starvation, all terms were
nearly alike, and they accordingly surrendered the city. After a
few days’ interval, during which they received nourishment from the
blockading army, five persons arrived from Sparta to sit in judgment
upon their fate,—one, Aristomenidas, a Herakleid of the regal
family.[432]
[430] Thucyd. v, 17.
[431] Thucyd. iii, 52. προσπέμπει δ᾽ αὐτοῖς κήρυκα λέγοντα, εἰ
βούλονται παραδοῦναι τὴν πόλιν ~ἑκόντες~ τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις,
καὶ δικασταῖς ἐκείνοις χρήσασθαι, τούς τε ἀδίκους κολάζειν, παρὰ
δίκην δὲ οὐδένα.
[432] Pausan. iii, 9, 1.
The five Spartans having taken their seat as judges, doubtless
in full presence of the blockading army, and especially with the
Thebans, the great enemies of Platæa, by their side,—the prisoners
taken, two hundred Platæans and twenty-five Athenians, were brought
up for trial, or sentence. No accusation was preferred against
them by any one: but the simple question was put to them by the
judges: “Have you, during the present war, rendered any service to
the Lacedæmonians or to their allies?” The Platæans were confounded
at a question alike unexpected and preposterous: it admitted but
of one answer,—but before returning any categorical answer at all,
they entreated permission to plead their cause at length. In spite
of the opposition of the Thebans,[433] their request was granted:
and Astymachus and Lakon, the latter proxenus of Sparta at Platæa,
were appointed to speak on behalf of the body. Possibly, both these
delegates may have spoken: if so, Thucydidês has blended the two
speeches into one.
[433] Thucyd. iii, 60. ἐπειδὴ καὶ ἐκείνοις ~παρὰ γνώμην τὴν
αὑτῶν~ μακρότερος λόγος ἐδόθη τῆς πρὸς τὸ ἐρώτημα ἀποκρίσεως.
αὑτῶν here means _the Thebans_.
A more desperate position cannot be imagined, for the interrogatory
was expressly so framed as to exclude allusion to any facts preceding
the Peloponnesian war,—but the speakers, though fully conscious
how slight was their chance of success, disregarded the limits of
the question itself, and while upholding with unshaken courage the
dignity of their little city, neglected no topic which could touch
the sympathies of their judges. After remonstrating against the
mere mockery of trial and judgment to which they were submitted,
they appealed to the Hellenic sympathies, and lofty reputation for
commanding virtue, of the Lacedæmonians,—they adverted to the first
alliance of Platæa with Athens, concluded at the recommendation of
the Lacedæmonians themselves, who had then declined, though formally
solicited, to undertake the protection of the town against Theban
oppression. They next turned to the Persian war, wherein Platæan
patriotism towards Greece was not less conspicuous than Theban
treason,[434]—to the victory gained over the Persians on their soil,
whereby it had become hallowed under the promises of Pausanias, and
by solemn appeals to the local gods. From the Persian war, they
passed on to the flagitious attack made by the Thebans on Platæa, in
the midst of the truce,—nor did they omit to remind the judges of an
obligation personal to Sparta,—the aid which they had rendered, along
with the Athenians, to Sparta, when pressed by the revolt of the
Helots at Ithôme. This speech is as touching as any which we find in
Thucydidês, and the skill of it consists in the frequency with which
the hearers are brought back, time after time, and by well-managed
transitions, to these same topics.[435] And such was the impression
which it seemed to make on the five Lacedæmonian judges, that the
Thebans near at hand found themselves under the necessity of making
a reply to it: although we see plainly that the whole scheme of
proceeding—the formal and insulting question, as well as the sentence
destined to follow upon answer given—had been settled beforehand
between them and the Lacedæmonians.
[434] See this point emphatically set forth in Orat. xiv, called
Λόγος Πλαταϊκὸς, of Isokratês, p. 308, sect. 62.
The whole of that oration is interesting to be read in
illustration of the renewed sufferings of the Platæans near fifty
years after this capture.
[435] Thucyd. iii, 54-59. Dionysius of Halikarnassus bestows
especial commendation on the speech of the Platæan orator (De
Thucyd. Hist. Judic. p. 921). Concurring with him as to its
merits, I do not concur in the opinion which he expresses that
it is less artistically put together than those other harangues
which he considers inferior.
Mr. Mitford doubts whether these two orations are to be taken
as approximating to anything really delivered on the occasion.
But it seems to me that the means possessed by Thucydidês for
informing himself of what was actually said at this scene before
the captured Platæa must have been considerable and satisfactory:
I therefore place full confidence in them, as I do in most of the
other harangues in his work, so far as _the substance_ goes.
The Theban speakers contended that the Platæans had deserved,
and brought upon themselves by their own fault, the enmity of
Thebes,—that they had stood forward earnestly against the Persians,
only because Athens had done so too, and that all the merit, whatever
it might be, which they had thereby acquired, was counterbalanced
and cancelled by their having allied themselves with Athens
afterwards for the oppression and enslavement of the Æginetans, and
of other Greeks equally conspicuous for zeal against Xerxes, and
equally entitled to protection under the promises of Pausanias. The
Thebans went on to vindicate their nocturnal surprise of Platæa,
by maintaining that they had been invited by the most respectable
citizens of the town,[436] who were anxious only to bring back Platæa
from its alliance with a stranger to its natural Bœotian home,—and
that they had abstained from anything like injurious treatment of the
inhabitants, until constrained to use force in their own defence.
They then reproached the Platæans, in their turn, with that breach of
faith whereby ultimately the Theban prisoners in the town had been
put to death. And while they excused their alliance with Xerxes, at
the time of the Persian invasion, by affirming that Thebes was then
under a dishonest party-oligarchy, who took this side for their own
factious purposes, and carried the people with them by force,—they at
the same time charged the Platæans with permanent treason against the
Bœotian customs and brotherhood.[437] All this was farther enforced
by setting forth the claims of Thebes to the gratitude of Lacedæmon,
both for having brought Bœotia into the Lacedæmonian alliance, at the
time of the battle of Korôneia, and for having furnished so large a
portion of the common force in the war then going on.[438]
[436] Thucyd. iii, 65.
[437] Thucyd. iii, 66. τὰ πάντων Βοιωτῶν πάτρια—iii, 62. ἔξω τῶν
ἄλλων Βοιωτῶν παραβαίνοντες τὰ πάτρια.
[438] Thucyd. iii, 61-68. It is probable that the slaughter of
the Theban prisoners taken in the town of Platæa was committed
by the Platæans in breach of a convention concluded with the
Thebans: and on this point, therefore, the Thebans had really
ground to complain. Respecting this convention, however, there
were two conflicting stories, between which Thucydidês does not
decide: see Thucyd. ii, 3, 4, and this History, above, chap.
xlviii.
