chapter 7.

Pericles proposed and passed the payment of dicasts, during the lifetime of Cimon, probably about 450 B.C. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 27.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 24.

3. Democracy during the Peloponnesian War 432 B.C.-404 B.C.

The changes which have been mentioned, together with others which have been passed over, produced the constitution under which the Athenians lived during their contest with Sparta. In the description of it we must notice (1) the general assembly and the council of five hundred, (2) the executive officers, (3) the judicature, (4) instances illustrative of the working of the constitution.

(1) The ἐκκλησία or general assembly had supreme power in all the most important matters: it consisted of all Athenian citizens who had attained the age of manhood: its meetings were held on the Pnyx, a hillside in the open air: four ordinary meetings were held on fixed days in each prytany, and other meetings for special business could at any time be summoned by proclamation. Though the assembly had supreme power to make laws and pass resolutions determining the policy of the city, it submitted to certain restraining formalities. No law could be proposed in the assembly till it had been considered and sanctioned by the council of five hundred: and any resolution or any new law passed by the assembly might afterwards be indicted before a popular law-court on the ground that it violated or contradicted some existing law or was contrary to the Athenian constitution. If the law or resolution was condemned by the law-court it was ipso facto cancelled. Moreover, if proceedings were taken within a year after the vote of the assembly, the proposer as well as the proposition might be indicted, and if the court decided against him he was subject to a heavy fine. The Greek name for the indictment was Graphê Paranomôn which may be translated literally Indictment for Illegality. The Graphê Paranomôn was, beyond all doubt, the best bulwark of the Athenian constitution: though there were occasions, as we shall see, when it did not save the constitution from being violated.

The place of meeting is proved by Aristophanes, Acharnians, line 20, ἡ πνὺξ αὑτηί, Knights, line 42, Δῆμος πυκνίτης and many other passages: the number of ordinary meetings by Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 43.

I do not know any evidence which proves directly that this rule was in force at the time of the Peloponnesian war. But we have already seen (page 60) that the rule was made by Solon, and it was certainly in force in the time of Demosthenes (366 B.C.-322 B.C.): see Demosthenes, contra Androtionem, p. 594, and contra Timocratem, p. 715, especially the words πρῶτον μὲν ... πρὸς τὴν βουλήν, εἶτα τῷ δήμῳ. Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities, article Boulê.

The events of 411 B.C. prove clearly that the procedure by Graphê Paranomôn was then an established part of the Athenian constitution: see Thucydides VIII. 67, Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 29: and further on in the present chapter, p. 93.

The council consisted of five hundred citizens taken by lot. It was a committee to manage the details of the business of the assembly. It met on every day in the year except the religious festivals or holidays and it drew up the list of business for the assembly, determining what business ought and what ought not to be brought forward. All business intended for the assembly passed through the hands of the council; and sometimes, in cases that demanded immediate action, (as in the accusation brought against the commanders at Arginusæ which will be described further on,) it had to come to important provisional decisions. The fifty councillors belonging to a tribe were presidents during a tenth part of the year: and if, during their presidency, a special meeting of the assembly was required, it was their business to summon it.

The details about the five hundred are from Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 43. An inscription of the date 410-409 B.C. printed in Clinton, Fasti Hellenici (vol. II. p. 345), shows how important the prytaneis then were.

(2) The chief servants of the sovereign assembly were the ten generals and the nine archons. The generals were elected and not like the rest of the officers of the state taken by lot: this might be inferred from the constant occurrence among the generals of the names of distinguished men, but it is completely proved by the fact that in the year 430 B.C. the Athenians though they were many of them angry with Pericles yet re-elected him general because his services could not be dispensed with. The ten generals levied troops, managed the revenue allotted to military purposes, and named trierarchs to command the ships. In the battle of Marathon and in an expedition to Samos in 440 B.C. all ten generals acted as commanders: in most cases the assembly appointed a convenient number, usually three, of the generals to conduct an enterprise abroad, while the rest remained at home to manage the ordinary business of their office.

Thucydides II. 65.

Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities, article Strategus.

The nine archons, taken yearly by lot from among a number of men who had declared themselves to be candidates, and had submitted the respectability of their characters to a public examination, had duties of a ceremonial character and attended to the routine of some business of state, but had no political influence. There were also some other functionaries for the supervision of markets and of the supply of corn, and for the preservation of order, of whom it is not necessary to speak further.

Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities, article Archon.

(3) The judicial bodies alone at Athens were independent of the political assembly. Jurisdiction, except in those few cases which were still brought before the semi-religious court of the Areopagus or before the first Archon, belonged to the popular law-courts which had been first founded by Solon. A large number of citizens were taken every year to serve as jurymen: they were divided into bodies varying in number from two hundred to a thousand, and each of these bodies sat collectively as judges to decide such cases as might be submitted to them. They sat without any professional judge to inform them about the condition of the law or the relevance of arguments: the advocate on either side cited such laws as favoured his contentions, and could use any reasoning which he thought likely to influence the court. The citizens were not only willing but eager to render their services as dicasts, partly because they received as daily pay three obols, a sum equal to half a modern franc, and partly because they enjoyed the business of the court and the importance which it conferred on them.

Demosthenes, Meidias p. 585, asks: "What is it that gives power and authority to any body of jurors sitting in judgement, whether they be two hundred or a thousand or any number you will?"

The eagerness of the citizens to act as dicasts is ridiculed all through the play of the Wasps, brought out in 422 B.C.

(4) The records of some of the meetings of the assembly of citizens will serve to illustrate the nature of their business. Just before the Peloponnesian war the Corcyræans requested the Athenians to protect them with armed force: the body to whom the Corcyræan envoys made their request was the assembly of citizens; on the first day the Athenians heard the arguments of the Corcyræans and of their enemies the Corinthians: on the second day they debated what answer they should give; on the third they resolved to grant what the Corcyræans desired and thereby made the great war inevitable. Again in 415 B.C. the ambassadors from Egeste in Sicily, sent to ask aid from Athens, were heard in the assembly, and it was agreed on the same day to send an expedition of sixty ships. In the case of the Peace of Nicias in 423 B.C. the negotiations were carried on by the ten generals, but the Treaty became binding on Athens only when it was ratified by the assembly of the people.

Thucydides I. 31 and 44.

Thucydides VI. 8.

Thucydides IV. 118.

In 428 B.C. Mitylenê in Lesbos, a city allied to Athens under compulsion, broke loose from the alliance. This revolt was the work of the oligarchy, which ruled supreme in Mitylenê. In the summer of the next year Mitylenê had difficulty in withstanding the forces of the Athenians, and the rulers of the city found it desirable to give arms to the common folk. With arms went power. The common folk preferred to be ruled by Athens rather than by those among their fellow-citizens who happened to be wealthy, and declared they would surrender to Paches the Athenian commander. The surrender was effected, and the fate of the city was to be settled by the Athenians. The Athenian citizens were very angry that a city which had been in compulsory alliance with them had revolted, and, making no distinction between the oligarchical party who had led the revolt and the democrats who had restored the city to Athens, voted that every man in Mitylenê of military age should be put to death, and all the women and children sold into slavery; and they despatched a galley bearing their orders to Paches. After the vote they went home and repented of their cruelty: next day they met again, and after hearing Cleon on the side of severity and Diodotus for mercy they rescinded the order of the day before and despatched a second galley to carry the new orders. The crew of the first galley made no haste in rowing, because they disliked the work of conveying a cruel and unjust sentence: and the second galley arrived with the new orders before the first had taken any effect.

Thucydides III. 2 and 36-49.

Judicial work at Athens belonged to the dicasteries and not to the general assembly: but the assembly also if it wished to inflict a punishment on an offender against the state could do so by a special legislative act which might be called in Latin a privilegium, and in English an attainder or bill of pains and penalties. Miltiades, after he had won the great victory of Marathon, was entrusted with the command of an expedition of which he did not disclose the object: he used it wrongfully and unsuccessfully against the Parians, and on his return Xanthippus proposed to the assembly that he should be put to death for having deceived the Athenians. The assembly showed mercy to him in gratitude for his services at Marathon, and let him off with a very heavy fine of fifty talents.

Herodotus VI. 133 and 136.

In the year 406 B.C. an Athenian fleet under the command of nine στρατηγοί or admirals won a great victory over a Spartan fleet at Arginusæ: several Athenian ships which had been disabled in the action were lost in a storm which came on afterwards, and it was suspected that the admirals had made no efforts to save them. The Athenians superseded all the admirals and summoned them to Athens. Six of the number obeyed the summons. One of them was first accused in a law-court of peculation and misconduct in his command, and the court ordered him to be kept in custody, with a view probably to any further proceedings which the general assembly might choose to take. The other five appeared before the council of five hundred, which acted as a sort of business committee to the assembly, and were committed to custody.

