READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

GEORGE GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE

CHAPTER LXVI.

FROM THE RESTORATION OF THE DEMOCRACY TO THE DEATH OF ALCIBIADES.

The period intervening between the defeat of Aegospotami (October, 405 B.C.) and the reestablishment of the democracy as sanctioned by the convention concluded with Pausanias, some time in the summer of 403 B.C., presents two years of cruel and multifarious suffering to Athens. For seven years before, indeed ever since the catastrophe at Syracuse, she had been struggling with hardships; contending against augmented hostile force, while her own means were cut down in every way; crippled at home by the garrison of Dekeleia; stripped to a great degree both of her tribute and her foreign trade, and beset by the snares of her own oligarchs. In spite of circumstances so adverse, she had maintained the fight with a resolution not less surprising than admirable; yet not without sinking more and more towards impoverishment and exhaustion. The defeat of Aegospotami closed the war at once, and transferred her from her period of struggle to one of concluding agony. Nor is the last word by any means too strong for the reality. Of these two years, the first portion was marked by severe physical privation, passing by degrees into absolute famine, and accompanied by the intolerable sentiment of despair and helplessness against her enemies, after two generations of imperial grandeur, not without a strong chance of being finally consigned to ruin and individual slavery; while the last portion comprised all the tyranny, murders, robberies, and expulsions perpetrated by the Thirty, overthrown only by heroic efforts of patriotism on the part of the exiles; which a fortunate change of sentiment, on the part of Pausanias, and the leading members of the Peloponnesian confederacy, ultimately crowned with success.

After such years of misery, it was an unspeakable relief to the Athenian population to regain possession of Athens and Attica, to exchange their domestic tyrants for a renovated democratical government, and to see their foreign enemies not merely evacuate the country, but even bind themselves by treaty to future friendly dealing. In respect of power, indeed, Athens was but the shadow of her former self. She bad ho empire, no tribute, no fleet, no fortifications at Piraeus, no long walls, not a single fortified place in Attica except the city itself. Of all these losses, however, the Athenians probably made little account, at least at the first epoch of their reestablishment; so intolerable was the pressure which they had just escaped, and so welcome the restitution of comfort, security, property, and independence, at home. The very excess of tyranny committed by the Thirty gave a peculiar zest to the recovery of the democracy. In their hands, the oligarchical principle, to borrow an expression from Burke, “had produced in fact, and instantly, the grossest of those evils with which it was pregnant in its nature”; realizing the promise of that plain-spoken oligarchical oath, which Aristotle mentions as having been taken in various oligarchical cities, to contrive as much evil as possible to the people. So much the more complete was the reaction of sentiment towards the antecedent democracy, even in the minds of those who had been before discontented with it. To all men, rich and poor, citizens and metics, the comparative excellence of the democracy, in respect of all the essentials of good government, was now manifest. With the exception of those who had identified themselves with the Thirty as partners, partisans, or instruments, there was scarcely any one who did not feel that his life and property had been far more secure under the former democracy, and would become so again if that democracy were revived.

It was the first measure of Thrasybulus and his companions, after concluding the treaty with Pausanias, and thus reentering the city, to exchange solemn oaths, of amnesty for the past, with those against whom they had just been at war. Similar oaths of amnesty were also exchanged with those in Eleusis, as soon as that town came into their power. The only persons excepted from this amnesty were the Thirty, the Eleven who had presided over the execution of all their atrocities, and the Ten who had governed in Piraeus. Even these persons were not peremptorily banished: opportunity was offered to them to come in and take their trial of accountability (universal at Athens in the case of every magistrate on quitting office); so that, if acquitted, they would enjoy the benefit of the amnesty as well as all others. We know that Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty, afterwards returned to Athens since there remains a powerful harangue of Lysias, invoking justice against him as having brought to death Polemarchus, the brother of Lysias. Eratosthenes was one of the minority of the Thirty who sided generally with Theramenes, and opposed to a considerable degree the extreme violences of Kritias, although personally concerned in that seizure and execution of the rich metics which Theramenes had resisted, and which was one of the grossest misdeeds even of that dark period. He and Pheidon, being among the Ten named to succeed the Thirty after the death of Kritias, when the remaining members of that deposed Board retired to Eleusis, had endeavored to maintain themselves as a new oligarchy, carrying on war at the same time against Eleusis and against the democratical exiles in Piraeus. Failing in this, they had retired from the country, at the time when these exiles returned, and when the democracy was first reestablished. But after a certain interval, the intense sentiments of the moment having somewhat subsided, they were encouraged by their friends to return, and came back to stand their trial of accountability. It was on that occasion that Lysias preferred his accusation against Eratosthenes, the result of which we do not know, though we see plainly, even from the accusatory speech, that the latter had powerful friends to stand by him, and that the dikasts manifested considerable reluctance to condemn. We learn, moreover, from the same speech, that such was the detestation of the Thirty among several of the states surrounding Attica, as to cause formal decrees for their expulsion, or for prohibiting their coming. The sons, even of such among the Thirty as did not return, were allowed to remain at Athens, and enjoy their rights of citizens, unmolested; a moderation rare in Grecian political warfare.