The discourse of the Thebans, inspired by bitter, and as yet
unsatisfied hatred against Platæa, proved effectual: or rather it was
superfluous,—the minds of the Lacedæmonians having before been made
up. After the proposition twice made by Archidamus to the Platæans,
inviting them to remain neutral, and even offering to guarantee
their neutrality,—after the solemn apologetic protest tendered by
him upon their refusal, to the gods, before he began the siege,—the
Lacedæmonians conceived themselves exonerated from all obligation to
respect the sanctity of the place;[439] looking upon the inhabitants
as having voluntarily renounced their inviolability and sealed their
own ruin. Hence the importance attached to that protest, and the
emphatic detail with which it is set forth in Thucydidês. The five
judges, as their only reply to the two harangues, again called the
Platæans before them, and repeated to every one of them individually,
the same question which had before been put: each one of them, as he
successively replied in the negative,[440] was taken away and killed,
together with the twenty-five Athenian prisoners. The women captured
were sold as slaves: and the town and territory of Platæa were
handed over to the Thebans, who at first established in them a few
oligarchical Platæan exiles, together with some Megarian exiles,—but
after a few months recalled this step, and blotted out Platæa,[441]
as a separate town and territory, from the muster-roll of Hellas.
They pulled down all the private buildings and employed the materials
to build a vast barrack all round the Heræum, or temple of Hêrê, two
hundred feet in every direction, with apartments of two stories above
and below; partly as accommodation for visitors to the temple, partly
as an abode for the tenant-farmers or graziers who were to occupy the
land. A new temple of one hundred feet in length, was also built in
honor of Hêrê, and ornamented with couches, prepared from the brass
and iron furniture found in the private houses of the Platæans.[442]
The Platæan territory was let out for ten years, as public property
belonging to Thebes, and was hired by private Theban cultivators.
[439] Thucyd. iii, 68; ii, 74. To construe the former of these
passages (iii, 68) as it now stands, is very difficult, if not
impossible; we can only pretend to give what seems to be its
substantial meaning.
[440] Diodorus (xii, 56) in his meagre abridgment of the siege
and fate of Platæa, somewhat amplifies the brevity and simplicity
of the question as given by Thucydidês.
[441] Thucyd. iii, 57. ὑμᾶς δὲ (you Spartans) καὶ ἐκ παντὸς τοῦ
Ἑλληνικοῦ πανοικησίᾳ διὰ Θηβαίους (Πλάταιαν) ~ἐξαλεῖψαι~.
[442] Thucyd. iii, 69.
Such was the melancholy fate of Platæa, after sustaining a blockade
of about two years.[443] Its identity and local traditions seemed
thus extinguished, and the sacrifices, in honor of the deceased
victors who had fought under Pausanias, suspended,—which the Platæan
speakers had urged upon the Lacedæmonians as an impiety not to be
tolerated,[444] and which perhaps the latter would hardly have
consented to under any other circumstances except from an anxious
desire of conciliating the Thebans in their prominent antipathy.
It is in this way that Thucydidês explains the conduct of Sparta,
which he pronounces to have been rigorous in the extreme.[445] And
in truth it was more rigorous, considering only the principle of
the case, and apart from the number of victims, than even the first
unexecuted sentence of Athens against the Mitylenæans: for neither
Sparta, nor even Thebes, had any fair pretence for considering Platæa
as a revolted town, whereas Mitylênê was a city which had revolted
under circumstances peculiarly offensive to Athens. Moreover, Sparta
promised trial and justice to the Platæans on their surrender: Pachês
promised nothing to the Mitylenæans, except that their fate should
be reserved for the decision of the Athenian people. This little
city—interesting from its Hellenic patriotism, its grateful and
tenacious attachments, and its unmerited suffering—now existed only
in the persons of its citizens harbored at Athens: we shall find it
hereafter restored, destroyed again, and finally again restored:
so checkered was the fate of a little Grecian state swept away by
the contending politics of the greater neighbors. The slaughter of
the twenty-five Athenian prisoners, like that of Salæthus by the
Athenians, was not beyond the rigor admitted and tolerated, though
not always practised, on both sides, towards prisoners of war.
[443] Demosthenês—or the Pseudo-Demosthenês—in the oration
against Neæra (p. 1380, c. 25), says that the blockade of Platæa
was continued for ten years before it surrendered,—ἐπολιόρκουν
αὐτοὺς διπλῷ τείχει περιτειχίσαντες δέκα ἔτη. That the real
duration of the blockade was only _two_ years, is most certain:
accordingly, several eminent critics—Palmerius, Wasse, Duker,
Taylor, Auger, etc., all with one accord confidently enjoin us
to correct the text of Demosthenês from δέκα to δύο. “Repone
_fidenter_ δύο,” says Duker.
I have before protested against corrections of the text of
ancient authors grounded upon the reason which all these
critics think so obvious and so convincing; and I must again
renew the protest here. It shows how little the principles of
historical evidence have been reflected upon, when critics can
thus concur in forcing dissentient witnesses into harmony, and
in substituting a true statement of their own in place of an
erroneous statement which one of these witnesses gives them. And
in the present instance, the principle adopted by these critics
is the less defensible, because the Pseudo-Demosthenês introduces
a great many other errors and inaccuracies respecting Platæa,
besides his mistake about the duration of the siege. The ten
years’ siege of Troy was constantly present to the imaginations
of these literary Greeks.
[444] Thucyd. iii, 59.
[445] Thucyd. iii, 69. σχεδὸν δέ τι καὶ τὸ ξύμπαν περὶ Πλαταιῶν
οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι οὕτως ἀποτετραμμένοι ἐγένοντο Θηβαίων ἕνεκα,
νομίζοντες ἐς τὸν πόλεμον αὐτοὺς ἄρτι τότε καθιστάμενον ὠφελίμους
εἶναι.
We have now gone through the circumstances, painfully illustrating
the manners of the age, which followed on the surrender of Mitylênê
and Platæa. We next pass to the west of Greece,—the island of
Korkyra,—where we shall find scenes not less bloody, and even more
revolting.