In a general assembly, held soon afterwards, a citizen who had himself held a subordinate command in the fleet complained of the conduct of the admirals and desired that they should be punished. They were allowed to speak briefly in their defence; and the assembly did not on that day pass any resolution except that the council of five hundred should consider what course the proceedings should take, and report their opinion at the next meeting. During the interval a festival occurred at which many citizens appeared ostentatiously in mourning for relatives who had been drowned in the neglected vessels. When the assembly met, the desire to punish the admirals had risen high: the council, bringing in its report, proposed that, as the accusation and the answers had been already heard, the assembly should proceed to an immediate vote whether or not the accused should be put to death. An objection was raised that the established practice required that a separate vote should be taken about each accused person: but it was met with a clamour that the people ought to be allowed to do what it likes. The objection based on established practice convinced some of the prytaneis or presiding councillors, but eventually all of them gave way to the clamour, except Socrates the philosopher. A formal proposal was then made by a citizen, who shared the views of Socrates, that a vote should be taken about each man separately. A division was taken on this proposal, and at first it was declared to be carried: but on a second scrutiny the proposal originally made by the council of five hundred was accepted. A vote was then taken on the proposal that the commanders should suffer death: the proposal was carried and the sentence executed on the six men who were in custody.

Xenophon, Hellenica I. 6 and 7. He names only eight admirals recalled. Grote makes the number nine.

The constitution, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, was arranged, in nearly all respects, according to the principles which the Greeks regarded as distinctive of ideal or extreme democracy, and tended to ensure firstly that all citizens should be equally treated in the distribution of offices, and secondly that the general assembly should be free to do as it liked. The exceptions to the prevailing tendency are to be found in the appointment of the ten generals by election, in the right of the five hundred to exclude a proposal from discussion, and in the provision that a resolution or new law might be indicted as unconstitutional before a law court. But the five hundred were not men of greater wisdom or experience than the other Athenians, being merely so many citizens taken at random by drawing lots: it does not appear from the descriptions which Thucydides gives of debates in the assembly that the generals or the five hundred exercised any commanding influence: and the illegal resolution against the admirals who commanded at Arginusæ took effect, just as if there had been no such thing as a regulation that it might be judicially indicted.

But it must be observed that what was an ideal democracy in the eyes of the Greeks was not an ideal democracy according to the views of our own time. When we speak of a democracy we generally mean a system of government in which the whole adult male population have some sort of control over public affairs. At Athens, a large part, it may have been half, or three-quarters or five-sixths, of the adult male population were slaves; and slaves, having lost their personal freedom, are of course incapable of political rights. If then we wish in speaking of the Athenian constitution to use terms in their modern sense and not in their Greek sense, we must say that the rulers of Athens were not a democracy but an aristocracy: it is true that they constituted a far larger part of the population than most aristocracies, but as compared with the whole they were but few. And further we may observe that without slavery there could never have been such a government as that which ruled Athens. The Athenian citizens gave a large part of their time to public business and attendance at public festivals: and they could not have done this unless there had been plenty of slaves to perform the industrial and menial work that the community required.

The observations contained in this paragraph were suggested to me firstly by Professor Mahaffy, Problems in Greek History § 38, and secondly by Mr W. Warde Fowler, The City State of the Greeks and Romans, chapter VI.

Although Athens ought, according to the modern use of terms, to be called rather an aristocracy than a democracy, it seems to be certain that the men actually and habitually employed in the daily work of government bore numerically a larger proportion to the whole population in ancient Athens than they have done in any other state known to history. The whole population of Attica may have been a quarter of a million or it may have been nearly half-a-million: the citizens numbered about thirty thousand, and it is probable that at least ten thousand of them were habitually employed in the business of government: and these ten thousand may have been a twenty-fifth part and were not less than a fiftieth part of the whole population. In modern England those who are habitually employed in governing would include members of Parliament, of town councils, of county councils, and of school-boards, magistrates, judges, and the staff of all Government offices, except those persons who are mere clerks or servants: I cannot say how many they would muster, all told: but, judging from those parts of England that I know best, I should estimate them at something between a two-hundredth and a five-hundredth part of the inhabitants of the country.