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

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

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

As soon as the laws had been revised and publicly inscribed in the poekile, pursuant to the above decree, two concluding laws were enacted, which completed the purpose of the citizens.

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

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

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

A still farther precaution was taken to bar all actions for redress or damages founded on acts done prior to the archonship of Eukleides. On the motion of Archinus, the principal colleague of Thrasybulus at Phyle, a law was passed, granting leave to any defendant against whom such an action might be brought, to plead an exception in bar, or paragraphs, upon the special ground of the amnesty and the legal prescription connected with it. The legal effect of this paragraphs, or exceptional plea, in Attic procedure, was to increase both the chance of failure, and the pecuniary liabilities in case of failure, on the part of the plaintiff; also, to better considerably the chances of the defendant. This enactment is said to have been moved by Archinus, on seeing that some persons were beginning to institute actions at law, in spite of the amnesty; and for the better prevention of all such claims.

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

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

If we follow the acts of the Thirty, we shall see that the horsemen and the privileged three thousand hoplites in the city had made themselves partisans in every species of flagitious crime which could possibly be imagined to exasperate the feelings of the exiles. The latter, on returning, saw before them men who had handed in their relations to be put to death without trial, who had seized upon and enjoyed their property, who had expelled them all from the city, and a large portion of them even from Attica; and who had held themselves in mastery not merely by the overthrow of the constitution, but also by inviting and subsidizing foreign guards. Such atrocities, conceived and ordered by the Thirty, had been executed by the aid, and for the joint benefit, as Critias justly remarked, of those occupants of the city whom the exiles found on returning. Now Thrasybulus, Anytus, and the rest of these exiles, saw their property all pillaged and appropriated by others during the few months of their absence: we may presume that their lands—which had probably not been sold, but granted to individual members or partisans of the Thirty—were restored to them; but the movable property could not be reclaimed, and the losses to which they remained subject were prodigious. The men who had caused and profited by these losses—often with great brutality towards the wives and families of the exiles, as we know by the case of the orator Lysias—were now at Athens, all individually well known to the sufferers. In like manner, the sons and brothers of Leon and the other victims of the Thirty, saw before them the very citizens by whose hands their innocent relatives bed been consigned without trial to prison and execution. The amount of wrong suffered had been infinitely greater than in the time of the Four Hundred, and the provocation, on every ground, public and private, violent to a degree never exceeded in history. Yet with all this sting fresh in their bosoms, we find the victorious multitude, on the latter occasion as well as on the former, burying the past in an indiscriminate amnesty, and anxious only for the future harmonious march of the renovated and all-comprehensive democracy. We see the sentiment of commonwealth in the Demos, twice contrasted with the sentiment of faction in an ascendant oligarchy; twice triumphant over the strongest counter-motives, over the most bitter, recollections of wrongful murder and spoliation, over all that passionate rush of reactionary appetite which characterizes the moment of political restoration. “Bloody will be the reign of that king who comes back to his kingdom from exile”, says the Latin poet: bloody, indeed had been the rule of Kritias and those oligarchs who had just come back from exile: “Harsh is a Demos (observes Aeschylus) which has just got clear of misery”. But the Athenian Demos, on coming back from Piraeus, exhibited the rare phenomenon of a restoration, after cruel wrong suffered, sacrificing all the strong impulse of retaliation to a generous and deliberate regard for the future march of the commonwealth. Thucydides remarks that the moderation of political antipathy which prevailed at Athens after the victory of the people over the Four Hundred, was the main cause which revived Athens from her great public depression and danger. Much more forcibly does this remark apply to the restoration after the Thirty, when the public condition of Athens was at the lowest depth of abasement, from which nothing could have rescued her except such exemplary wisdom and patriotism on the part of her victorious Demos. Nothing short of this could have enabled her to accomplish that partial resurrection—into an independent and powerful single state, though shorn of her imperial power—which will furnish material for the subsequent portion of our History.