It has been already mentioned,[446] that in the naval combats
between the Corinthians and Korkyræans during the year before the
Peloponnesian war, the former had captured two hundred and fifty
Korkyræan prisoners, men of the first rank and consequence in
the island. Instead of following the impulse of blind hatred in
slaughtering their prisoners, the Corinthians displayed, if not
greater humanity, at least a more long-sighted calculation: they
had treated the prisoners well, and made every effort to gain them
over, with a view of employing them on the first opportunity to
effect a revolution in the island,—to bring it into alliance with
Corinth,[447] and disconnect it from Athens. Such an opportunity
appears first to have occurred during the winter or spring of the
present year, while both Mitylênê and Platæa were under blockade;
probably about the time when Alkidas departed for Ionia, and when
it was hoped that not only Mitylênê would be relieved, but the
neighboring dependencies of Athens excited to revolt, and her whole
attention thus occupied in that quarter. Accordingly, the Korkyræan
prisoners were then sent home from Corinth, nominally under a heavy
ransom of eight hundred talents, for which those Korkyræan citizens
who acted as proxeni to Corinth made themselves responsible:[448] the
proxeni, lending themselves thus to the deception, were doubtless
participant in the entire design.
[446] See above, chap. xlvii.
[447] Thucyd. i, 55.
[448] Thucyd. iii, 70: compare Diodor. xii, 57.
But it was soon seen in what form the ransom was really to be paid.
The new-comers, probably at first heartily welcomed, after so long
a detention, employed all their influence, combined with the most
active personal canvass, to bring about a complete rupture of all
alliance with Athens. Intimation being sent to Athens of what was
going on, an Athenian trireme arrived with envoys to try and defeat
these manœuvres; while a Corinthian trireme also brought envoys from
Corinth to aid the views of the opposite party. The mere presence
of Corinthian envoys indicated a change in the political feeling of
the island: but still more conspicuous did this change become, when
a formal public assembly, after hearing both envoys, decided,—that
Korkyra would maintain her alliance with Athens according to the
limited terms of simple mutual defence originally stipulated;[449]
but would at the same time be in relations of friendship with the
Peloponnesians, as she had been before the Epidamnian quarrel. But
the alliance between Athens and Korkyra had since become practically
more intimate, and the Korkyræan fleet had aided the Athenians in
the invasion of Peloponnesus:[450] accordingly, the resolution, now
adopted, abandoned the present to go back to the past,—and to a past
which could not be restored.
[449] Thucyd. i, 44.
[450] Thucyd. ii, 25.
Looking to the war then raging between Athens and the Peloponnesians,
such a declaration was self-contradictory: nor, indeed, did the
oligarchical party intend it as anything else than a step to a more
complete revolution, both foreign and domestic. They followed it up
by a political prosecution against Peithias, the citizen of greatest
personal influence among the people, who acted by his own choice as
proxenus to the Athenians. They accused him of practising to bring
Korkyra into slavery to Athens. What were the judicial institutions
of the island, under which he was tried, we do not know: but he was
acquitted of the charge; and he then revenged himself by accusing in
his turn five of the richest among his oligarchical prosecutors, of
the crime of sacrilege,—as having violated the sanctity of the sacred
grove of Zeus and Alkinous, by causing stakes, for their vine-props,
to be cut in it.[451] This was an act distinctly forbidden by law,
under penalty of a stater or four drachms for every stake so cut:
but it is no uncommon phenomenon, even in societies politically
better organized than Korkyra, to find laws existing and unrepealed,
yet habitually violated, sometimes even by every one, but still
oftener by men of wealth and power, whom most people would be afraid
to prosecute: moreover, in this case, no individual was injured by
the act, and any one who came forward to prosecute would incur the
odium of an informer,—which probably Peithias might not have chosen
to brave under ordinary circumstances, though he thought himself
justified in adopting this mode of retaliation against those who
had prosecuted him. The language of Thucydidês implies that the
fact was not denied: nor is there any difficulty in conceiving that
these rich men may have habitually resorted to the sacred property
for vine-stakes. On being found guilty and condemned, they cast
themselves as suppliants at the temples, and entreated the indulgence
of being allowed to pay the fine by instalments: but Peithias, then
a member of the (annual) senate, to whom the petition was referred,
opposed it, and caused its rejection, leaving the law to take its
course. It was moreover understood, that he was about to avail
himself of his character of senator,—and of his increased favor,
probably arising from the recent judicial acquittal,—to propose in
the public assembly a reversal of the resolution recently passed,
and a new resolution to recognize only the same friends and the same
enemies as Athens.
[451] Thucyd. iii, 70. φάσκων τέμνειν χάρακας ἐκ τοῦ τε Διὸς
τεμένους καὶ τοῦ Ἀλκίνου· ζημία δὲ καθ᾽ ἑκάστην χάρακα ἐπέκειτο
στατήρ.
The present tense τέμνειν seems to indicate that they were
going on habitually making use of the trees in the grove for
this purpose. Probably it is this cutting and fixing of stakes
to support the vines, which is meant by the word χαρακισμὸς in
Pherekratês. Pers. ap. Athenæum, vi, p. 269.
The Oration of Lysias (Or. vii), against Nikomachus, ὑπὲρ τοῦ
σηκοῦ ἀπολογία, will illustrate this charge made by Peithias at
Korkyra. There were certain ancient olive-trees near Athens,
consecrated and protected by law, so that the proprietors of
the ground on which they stood were forbidden to grub them up,
or to dig so near as to injure the roots. The speaker in that
oration defends himself against a charge of having grubbed up one
of these and sold the wood. It appears that there were public
visitors whose duty it was to watch over these old trees: see the
note of Markland on that oration, p. 270.
Pressed by the ruinous fine upon the five persons condemned,
as well as by the fear that Peithias might carry his point and
thus completely defeat their project of Corinthian alliance, the
oligarchical party resolved to carry their point by violence
and murder. They collected a party armed with daggers, burst
suddenly into the senate-house during full sitting, and there slew
Peithias with sixty other persons, partly senators, partly private
individuals: some others of his friends escaped the same fate by
getting aboard the Attic trireme which had brought the envoys, and
which was still in the harbor, but now departed forthwith to Athens.
These assassins, under the fresh terror arising from their recent
act, convoked an assembly, affirmed that what they had done was
unavoidable to guard Korkyra against being made the slave of Athens,
and proposed a resolution of full neutrality, both towards Athens
and towards the Peloponnesians,—to receive no visit from either of
the belligerents, except of a pacific character, and with one single
ship at a time. And this resolution the assembly was constrained
to pass,—it probably was not very numerous, and the oligarchical
partisans were at hand in arms.[452] At the same time they sent
envoys to Athens, to communicate the recent events with such coloring
as suited their views, and to dissuade the fugitive partisans of
Peithias from provoking any armed Athenian intervention, such as
might occasion a counter-revolution in the island.[453] With some of
the fugitives, representations of this sort, or perhaps the fear of
compromising their own families, left behind, prevailed: but most
of them, and the Athenians along with them, appreciated better both
what had been done, and what was likely to follow. The oligarchical
envoys, together with such of the fugitives as had been induced to
adopt their views, were seized by the Athenians as conspirators,
and placed in detention at Ægina; while a fleet of sixty Athenian
triremes, under Eurymedon, was immediately fitted out to sail
for Korkyra,—for which there was the greater necessity, as the
Lacedæmonian fleet, under Alkidas, lately mustered at Kyllênê after
its return from Ionia, was understood to be on the point of sailing
thither.[454]
[452] Thucyd. iii, 71. ὡς δὲ εἶπον, καὶ ~ἐπικυρῶσαι ἠνάγκασαν τὴν
γνώμην~.