4. Democracy after the Peloponnesian War, 404-338 B.C.

In the period which followed the Peloponnesian war the poorer citizens who predominated in the assembly passed several votes to promote the pleasure and the pecuniary interests of their class. Pay was provided for every citizen who attended a meeting of the assembly or was a spectator at a religious festival and its dramatic performances. The pay was at first fixed at a low rate: before 392 B.C. it had been raised to three obols, the same sum as was paid to a dicast for a day's attendance. The pay for the law courts, the assemblies, the festivals and the council came to nearly two hundred talents yearly. The whole revenue of the Athenian state in the fourth century is not known: but it can scarcely have exceeded eleven or twelve hundred talents: and thus it seems that about one-sixth part of it was spent in providing citizens with religious spectacles or comfortable employment.

The decrees granting pay for attendance at ecclesia are enumerated in Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 41. In the Ecclesiazusæ, first acted in 392 B.C., Chremes (at lines 381-2) says he had lost his three obols by being late for the assembly. For the allowance to citizens at religious festivals see Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 28.

See Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, book II. ch. 13-14.

See Boeckh, Public Economy, book III. ch. 19. Supposing half a drachma was paid to 18000 spectators at 30 festivals, to 8000 citizens at 50 assemblies and to 4000 dicasts for 300 days, and a whole drachma to 400 councillors for 300 days, we get a sum of 1,190,000 drachmæ, and, as there were 6000 drachmæ in a talent, this was equal to 198⅓ talents.

After the three obols had been decreed, a majority more overwhelming than ever was ensured in the assembly to the poorer class. The professional orators began to devote their skill to the purpose of persuading the ecclesia, and thus obtained a control over Athenian policy. It was fortunate for the state that in Demosthenes it found not only an orator but a patriot and a statesman: and it says much for the good sense of the assembly that it followed his counsels, unless they interfered too much with the comfort of the individual citizens. The assembly governed on the whole with moderation, and no harsh measures against the property of the rich were ever passed in it: but it insisted that the poor citizens should have their three obols for the religious spectacles, even when the money was wanted for a most necessary war to defend Olynthus against Macedonia. The very frequent assemblies of the whole body of citizens gave the poorer classes a decisive voice in all questions of policy and legislation: but they also ensured that all the citizens had some knowledge of what was being proposed, and gave them the habit of listening to arguments, and of deciding questions by voting and not by force. During the period from 404 B.C. to 338 B.C. Athens was never troubled with conspiracies or seditious violence.

Grote, octavo edition, vol. VIII. pp. 81-98, cabinet edition, vol. XI. pp. 138-157.

The fall of Athens occurred at the end of the period of which I have been speaking, and no doubt the defects of the constitution and the unwillingness of the citizens to make any sacrifices were contributory causes. But it is not certain that, even if Athens had been as well governed and patriotic as ever, it would have been able so to unite the jealous Greek cities as to ensure their independence against the new and formidable power of Macedonia.

Our materials for forming an estimate of the nature of democracy in the Greek cities other than Athens are, as I have said, very scanty. But it seems clear that most of the democracies ruled with less moderation and self-control than the Athenian democracy, and had less stability. Revolutions from democracy to oligarchy or from oligarchy to democracy recurred at shorter intervals in many Greek cities than at Athens: and sometimes, as at Corcyra in 427 B.C., and at Argos in 371 B.C. or 370 B.C., an unsuccessful attempt at revolution was punished with wholesale massacre. It is to be observed that the Greek writers, in speaking of democracy, generally seem to regard it with distrust and even dislike: and this could hardly have been the case, if all democratic governments had been as well conducted as the Athenian government. We know that at Athens the whole mass of the citizens were able at any moment to do whatever they liked, subject to no restraint except from the Graphê Paranomôn and from their own characters and inclinations: and it seems certain that in every Greek city mentioned by the Greek writers as democratically governed the citizens were still more free from restraint: for many of the best and most careful writers were great admirers of artificial restraints on democracy, and if any city had provided itself with such restraints the fact would have been recorded. It is clear that a government which allows the mass of the citizens to do whatever they choose must be beset with dangers, unless the citizens have learned habits of self-restraint and mutual forbearance from a long and gradual political education. The Athenians had learned such habits, but the other Greeks probably had not: for the Athenians alone among the Greeks had had the good fortune to live under the wise constitutions of a Solon and a Cleisthenes, which, by granting to the mass of the citizens at first a very small share and afterwards a larger share in the control of public affairs, provided them with such political training that eventually they were able with safety to expose themselves to the perils of complete self-government.