While we note the memorable resolution of the Athenian people to forget that which could not be remembered without ruin to the future march of the democracy, we must at the same time observe that which they took special pains to preserve from being forgotten. They formally recognized all the adjudged cases and all the rights of property as existing under the democracy anterior to the Thirty. “You pronounced, fellow citizens (says Andokides), that all the judicial verdicts and all the decisions of arbitrators passed under the democracy should remain valid, in order that there might be no abolition of debts, no reversal of private rights, but that every man might have the means of enforcing contracts due to him by others”. If the Athenian people had been animated by that avidity to despoil the rich, and that subjection to the passion of the moment, which Mr. Mitford imputes to them in so many chapters of his history, neither motive nor opportunity was now wanting for wholesale confiscation, of which the rich themselves, during the dominion of the Thirty, had set abundant example. The amnesty as to political wrong, and the indelible memory as to the rights of property, stand alike conspicuous as evidences of the real character of the Athenian Demos.

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

All that was required from the horsemen, or knights, who had been active in the service of the Thirty, was that they should repay the sums which had been advanced to them by the latter as outfit. Such advance to the horsemen, subject to subsequent repayment, and seemingly distinct from the regular military pay, appears to have been a customary practice under the previous democracy; but we may easily believe that the Thirty had carried it to an abusive excess, in their anxiety to enlist or stimulate partisans, when we recollect that they resorted to means more nefarious for the same end. There were of course great individual differences among these knights, as to the degree in which each had lent himself to the misdeeds of the oligarchy. Even the most guilty of them were not molested, and they were sent, four years afterwards, to serve with Agesilaus in Asia, at a time when the Lacedaemonians required from Athens a contingent of cavalry; the Demos being well pleased to be able to provide for them an honorable foreign service. But the general body of knights suffered so little disadvantage from the recollection of the Thirty, that many of them in after days became senators, generals, hipparchs, and occupants of other considerable posts in the state. Although the decree of Tisamenus—prescribing a revision of the laws without delay, and directing that the laws, when so revised, should be posted up for public view, to form the sole and exclusive guide of the dikasteries—had been passed immediately after the return from Piraeus and the confirmation of the amnesty, yet it appears that considerable delay took place before such enactment was carried into full effect .A person named Nikomachus was charged with the duty, and stands accused of having performed it tardily as well as corruptly. He, as well as Tisamenus, was a scribe, or secretary, under which name were included a class of paid officers, highly important in the detail of business at Athens, though seemingly men of low birth, and looked upon as filling a subordinate station, open to sneers from unfriendly orators. The boards, the magistrates, and the public bodies were so frequently changed at Athens, that the continuity of public business could only have been maintained by paid secretaries of this character, who devoted themselves constantly to the duty.

Nikomachus had been named, during the democracy anterior to the Thirty, for the purpose of preparing a fair transcript, and of posting up afresh, probably in clearer characters, and in a place more convenient for public view, the old laws of Solon. We can well understand that the renovated democratical feeling, which burst out after the expulsion of the Four Hundred, and dictated the vehement psephism of Demophantus, might naturally also produce such a commission as this, for which Nikomachus, both as one of the public scribes, or secretaries, and as an able speaker, was a suitable person. His accuser, for whom Lysias composed his thirtieth oration, now remaining, denounces him as having not only designedly lingered in the business, for the purpose of prolonging the period of remuneration, but even as having corruptly tampered with the old laws, by new interpolations, as well as by omissions. How far such charges may have been merited, we have no means of judging; but even assuming Nikomachus to have been both honest and diligent, he would find no small difficulty in properly discharging his duty of anagrapheus, or “writer-up” of all the old laws of Athens, from Solon downward. Both the phraseology of these old laws, and the alphabet in which they were written, were in many cases antiquated and obsolete; while there were doubtless also cases in which one law was at variance, wholly or partially, with another. Now such contradictions and archaisms would be likely to prove offensive, if set up in a fresh place, and with clean, new characters; while Nikomachus had no authority to make the smallest alteration, and might naturally therefore be tardy in a commission which did not promise much credit to him in its result.

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

Partly through this important reform, partly through the revising body, partly through the agency of Nikomachus, who was still continued as anagrapheus, the revision, inscription, and publication of the laws in their new alphabet was at length completed. But it seems to have taken two years to perform, or at least two years elapsed before Nikomachus went through his trial of accountability. He appears to have made various new propositions of his own, which were among those adopted by the nomothetae: for these his accuser attacks him, on the trial of accountability, as well as on the still graver allegation, of having corruptly falsified the decisions of that body; writing up what they had not sanctioned, or suppressing that which they had sanctioned.