[453] Thucyd. iii, 71. καὶ τοὺς ἐκεῖ καταπεφευγότας πείσοντας
μηδὲν ἀνεπιτήδειον πράσσειν, ὅπως μή τις ἐπιστροφὴ γένηται.
[454] Thucyd. iii, 80.
But the oligarchical leaders at Korkyra knew better than to rely
on the chances of this mission to Athens, and proceeded in the
execution of their conspiracy with that rapidity which was best
calculated to insure its success. On the arrival of a Corinthian
trireme, which brought ambassadors from Sparta, and probably also
brought news that the fleet of Alkidas would shortly appear,—they
organized their force, and attacked the people and the democratical
authorities. The Korkyræan Demos were at first vanquished and
dispersed; but during the night they collected together and fortified
themselves in the upper parts of the town near the acropolis, and
from thence down to the Hyllaic harbor, one of the two harbors which
the town possessed; while the other harbor and the chief arsenal,
facing the mainland of Epirus, was held by the oligarchical party,
together with the market-place near to it, in and around which the
wealthier Korkyræans chiefly resided. In this divided state the
town remained throughout the ensuing day, during which the Demos
sent emissaries round the territory soliciting aid from the working
slaves, and promising to them emancipation as a reward; while the
oligarchy also hired and procured eight hundred Epirotic mercenaries
from the mainland. Reinforced by the slaves, who flocked in at the
call received, the Demos renewed the struggle on the morrow, more
furiously than before. Both in position and numbers they had the
advantage over the oligarchy, and the intense resolution with which
they fought communicated itself even to the women, who, braving
danger and tumult, took active part in the combat, especially by
flinging tiles from the housetops. Towards the afternoon, the people
became decidedly victorious, and were even on the point of carrying
by assault the lower town, together with the neighboring arsenal,
both held by the oligarchy,—nor had the latter any other chance of
safety except the desperate resource of setting fire to that part of
the town, with the market-place, houses, and buildings all around it,
their own among the rest. This proceeding drove back the assailants,
but destroyed much property belonging to merchants in the warehouses,
together with a large part of the town: indeed, had the wind been
favorable the entire town would have been consumed. The people being
thus victorious, the Corinthian trireme, together with most of the
Epirotic mercenaries, thought it safer to leave the island; while the
victors were still farther strengthened on the ensuing morning by the
arrival of the Athenian admiral Nikostratus, with twelve triremes
from Naupaktus,[455] and five hundred Messenian hoplites.
[455] Thucyd. iii, 74, 75.
Nikostratus did his best to allay the furious excitement prevailing,
and to persuade the people to use their victory with moderation.
Under his auspices, a convention of amnesty and peace was concluded
between the contending parties, save only ten proclaimed individuals
of the most violent oligarchs, who were to be tried as ringleaders:
these men of course soon disappeared, so that there would have been
no trial at all, which seems to have been what Nikostratus desired.
At the same time an alliance offensive and defensive was established
between Korkyra and Athens, and the Athenian admiral was then on
the point of departing, when the Korkyræan leaders entreated him to
leave with them, for greater safety, five ships out of his little
fleet of twelve,—offering him five of their own triremes instead.
Notwithstanding the peril of this proposition to himself, Nikostratus
acceded to it, and the Korkyræans, preparing the five ships to be
sent along with him, began to enroll among the crews the names of
their principal enemies. To the latter this presented the appearance
of sending them to Athens, which they accounted a sentence of death.
Under this impression they took refuge as suppliants in the temple
of the Dioskuri, where Nikostratus went to visit them and tried to
reassure them by the promise that nothing was intended against their
personal safety. But he found it impossible to satisfy them, and as
they persisted in refusing to serve, the Korkyræan Demos began to
suspect treachery. They took arms again, searched the houses of the
recusants for arms, and were bent on putting some of them to death,
if Nikostratus had not taken them under his protection. The principal
men of the defeated party, to the number of about four hundred,
now took sanctuary in the temple and sacred ground of Hêrê; and
the leaders of the people, afraid that in this inviolable position
they might still cause further insurrection in the city, opened a
negotiation and prevailed upon them to be ferried across to the
little island immediately opposite to the Heræum; where they were
kept under watch, with provisions regularly transmitted across to
them, for four days.[456]
[456] Thucyd. iii, 75, 76.
At the end of these four days, while the uneasiness of the
popular leaders still continued, and Nikostratus still adjourned
his departure, a new phase opened in this melancholy drama. The
Peloponnesian fleet under Alkidas arrived at the road of Sybota on
the opposite mainland,—fifty-three triremes in number, for the forty
triremes brought back from Ionia had been reinforced by thirteen
more from Leukas and Ambrakia, and the Lacedæmonians had sent down
Brasidas as advising companion,—himself worth more than the new
thirteen triremes, if he had been sent to supersede Alkidas, instead
of bringing nothing but authority to advise.[457] Despising the
small squadron of Nikostratus, then at Naupaktus, they were only
anxious to deal with Korkyra before reinforcements should arrive from
Athens: but the repairs necessary for the ships of Alkidas, after
their disastrous voyage home, occasioned an unfortunate delay. When
the Peloponnesian fleet was seen approaching from Sybota at break
of day, the confusion in Korkyra was unspeakable: the Demos and the
newly-emancipated slaves were agitated alike by the late terrible
combat and by fear of the invaders,—the oligarchical party, though
defeated, was still present and forming a considerable minority, and
the town was half burnt. Amidst such elements of trouble, there was
little authority to command, and still less confidence or willingness
to obey. Plenty of triremes were indeed at hand, and orders were
given to man sixty of them forthwith,—while Nikostratus, the only man
who preserved the cool courage necessary for effective resistance,
entreated the Korkyræan leaders to proceed with regularity, and to
wait till all were manned, so as to sail forth from the harbor in
a body. He offered himself with his twelve Athenian triremes to go
forth first alone, and occupy the Peloponnesian fleet, until the
Korkyræan sixty triremes could all come out in full array to support
him. He accordingly went forth with his squadron; but the Korkyræans,
instead of following his advice, sent their ships out one by one and
without any selection of crews. Two of them deserted forthwith to
the enemy, while others presented the spectacle of crews fighting
among themselves; even those which actually joined battle came up by
single ships, without the least order or concert.