Thucydides III. 70-84. Grote, Part II. chapter LXXVIII.

5. Oligarchy at Athens, 411 B.C. and 404 B.C.

In the year 415 B.C., the seventeenth year of the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians despatched a great naval and military expedition to the distant island of Sicily. The expedition encountered many difficulties: the Athenians sent strong reinforcements: but in the year 412 B.C. their fleet suffered a crushing defeat in the Great Harbour of Syracuse, and their army was afterwards completely destroyed. Athens itself was without any adequate defence of ships or sailors or soldiers: the Athenians did their best to supply the deficiency, but there was grave reason to fear that their unaided efforts would not avail to save them, and they greatly desired to get support by making some new alliance. It was certain that no new allies could be found among the Greeks, and they could look for no help unless it were from the king of Persia.

Thucydides VIII. 1.

Thucydides VIII. 2.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 29, and Thucydides VIII. 47.

Alcibiades, the ablest but the most unpatriotic and unscrupulous of the Athenians of that time, was in 412 B.C. an exile from his native city under sentence of death. He had in 415 B.C. been appointed one of the three commanders of the great expedition to Sicily: but, when it was on the eve of starting from Attica, he fell under suspicion of having committed a great crime by wilfully offending one of the gods who protected Athens and of designing to overthrow the Athenian constitution. As however there was no proof of his guilt, legal proceedings could not be immediately instituted, and he was allowed to sail as one of the commanders of the fleet: but when he reached Sicily, he found awaiting him the Salaminia, the swift galley which carried despatches, and on board of her some officers sent by the Athenian assembly to summon him home to stand his trial. These officers had been instructed not to arrest him but merely to bid him come to Athens for trial: accordingly he sailed homeward in his own ship, under escort of the Salaminia. On the way the two ships touched at a port in southern Italy, and Alcibiades went ashore and escaped from his custodians: soon afterwards, getting a passage to the Peloponnesus, he went to Sparta and advised the Spartans how they might best defeat the Athenian forces in Sicily. The charges against him were produced before one of the popular law courts at Athens: and, as he did not appear, he was found guilty and condemned to death.

Thucydides VI. 61.

Thucydides VI. 26-28.

Thucydides VI. 53.

Thucydides VI. 61.

Thucydides VI. 89.

Thucydides VI. 61.

With the Spartans Alcibiades gained great influence, partly through his intimacy with a powerful man among their Ephors, and partly by the sound advice which he gave them as to the best way to injure Athens. In the year 412 B.C., at his own earnest desire, he was sent to act on behalf of Sparta in some of the cities of Asia Minor which were in alliance with Athens, and to induce them to change sides in the war. Before long however the Spartans had reason to suspect that he was betraying their interests, and sent an order to the commander of their fleet off the coast of Asia to put him to death. Alcibiades was warned, and, fleeing to the court of Tissaphernes, a powerful satrap of the king of Persia in the south-western part of Asia Minor, became no less zealous and efficient in opposing the interests of the Spartans than he had been in promoting them: and, after winning in some degree the confidence of Tissaphernes, he induced him to withhold a large part of the money which he had been in the habit of furnishing for the pay of the sailors in the Lacedæmonian fleet. Having thus completely destroyed his credit with the Spartans, he desired nothing so much as to obtain pardon for his offences from his own countrymen: for he hoped that, if once the sentence which had been passed on him were cancelled, he might return to Athens and recover some of his former popularity and influence.

Thucydides VIII. 11, 12.

Thucydides VIII. 45.

Thucydides VIII. 45, 46.

Thucydides VIII. 47.

Alcibiades knew that the Athenians were in a sore strait, and were longing for an alliance with the king of Persia: and in this desire of theirs and his own friendly relations with Tissaphernes he thought he saw the means of effecting his return: for, if the Athenians could only be persuaded that he was able and willing through influence with Tissaphernes to bring about the desired alliance, they would not only let him return but would welcome him as a valuable friend in their distress. He believed however that his restoration could more easily be brought about if the present quiet and orderly government of Athens were to come to an end, and the city were thrown into the turmoil of a revolution. The surest way to cause political disturbance was to try to substitute an oligarchy for the existing democracy: and this accordingly was what Alcibiades did, not that he liked oligarchy better than democracy, but because he thought that any political troubles at Athens might conduce to his restoration. He sought for fit agents to bring about the desired revolution, and found them among the officers of an Athenian fleet stationed at the island of Samos near the coast of Asia Minor.