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

Such refusal of citizenship to an eminent man like Lysias, who had both acted and suffered in the cause of the democracy, when combined with the decree of Aristophon above noticed, implies a degree of augmented strictness which we can only partially explain. It was not merely the renewal of her democracy for which Athens had now to provide. She had also to accommodate her legislation and administration to her future march as an isolated state, without empire or foreign dependencies. For this purpose, material changes must have been required : among others, we know that the Board of Hellenotamiae—originally named for the collection and management of the tribute at Delos, but attracting to themselves gradually more extended functions, until they became ultimately, immediately before the Thirty, the general paymasters of the state—was discontinued, and such among its duties as did not pass away along with the loss of the foreign empire, were transferred to two new officers, the treasurer at war, and the manager of the theorikon, or religious festival-fund. Respecting these two new departments, the latter of which especially became so much extended as to comprise most of the disbursements of a peace-establishment, I shall speak more fully hereafter; at present, I only notice them as manifestations of the large change in Athenian administration consequent upon the loss of the empire. There were doubtless many other changes arising from the same cause, though we do not know them in detail; and I incline to number among such the alteration above noticed respecting the right of citizenship. While the Athenian empire lasted, the citizens of Athens were spread over the Aegean in every sort of capacity, as settlers, merchants, navigators, soldiers, etc.; which must have tended materially to encourage intermarriages between them and the women of other Grecian insular states. Indeed, we are even told that an express permission of connubium with Athenians was granted to the inhabitants of Euboea, a fact, noticed by Lysias, of some moment in illustrating the tendency of the Athenian empire to multiply family ties between Athens and the allied cities. Now, according to the law which prevailed before Eukleides, the son of every such marriage was by birth an Athenian citizen, an arrangement at that time useful to Athens, as strengthening the bonds of her empire, and eminently useful in a larger point of view, among the causes of Pan-Hellenic sympathy. But when Athens was deprived both of her empire and her fleet, and confined within the limits of Attica, there no longer remained any motive to continue such a regulation, so that the exclusive city-feeling, instinctive in the Grecian mind, again became predominant. Such is, perhaps, the explanation of the new restrictive law proposed by Aristophon.

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

At the restoration of the democracy, however, Alcibiades was already no more. Shortly after the catastrophe at Aegospotami, he had sought shelter in the satrapy of Pharnabazus, no longer thinking himself safe from Lacedaemonian persecution in his forts on the Thracian Chersonese. He carried with him a good deal of property, though he left still more behind him, in these forts; how acquired, we do not know. But having crossed apparently to Asia by the Bosphorus, he was plundered by the Thracians in Bithynia, and incurred much loss before he could reach Pharnabazus in Phrygia. Renewing the tie of personal hospitality which he had contracted with Pharnabazus four years before, he now solicited from the satrap a safe-conduct up to Susa. The Athenian envoys—whom Pharnabazus, after his former pacification with Alcibiades in 408 B.C., had engaged to escort to Susa, but had been compelled by the mandate of Cyrus to detain as prisoners—were just now released from their three years’ detention, and enabled to come down to the Propontis; and Alcibiades, by whom this mission had originally been projected, tried to prevail on the satrap to perform the promise which he had originally given, but had not been able to fulfil. The hopes of the sanguine exile, reverting back to the history of Themistocles, led him to anticipate the same success at Susa as had fallen to the lot of the latter; nor was the design impracticable, to one whose ability was universally renowned, and who had already acted as minister to Tissaphernes. The court of Susa was at this time in a peculiar position. King Darius Nothus, having recently died, had been succeeded by his eldest son Artaxerxes Mnemon; but the younger son Cyrus, whom Darius had sent for during his last illness, tried after the death of the latter to supplant Artaxerxes in the succession, or at least was suspected of so trying. Being seized and about to be slain, the queen-mother Parysatis prevailed upon Artaxerxes to pardon him, and send him again down to his satrapy along the coast of Ionia, where he labored strenuously, though secretly, to acquire the means of dethroning his brother; a memorable attempt, of which I shall speak more fully hereafter. But his schemes, though carefully masked, did not escape the observation of Alcibiades, who wished to make a merit of revealing them at Susa, and to become the instrument of defeating them. He communicated his suspicions as well as his purpose to Pharnabazus; whom he tried to awaken by alarm of danger to the empire, in order that he might thus get himself forwarded to Susa as informant and auxiliary.