[457] Thucyd. iii, 69-76.
The Peloponnesians, soon seeing that they had little to fear from
such enemies, thought it sufficient to set twenty of their ships
against the Korkyræans, while with the remaining thirty-three they
moved forward to contend with the twelve Athenians. Nikostratus,
having plenty of sea-room, was not afraid of this numerical
superiority,—the more so, as two of his twelve triremes were
the picked vessels of the Athenian navy,—the Salaminia and the
Paralus.[458] He took care to avoid entangling himself with the
centre of the enemy, and to keep rowing about their flanks; and as
he presently contrived to disable one of their ships, by a fortunate
blow with the beak of one of his vessels, the Peloponnesians, instead
of attacking him with their superior numbers, formed themselves into
a circle and stood on the defensive, as they had done in the first
combat with Phormio in the middle of the strait at Rhium. Nikostratus
(like Phormio) rowed round this circle, trying to cause confusion by
feigned approach, and waiting to see some of the ships lose their
places or run foul of each other, so as to afford him an opening
for attack. And he might perhaps have succeeded, if the remaining
twenty Peloponnesian ships, seeing the proceeding, and recollecting
with dismay the success of a similar manœuvre in the former battle,
had not quitted the Korkyræan ships, whose disorderly condition they
despised, and hastened to join their comrades. The whole fleet of
fifty-three triremes now again took the aggressive, and advanced to
attack Nikostratus, who retreated before them, but backing astern and
keeping the head of his ships towards the enemy. In this manner he
succeeded in drawing them away from the town, so as to leave to most
of the Korkyræan ships opportunity for getting back to the harbor;
while such was the superior manœuvring of the Athenian triremes,
that the Peloponnesians were never able to come up with him or force
him to action. They returned back in the evening to Sybota, with no
greater triumph than their success against the Korkyræans, thirteen
of whose triremes they carried away as prizes.[459]
[458] These two triremes had been with Pachês at Lesbos (Thucyd.
iii, 33), immediately on returning from thence, they must have
been sent round to join Nikostratus at Naupaktus. We see in what
constant service they were kept.
[459] Thucyd. iii, 77, 78, 79.
It was the expectation in Korkyra, that they would on the morrow make
a direct attack—which could hardly have failed of success—on the
town and harbor; and we may easily believe (what report afterwards
stated), that Brasidas advised Alkidas to this decisive proceeding.
And the Korkyræan leaders, more terrified than ever, first removed
their prisoners from the little island to the Heræum, and then tried
to come to a compromise with the oligarchical party generally,
for the purpose of organizing some effective and united defence.
Thirty triremes were made ready and manned, wherein some even of the
oligarchical Korkyræans were persuaded to form part of the crews.
But the slackness of Alkidas proved their best defence: instead of
coming straight to the town, he contented himself with landing in
the island at some distance from it, on the promontory of Leukimnê:
after ravaging the neighboring lands for some hours, he returned to
his station at Sybota. He had lost an opportunity which never again
returned: for on the very same night the fire-signals of Leukas
telegraphed to him the approach of the fleet under Eurymedon from
Athens,—sixty triremes. His only thought was now for the escape of
the Peloponnesian fleet, which was in fact saved by this telegraphic
notice. Advantage was taken of the darkness to retire close along
the land as far as the isthmus which separates Leukas from the
mainland,—across which isthmus the ships were dragged by hand or
machinery, so that they might not fall in with or be descried by the
Athenian fleet in sailing round the Leukadian promontory. From hence
Alkidas made the best of his way home to Peloponnesus, leaving the
Korkyræan oligarchs to their fate.[460]
[460] Thucyd. iii, 80.
That fate was deplorable in the extreme. The arrival of Eurymedon
opens a third unexpected transition in this checkered narrative,—the
Korkyræan Demos passing, abruptly and unexpectedly, from intense
alarm and helplessness to elate and irresistible mastery. In the
bosom of Greeks, and in a population seemingly amongst the least
refined of all Greeks,—including too a great many slaves just
emancipated against the will of their masters, and of course the
fiercest and most discontented of all the slaves in the island,—such
a change was but too sure to kindle a thirst for revenge almost
ungovernable, as the only compensation for foregone terror and
suffering. As soon as the Peloponnesian fleet was known to have
fled, and that of Eurymedon was seen approaching, the Korkyræan
leaders brought into the town the five hundred Messenian hoplites
who had hitherto been encamped without; thus providing a resource
against any last effort of despair on the part of their interior
enemies. Next, the thirty ships recently manned,—and held ready, in
the harbor facing the continent, to go out against the Peloponnesian
fleet, but now no longer needed, were ordered to sail round to the
other or Hyllaic harbor. Even while they were thus sailing round,
some obnoxious men of the defeated party, being seen in public, were
slain: but when the ships arrived at the Hyllaic harbor, and the
crews were disembarked, a more wholesale massacre was perpetrated,
by singling out those individuals of the oligarchical faction who
had been persuaded on the day before to go aboard as part of the
crews, and putting them to death.[461] Then came the fate of those
suppliants, about four hundred in number, who had been brought back
from the islet opposite, and were yet under sanctuary in the sacred
precinct of the Heræum. It was proposed to them to quit sanctuary and
stand their trial; and fifty of them having accepted the proposition,
were put on their trial,—all condemned, and all executed. Their
execution took place, as it seems, immediately on the spot, and
within actual view of the unhappy men still remaining in the sacred
ground;[462] who, seeing that their lot was desperate, preferred
dying by their own hands to starvation or the sword of their enemies.
Some hung themselves on branches of the trees surrounding the temple,
others helped their friends in the work of suicide, and, in one
way or another, the entire band thus perished: it was probably a
consolation to them to believe, that this desecration of the precinct
would bring down the anger of the gods upon their surviving enemies.
[461] Thucyd. iii, 80, 81. καὶ ἐκ τῶν νεῶν, ὅσους ἔπεισαν
ἐσβῆναι, ἐκβιβάζοντες ἀπεχώρησαν. It is certain that the reading
ἀπεχώρησαν here must be wrong: no satisfactory sense can be made
out of it. The word substituted by Dr. Arnold is ἀνεχρῶντο; that
preferred by Göller is ἀπεχρῶντο; others recommend ἀπεχρήσαντο;
Hermann adopts ἀπεχώρισαν, and Dionysius, in his copy, read
ἀνεχώρησαν. I follow the meaning of the words proposed by
Dr. Arnold and Göller, which appear to be both equivalent to
ἐκτεῖνον. This meaning is at least plausible and consistent;
though I do not feel certain that we have the true sense of the
passage.
