When the reconciliation had taken place on these terms, those who had
fought on the side of the Thirty felt considerable apprehensions, and a
large number intended to secede. But as they put off entering their
names till the last moment, as people will do, Archinus, observing
their numbers, and being anxious to retain them as citizens, cut off
the remaining days during which the list should have remained open; and
in this way many persons were compelled to remain, though they did so
very unwillingly until they recovered confidence. This is one point in
which Archinus appears to have acted in a most statesmanlike manner,
and another was his subsequent prosecution of Thrasybulus on the charge
of illegality, for a motion by which he proposed to confer the
franchise on all who had taken part in the return from Piraeus,
although some of them were notoriously slaves. And yet a third such
action was when one of the returned exiles began to violate the
amnesty, whereupon Archinus haled him to the Council and persuaded them
to execute him without trial, telling them that now they would have to
show whether they wished to preserve the democracy and abide by the
oaths they had taken; for if they let this man escape they would
encourage others to imitate him, while if they executed him they would
make an example for all to learn by. And this was exactly what
happened; for after this man had been put to death no one ever again
broke the amnesty. On the contrary, the Athenians seem, both in public
and in private, to have behaved in the most unprecedentedly admirable
and public-spirited way with reference to the preceding troubles. Not
only did they blot out all memory of former offences, but they even
repaid to the Lacedaemonians out of the public purse the money which
the Thirty had borrowed for the war, although the treaty required each
party, the party of the city and the party of Piraeus, to pay its own
debts separately. This they did because they thought it was a necessary
first step in the direction of restoring harmony; but in other states,
so far from the democratic parties making advances from their own
possessions, they are rather in the habit of making a general
redistribution of the land. A final reconciliation was made with the
secessionists at Eleusis two years after the secession, in the
archonship of Xenaenetus.