Pharnabazus was already jealous and unfriendly in spirit towards Lysander and the Lacedaemonians, of which we shall soon see plain evidence, and perhaps towards Cyrus also, since such were the habitual relations of neighboring satraps in the Persian empire. But the Lacedaemonians and Cyrus were now all-powerful on the Asiatic coast, so that he probably did not dare to exasperate them, by identifying himself with a mission so hostile and an enemy so dangerous to both. Accordingly, he refused compliance with the request of Alcibiades; granting him, nevertheless, permission to live in Phrygia, and even assigning to him a revenue. But the objects at which the exile was aiming soon became more or less fully divulged, to those against whom they were intended. His restless character, enterprise, and capacity, were so well known as to raise exaggerated fears as well as exaggerated hopes. Not merely Cyrus, but the Lacedaemonians, closely allied with Cyrus, and the dekadarchies, whom Lysander had set up in the Asiatic Grecian cities, and who held their power only through Lacedaemonian support, all were uneasy at the prospect of seeing Alcibiades again in action and command, amidst so many unsettled elements. Nor can we doubt that the exiles whom these dekadarchies had banished, and the disaffected citizens who remained at home, under their government in fear of banishment or death, kept up correspondence with him, and looked to him as a probable liberator. Moreover, the Spartan king, Agis, still retained the same personal antipathy against him, which had already some years before procured the order to be despatched, from Sparta to Asia, to assassinate him. Here are elements enough, of hostility, vengeance, and apprehension, afloat against Alcibiades, without believing the story of Plutarch, that Critias and the Thirty sent to apprize Lysander that the oligarchy at Athens could not stand, so long as Alcibiades was alive. The truth is, that though the Thirty had included him in the list of exiles, they had much less to dread from his assaults or plots, in Attica, than the Lysandrian dekadarchies in the cities of Asia. Moreover, his name was not popular even among the Athenian democrats, as will be shown hereafter, when we come to recount the trial of Socrates. Probably, therefore, the alleged intervention of Kritias and the Thirty, to procure the murder of Alcibiades, is a fiction of the subsequent encomiasts of the latter at Athens, in order to create for him claims to esteem as a friend and fellow-sufferer with the democracy.

A special despatch, or skytale, was sent out by the Spartan authorities to Lysander in Asia, enjoining him to procure that Alcibiades should be put to death. Accordingly, Lysander communicated this order to Pharnabazus, within whose satrapy Alcibiades was residing, and requested that it might be put in execution. The whole character of Pharnabazus shows that he would not perpetrate such a deed, towards a man with whom he had contracted ties of hospitality, without sincere reluctance and great pressure from without; especially as it would have been easy for him to connive underhand at the escape of the intended victim. We may therefore be sure that it was Cyrus, who, informed of the revelations contemplated by Alcibiades, enforced the requisition of Lysander; and that the joint demand of the two was too formidable even, to be evaded, much less openly disobeyed. Accordingly, Pharnabazus despatched his brother Magaeus and his uncle Sisamithres with a band of armed men, to assassinate Alcibiades in the Phrygian village where he was residing. These men, not daring to force their way into his house, surrounded it and set it on fire; but Alcibiades, having contrived to extinguish the flames, rushed out upon his assailants with a dagger in his right hand, and a cloak wrapped round his left to serve as a shield. None of them dared to come near him; but they poured upon him showers of darts and arrows until he perished, undefended as he was either by shield or by armor. A female companion with whom he lived, Timandra, wrapped up his body in garments of her own, and performed towards it all the last affectionate solemnities.

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

If from his achievements we turn to his dispositions, his ends, and his means, there are few characters in Grecian history who present so little to esteem, whether we look at him as a public or as a private man. His ends are those of exorbitant ambition and vanity, his means rapacious as well as reckless, from his first dealing with Sparta and the Spartan envoys, down to the end of his career. The manoeuvres whereby his political enemies first procured his exile were indeed base and guilty in a high degree; but we must recollect that if his enemies were more numerous and violent than those of any other politician in Athens, the generating seed was sown by his own overweening insolence, and contempt of restraints, legal as well as social.

On the other hand, he was never once defeated either by land or sea. In courage, in ability, in enterprise, in power of dealing with new men and new situations, he was never wanting; qualities, which, combined with his high birth, wealth, and personal accomplishments, sufficed to render him for the time the first man in every successive party which he espoused; Athenian, Spartan, or Persian; oligarchical or democratical. But to none of them did he ever inspire any lasting confidence; all successively threw him off. On the whole, we shall find few men in whom eminent capacities for action and command are so thoroughly marred by an assemblage of bad moral qualities, as Alcibiades.

CHAPTER LXVII.

THE DRAMA. — RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS. - THE SOPHISTS.