[462] Thucyd. iii, 81. οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ τῶν ἱκετῶν, ὅσοι οὐκ
ἐπείσθησαν, ~ὡς ἑώρων τὰ γιγνόμενα~, διέφθειραν αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ
ἀλλήλους, etc. The meagre abridgment of Diodorus (xii, 57) in
reference to these events in Korkyra, is hardly worth notice.
Eurymedon remained with his fleet for seven days, during all which
time the victorious Korkyræans carried on a sanguinary persecution
against the party who had been concerned in the late oligarchical
revolution. Five hundred of this party contrived to escape by flight
to the mainland; while those who did not, or could not flee, were
slain wherever they could be found. Some received their death-wounds
even on the altar itself,—others shared the same fate, after having
been dragged away from it by violence. In one case, a party of
murderers having pursued their victims to the temple of Dionysius,
refrained from shedding their blood, but built up the doorway and
left them to starve; as the Lacedæmonians had done on a former
occasion respecting Pausanias. Such was the ferocity of the time,
that in one case a father slew his own son. Nor was it merely the
oligarchical party who thus suffered: the floodgates of private feud
were also opened, and various individuals, under false charges of
having been concerned in the oligarchical movements, were slain by
personal enemies or debtors. This deplorable suspension of legal, as
well as moral restraints, continued during the week of Eurymedon’s
stay,—a period long enough to satiate the fierce sentiment out of
which it arose;[463] yet without any apparent effort on his part to
soften the victors or protect the vanquished. We shall see farther
reason hereafter to appreciate the baseness and want of humanity
in his character: but had Nikostratus remained in command, we may
fairly presume, judging by what he had done in the earlier part of
the sedition, with very inferior force, that he would have set much
earlier limits to the Korkyræan butchery: unfortunately, Thucydidês
tells us nothing at all about Nikostratus, after the naval battle of
the preceding day.[464]
[463] Thucyd. iii, 85. Οἱ μὲν οὖν κατὰ τὴν πόλιν Κερκυραῖοι
~τοιαύταις ὀργαῖς ταῖς πρώταις~ ἐς ἀλλήλους ἐχρήσαντο, etc.
[464] In reading the account of the conduct of Nikostratus, as
well as that of Phormio, in the naval battles of the preceding
summer, we contract a personal interest respecting both of them.
Thucydidês does not seem to have anticipated that his account
would raise such a feeling in the minds of his readers, otherwise
he probably would have mentioned something to gratify it.
Respecting Phormio, his omission is the more remarkable; since we
are left to infer, from the request made by the Akarnanians to
have his son sent as commander, that he must have died or become
disabled: yet the historian does not distinctly say so (iii, 7).
The Scholiast on Aristophanês (Pac. 347) has a story that Phormio
was asked for by the Akarnanians, but that he could not serve in
consequence of being at that moment under sentence for a heavy
fine, which he was unable to pay: accordingly, the Athenians
contrived a means of evading the fine, in order that he might
be enabled to serve. It is difficult to see how this can be
reconciled with the story of Thucydidês, who says that the son of
Phormio went instead of his father.
Compare Meineke, Histor. Critic. Comicc. Græc. vol. i, p. 144,
and Fragment. Eupolid. vol. ii, p. 527. Phormio was introduced as
a chief character in the Ταξίαρχοι of Eupolis; as a brave, rough,
straightforward soldier something like Lamachus in the Acharneis
of Aristophanês.
We should have been glad to hear something about the steps taken in
the way of restoration or healing, after this burst of murderous
fury, in which doubtless the newly-emancipated slaves were not
the most backward, and after the departure of Eurymedon. But here
again Thucydidês disappoints our curiosity. We only hear from him,
that the oligarchical exiles who had escaped to the mainland were
strong enough to get possession of the forts and most part of the
territory there belonging to Korkyra; just as the exiles from Samos
and Mitylênê became more or less completely masters of the Peræa
or mainland possessions belonging to those islands. They even sent
envoys to Corinth and Sparta, in hopes of procuring aid to accomplish
their restoration by force, but their request found no favor, and
they were reduced to their own resources. After harassing for some
time the Korkyræans in the island by predatory incursions, so as to
produce considerable dearth and distress, they at length collected a
band of Epirotic mercenaries, passed over to the island, and there
established a fortified position on the mountain called Istônê, not
far from the city. They burned their vessels in order to cut off all
hopes of retreat, and maintained themselves for near two years on
a system of ravage and plunder which inflicted great misery on the
island.[465] This was a frequent way whereby, of old, invaders wore
out and mastered a city, the walls of which they found impregnable.
The ultimate fate of these occupants of Istônê, which belongs to a
future chapter, will be found to constitute a close suitable to the
bloody drama yet unfinished in Korkyra.
[465] Thucyd. iii, 85.