Thucydides VIII. 47.

Thucydides VIII. 48, 3, ἐκ τοῦ παρόντος =κόσμου= τὴν πόλιν μεταστήσας.

Thucydides VIII. 48, 3, ὁ 'Αλκιβιάδης, =ὅπερ καὶ ἦν=, οὐδὲν μᾶλλον ὀλιγαρχίας ἢ δημοκρατίας δεῖσθαι ἐδόκει αὐτῷ.

Thucydides VIII. 47.

The part of Alcibiades in the revolution consisted only in giving it a start by raising false expectations of a Persian alliance. His agents went to Athens, and there Pisander, who took the leading part among them, addressing the assembly of the citizens, urged that the only hope of salvation for Athens lay in an alliance with Persia, and declared that that alliance would be made if they would invite Alcibiades to return, abolish their democracy, which was not to the liking of the king of Persia, and set up in its stead an oligarchy which the king could trust. The assembly was grieved at the prospect of losing its democratic constitution, but under the stress of circumstances gave some kind of provisional approval of the proposed change; for the present however it took no definite step beyond appointing Pisander and ten other men as envoys to negotiate with Alcibiades and Tissaphernes. Pisander remained for a while in Athens for the purpose of visiting all the oligarchical clubs which already existed there and preparing them to be ready to strike a blow against the democratic constitution: this done, he departed on his mission. It soon became evident that Alcibiades was powerless to obtain help for Athens from the king of Persia or even from Tissaphernes: a breach occurred between him and the oligarchical conspirators, and he took no further part in their proceedings.

Thucydides VIII. 53.

Thucydides VIII. 54.

Thucydides VIII. 56.

During the absence of Pisander the oligarchical clubs at Athens prepared the way for the success of his designs by skilfully organising a series of assassinations. The persons selected to be murdered were the most faithful upholders of the democratic constitution: the assassins were never brought to justice: and such general terror prevailed that men did not dare to mourn for the victims lest their own turn should come next. Meanwhile the chief politicians in the oligarchic party, wishing to disguise their real designs, gave out that the changes in the constitution which they would advocate were moderate in character: they would limit the number of citizens who formed the ecclesia to a number not exceeding five thousand, consisting of those who were best able to aid the state by paying taxes or by serving in the war, and would propose that henceforth wages from the treasury should be paid to none but the soldiers and sailors: but in other respects they would wish the constitution to remain unaltered.

Thucydides VIII. 65, 66.

Thucydides VIII. 65, the last sentence. My small addition to the words of this sentence seems to be justified by ἐυπρεπὲς πρὸς τοὺς πλείους which occurs in the next.

Pisander, on his return to Athens about April 411 B.C., was eager for the establishment of an oligarchy, with himself as one of its leading members: and, even if he had wished to pause in his measures, it was now dangerous for him to do so, because, if the citizens recovered from their terror, he would be prosecuted under a Graphê Paranomôn for the proposals which he had made and carried last year, and would undergo severe punishment. One of his adherents named Pythodorus at once proposed to the assembly that it should appoint a small committee of citizens to make a draft scheme for a new constitution: Cleitophon, who was probably an opponent of Pisander, moved that it should be an instruction to the committee that they should examine the ancient constitution of Cleisthenes to see whether any of its provisions ought to be revived. The proposal of Pythodorus was carried: whether Cleitophon's instruction was accepted or rejected we do not know.

The oligarchical government lasted four months and ended two months after new archons took office, that is to say, two months after midsummer. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 33. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. II. pp. XV. XVI.

Thucydides VIII. 67. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 29.

Within a short time the committee had prepared its proposals. An assembly of the citizens was summoned to meet, not as usual at the Pnyx within the city, but at the hill of Colonus, more than a mile outside the walls. At this assembly the proposals of the committee were announced; and they were to the following effect. (1) Any Athenian citizen may propose whatever he thinks fit; and no proposal shall make him liable to a Graphê Paranomôn. (2) The government (that is to say, the right of speaking and voting in the ecclesia) shall be entrusted, during the continuance of the war, to a body of citizens numbering not less than Five Thousand, and consisting of those best qualified by bodily vigour for serving in the war or by wealth for contributing to the public treasury. (3) During the continuance of the war no wages shall be paid from the treasury except to the army and navy, and the nine archons and the presidents of the assembly and council.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 29. Thucydides VIII. 67.