Such a drama could not be acted, in an important city belonging to
the Greek name, without producing a deep and extensive impression
throughout all the other cities. And Thucydidês has taken advantage
of it to give a sort of general sketch of Grecian politics during
the Peloponnesian war; violence of civil discord in each city,
aggravated by foreign war, and by the contending efforts of Athens
and Sparta,—the former espousing the democratical party everywhere;
the latter, the oligarchical. The Korkyræan sedition was the
first case in which these two causes of political antipathy and
exasperation were seen acting with full united force, and where
the malignity of sentiment and demoralization flowing from such an
union was seen without disguise. The picture drawn by Thucydidês,
of moral and political feeling under these influences, will ever
remain memorable as the work of an analyst and a philosopher: he
has conceived and described the perverting causes with a spirit
of generalization which renders these two chapters hardly less
applicable to other political societies, far distant both in time and
place,—especially, under many points of view, to France between 1789
and 1799,—than to Greece in the fifth century before the Christian
era. The deadly bitterness infused into intestine party contests by
the accompanying dangers of foreign war and intervention of foreign
enemies,—the mutual fears between political rivals, where each thinks
that the other will forestall him in striking a mortal blow, and
where constitutional maxims have ceased to carry authority either
as restraint or as protection,—the superior popularity of the man
who is most forward with the sword, or who runs down his enemies in
the most unmeasured language, coupled with the disposition to treat
both prudence in action and candor in speech as if it were nothing
but treachery or cowardice,—the exclusive regard to party ends, with
the reckless adoption, and even admiring preference, of fraud or
violence as the most effectual means,—the loss of respect for legal
authority, as well as of confidence in private agreement, and the
surrender even of blood and friendship to the overruling ascendency
of party-ties,—the perversion of ordinary morality, bringing with
it altered signification of all the common words importing blame
or approbation,—the unnatural predominance of the ambitious and
contentious passions, overpowering in men’s minds all real public
objects, and equalizing for the time the better and the worse cause,
by taking hold of democracy on one side and aristocracy on the other
as mere pretences to sanctify personal triumph,—all these gloomy
social phenomena, here indicated by the historian, have their causes
deeply seated in the human mind, and are likely, unless the bases
of constitutional morality shall come to be laid more surely and
firmly than they have hitherto been, to recur from time to time,
under diverse modifications, “so long as human nature shall be the
same as it is now,” to use the language of Thucydidês himself.[466]
He has described, with fidelity not inferior to his sketch of the
pestilence at Athens, the symptoms of a certain morbid political
condition, wherein the vehemence of intestine conflict, instead
of being kept within such limits as consists with the maintenance
of one society among the contending parties, becomes for the time
inflamed and poisoned with all the unscrupulous hostility of foreign
war, chiefly from actual alliance between parties within the state
and foreigners without. In following the impressive description of
the historian, we have to keep in mind the general state of manners
in his time, especially the cruelties tolerated by the laws of war,
as compared with that greater humanity and respect for life which
has grown up during the last two centuries in modern Europe. And we
have farther to recollect that if he had been describing the effects
of political fury among Carthaginians and Jews, instead of among
his contemporary Greeks, he would have added to his list of horrors
mutilation, crucifixion, and other refinements on simple murder.
[466] Thucyd. iii, 82. γιγνόμενα μὲν καὶ ἀεὶ ἐσόμενα ἕως ἂν ἡ
αὐτὴ φύσις ἀνθρώπων ᾖ, μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ ἡσυχαίτερα καὶ τοῖς εἴδεσι
διηλλαγμένα, ὡς ἂν ἕκασται αἱ μεταβολαὶ τῶν ξυντυχιῶν ἐφιστῶνται,
etc.
The many obscurities and perplexities of construction which
pervade these memorable chapters, are familiar to all readers of
Thucydidês, ever since Dionysius of Halikarnassus, whose remarks
upon them are sufficiently severe (Judic. de Thucyd. p. 883). To
discuss difficulties which the best commentators are sometimes
unable satisfactorily to explain, is no part of the business of
this work: yet there is one sentence which I venture to notice as
erroneously construed by most of them, following the Scholiast.
Τὸ δ᾽ ἐμπλήκτως ὀξὺ ἀνδρὸς μοίρᾳ προσετέθη, ἀσφάλεια δὲ
(Dr. Arnold and others read ἀσφαλείᾳ in the dative) τὸ
ἐπιβουλεύσασθαι, ἀποτροπῆς πρόφασις εὔλογος.
The Scholiast explains the latter half of this as follows:
τὸ ἐπιπολὺ βουλεύσασθαι δι᾽ ἀσφάλειαν πρόφασις ἀποτροπῆς
ἐνομίζετο,,—and this explanation is partly adopted by Poppo,
Göller, and Dr. Arnold, with differences about ἀσφάλεια and
ἐπιβουλεύσασθαι, but all agreeing about the word ἀποτροπὴ so that
the sentence is made to mean, in the words of Dr. Arnold: “But
safely to concert measures against an enemy, was accounted but a
decent pretence for _declining the contest with him altogether_.”
Now the signification here assigned to ἀποτροπὴ is one which does
not belong to it. Ἀποτροπὴ, in Thucydidês as well as elsewhere,
does not mean “tergiversation, or declining the contest:” it
has an active sense, and means, “the deterring, preventing,
or dissuading another person from something which he might be
disposed to do,—or the warding off of some threatening danger or
evil:” the remarkable adjective ἀποτροπαῖος is derived from it,
and προτροπὴ, in rhetoric, is its contrary term. In Thucydidês
it is used in this active sense (iii, 45): compare also Plato,
Legg. ix, c. 1, p. 853; Isokratês, Areopagatic. Or. vii, p. 143,
sect. 17; Æschinês cont. Ktesiphon. c. 68, p. 442: Æschyl. Pers.
217; nor do the commentators produce any passage to sustain
the passive sense which they assign to it in the sentence here
under discussion, whereby they would make it equivalent to
ἀναχωρεῖν—ἀναχώρησις—or ἐξαναχωρεῖν (Thucyd. iv, 28; v, 65), “a
backing out.”
Giving the meaning which they do to ἀποτροπὴ, the commentators
are farther unavoidably embarrassed how to construe ἀσφάλεια
δὲ τὸ ἐπιβουλεύσασθαι, as may be seen by the notes of Poppo,
Göller, and Dr. Arnold. The Scholiast and Göller give to the word
ἐπιβουλεύσασθαι the very unusual meaning of “repeated and careful
deliberation,” instead of its common meaning of “laying snares
for another, concerting secret measures of hostility:” and Poppo
and Dr. Arnold alter ἀσφάλεια into the dative case ἀσφαλείᾳ,
which, if it were understood to be governed by προσετέθη, might
make a fair construction,—but which they construe along with τὸ
ἐπιβουλεύσασθαι, though the position of the particle δὲ, upon
that supposition, appears to me singularly awkward.
The great difficulty of construing the sentence arises from the
erroneous meaning attached to the word ἀποτροπὴ. But when we
interpret that word “deterrence, or prevention,” according to the
examples which I have cited, the whole meaning of the sentence
will become clear and consistent. Of the two modes of hurting a
party-enemy—1. violent and open attack; 2. secret manœuvre and
conspiracy—Thucydidês remarks first, what was thought of the one;
next, what was thought of the other, in the perverted state of
morality which he is discussing.
Τὸ δ᾽ ἐμπλήκτως ὀξὺ ἀνδρὸς μοίρᾳ προσετέθη—ἀσφάλεια δὲ τὸ
ἐπιβουλεύσασθαι, ἀποτροπῆς πρόφασις εὔλογος.
“Sharp and reckless attack was counted among the necessities of
the manly character: secret conspiracy against an enemy was held
to be safe precaution,—a specious pretence of preventing him from
doing the like.”
According to this construction, τὸ ἐπιβουλεύσασθαι is the
subject; ἀσφάλεια belongs to the predicate and the concluding
words, ἀποτροπῆς πρόφασις εὔλογος, are an epexegesis, or
explanatory comment, upon ἀσφάλεια. Probably we ought to consider
some such word as ἐνομίζετο to be understood,—just as the
Scholiast understands that word for his view of the sentence.
The language of Thucydidês is to be taken rather as a generalization
and concentration of phenomena which he had observed among different
communities, rather than as belonging altogether to any one of them.
Nor are we to believe—what a superficial reading of his opening words
might at first suggest—that the bloodshed in Korkyra was only the
earliest, but by no means the worst, of a series of similar horrors
spread over the Grecian world. The facts stated in his own history
suffice to show that though the same causes which worked upon this
unfortunate island became disseminated, and produced analogous
mischiefs throughout many other communities, yet the case of Korkyra,
as it was the first, so it was also the worst and most aggravated in
point of intensity. Fortunately, the account of Thucydidês enables us
to understand it from beginning to end, and to appreciate the degree
of guilt of the various parties implicated, which we can seldom do
with certainty; because when once the interchange of violence has
begun, the feelings arising out of the contest itself presently
overpower in the minds of both parties the original cause of dispute,
as well as all scruples as to fitness of means. Unjustifiable acts
in abundance are committed by both, and in comparing the two, we are
often obliged to employ the emphatic language which Tacitus uses
respecting Otho and Vitellius: “Deteriorem fore, quisquis vicisset;”
of two bad men, all that the Roman world could foresee was, that the
victor, whichsoever he was, would prove the worst.
But in regard to the Korkyræan revolution, we can arrive at a more
discriminating criticism. We see that it is from the beginning the
work of a selfish oligarchical party, playing the game of a foreign
enemy, and the worst and most ancient enemy of the island,—aiming to
subvert the existing democracy and acquire power for themselves, and
ready to employ any measure of fraud or violence for the attainment
of these objects. While the democracy which they attack is purely
defensive and conservative, the oligarchical movers, having tried
fair means in vain, are the first to employ foul means, which
latter they find retorted with greater effect against themselves.
They set the example of judicial prosecution against Peithias,
for the destruction of a political antagonist; in the use of this
same weapon, he proves more than a match for them, and employs it
to their ruin. Next, they pass to the use of the dagger in the
senate-house, against him and his immediate fellow-leaders, and
to the wholesale application of the sword against the democracy
generally. The Korkyræan Demos are thus thrown upon the defensive,
and instead of the affections of ordinary life, all the most intense
anti-social sentiments,—fear, pugnacity, hatred, vengeance, obtain
unqualified possession of their bosoms; exaggerated too through
the fluctuations of victory and defeat successively brought by
Nikostratus, Alkidas, and Eurymedon. Their conduct as victors is such
as we should expect under such maddening circumstances, from coarse
men, mingled with liberated slaves: it is vindictive and murderous in
the extreme, not without faithless breach of assurances given. But
we must remember that they are driven to stand upon their defence,
and that all their energies are indispensable to make that defence
successful. They are provoked by an aggression no less guilty in
the end than in the means,—an aggression, too, the more gratuitous,
because, if we look at the state of the island at the time when the
oligarchical captives were restored from Corinth, there was no
pretence for affirming that it had suffered, or was suffering, any
loss, hardship, or disgrace, from its alliance with Athens. These
oligarchical insurgents find the island in a state of security and
tranquillity,—since the war imposed upon it little necessity for
effort,—they plunge it into a sea of blood, with enormities as well
as suffering on both sides, which end at length in their own complete
extermination. Our compassion for their final misery must not hinder
us from appreciating the behavior whereby it was earned.
In the course of a few years from this time, we shall have occasion
to recount two political movements in Athens, similar in principle
and general result to this Korkyræan revolution; exhibiting
oligarchical conspirators against an existing and conservative
democracy, with this conspiracy at first successful, but afterwards
put down, and the Demos again restored. The contrast between
Athens and Korkyra, under such circumstances, will be found highly
instructive, especially in regard to the Demos, both in the hours of
defeat and in those of victory. It will then be seen how much the
habit of active participation in political and judicial affairs,—of
open, conflicting discussion, discharging the malignant passions
by way of speech, and followed by appeal to the vote,—of having
constantly present, to the mind of every citizen, in his character of
dikast or ekklesiast, the conditions of a pacific society, and the
paramount authority of a constitutional majority,—how much all these
circumstances, brought home as they were at Athens more than in any
other democracy to the feelings of individuals, contributed to soften
the instincts of intestine violence and revenge, even under very
great provocation.
But the case of Korkyra, as well as that of Athens, different in
so many respects, conspire to illustrate another truth, of much
importance in Grecian history. Both of them show how false and
impudent were the pretensions set up by the rich and great men of the
various Grecian cities, to superior morality, superior intelligence,
and greater fitness for using honorably and beneficially the powers
of government, as compared with the mass of the citizens. Though
the Grecian oligarchies, exercising powerful sway over fashion,
and more especially over the meaning of words, bestowed upon
themselves the appellation of “the best men, the honorable and good,
the elegant, the superior,” etc., and attached to those without
their own circle epithets of a contrary tenor, implying low moral
attributes,—no such difference will be found borne out by the facts
of Grecian history.[467] Abundance of infirmity, with occasional bad
passions, was doubtless liable to work upon the people generally,
often corrupting and misguiding even the Athenian democracy, the
best apparently of all the democracies in Greece. But after all, the
rich and great men were only a part of the people, and taking them
as a class, apart from honorable individual exceptions, by no means
the best part. If exempted by their position from some of the vices
which beset smaller and poorer men, they imbibed from that same
position an unmeasured self-importance, and an excess of personal
ambition as well as of personal appetite, peculiar to themselves,
not less anti-social in tendency, and operating upon a much grander
scale. To the prejudices and superstitions belonging to the age,
they were noway superior, considering them as a class; while their
animosities among one another, virulent and unscrupulous, were among
the foremost causes of misfortune in Grecian commonwealth,—and indeed
many of the most exceptionable acts committed by the democracies,
consisted in their allowing themselves to be made the tools of one
aristocrat for the ruin of another. Of the intense party-selfishness
which characterized them as a body, sometimes exaggerated into
the strongest anti-popular antipathy, as we see in the famous
oligarchical oath cited by Aristotle,[468] we shall find many
illustrations as we advance in the history, but none more striking
than this Korkyræan revolution.
[467] See the valuable preliminary discourse, prefixed to
Welcker’s edition of Theognis, page xxi, sect. 9, _seq._
[468] Aristotel. Politic. v. 7, 19. Καὶ τῷ δήμῳ κακόνους ἔσομαι,
καὶ βουλεύσω ὅ,τι ἂν ἔχω κακόν.