The proposals bore a specious aspect of moderation, and seemed to promise that the new constitution should be something like the old constitution of Cleisthenes. The assembly gave its assent to these proposals: but, as soon as that assent had been given, it found that further and more radical changes awaited it. A motion was made and carried that a second committee of a hundred citizens should be appointed to give more precise shape to the new constitution. The report of this second committee, an elaborate document, disclosed the real intentions of Pisander and his party. It set forth a complicated scheme of government which was to come into force at some future time: but it also did what was more important by proposing that for the present a council of Four Hundred should be elected, that the Four Hundred should appoint ten generals and a secretary to the generals, and that the eleven men thus appointed should have power to do everything except alter the laws. The proposals were ratified by the assembly; the council of Four Hundred, being elected during the reign of terror which had been established, was no doubt entirely filled with the adherents of Pisander, and the ten generals and their secretary no doubt included Pisander himself and his most ardent partisans. No steps were taken to call the assembly of Five Thousand into existence, and thus all political rights had been taken away from the mass of the citizens, and unrestrained power was conferred upon Pisander and his fellow-conspirators.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 31.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 31, 32.

The proceedings of the oligarchy which had thus been founded are not narrated in detail by our authorities: but we are told that the new rulers governed violently, and made many changes in the administration: that they "put to death some few men who seemed convenient to be got rid of, imprisoned others, and removed others from Attica," that they fell to quarrelling with one another, and that at last they were suspected of a design to introduce a garrison of Spartans into the Piræus, the port of Athens. As soon as this suspicion gained credence the days of the oligarchy were numbered. A battalion of Athenian hoplites, employed by Pisander to build a fortress at the mouth of the Piræus for the reception of a Lacedæmonian garrison, rose in mutiny against their officers, held a meeting in Munychia, which adjoins the Piræus, to decide on their course of action, and after due deliberation marched into Athens and piled arms at the foot of the Acropolis. Many specious offers of ineffectual reforms were made to them by envoys from the Four Hundred: but they insisted on the one thing which the oligarchy most dreaded, a free assembly of the citizens to be held within the city. The citizens met in assembly at the Pnyx, and their first resolution declared that the power of the Four Hundred was at an end.

Thucydides VIII. 70.

Thucydides VIII. 89.

Thucydides VIII. 90-97.

After the deposition of the Four Hundred, which occurred late in August 411 B.C., the Athenians had to decide what their government should be. Two courses lay open to them: they might rescind all the enactments which they had made four months earlier, and so return at once to an unmixed democracy: or they might allow those enactments, except such as were obviously mischievous, to remain in force. The second of the two alternatives was that which they adopted. They reaffirmed in substance the regulations which had been recommended by the small committee elected under the resolution of Pythodorus, and enacted: (1) That the government should be entrusted to the body of not less than Five Thousand, which they had already ordered to be created. (2) That every citizen, who furnished the equipment of a heavy armed soldier, either for himself or for any one else, should of right be a member of this body. (3) That no citizen should receive pay for any political function, on pain of being solemnly accursed or excommunicated. The constitution thus established was partly democratic and partly oligarchical: it contained a preponderant element of democracy because it gave supreme power to a numerous body, who, though they were called the Five Thousand, were in reality about nine thousand: but it also contained some small oligarchical ingredients, since it excluded the poorest citizens from the ecclesia, and by withholding payment for the discharge of political functions made it likely that few citizens would be able to serve on the council of five hundred and in the popular law-courts except those who had money and leisure. Concerning the motives which induced the Athenians to adopt this mixed form of government we have no information, and can only observe that the new constitution would certainly commend itself to the body of hoplites who had delivered the Athenians from their oppressors, since it gave supreme power to the class to which they belonged; and that, from what we know of the political opinions of Socrates, we may be sure that it met with his hearty approval and was supported by his powerful advocacy. In regard to the merits of the new government we have an emphatic testimony from Thucydides, who says that of all the governments that ruled Athens within the space of his lifetime this was the best. But the mixed form of government was not suited to the needs and the condition of the Athenians: for within a few years--certainly before 406 B.C. when they condemned the commanders at Arginusæ, and possibly as early as 410 B.C.--they abandoned it and reverted to their well-tried system of unmixed democracy.

Thucydides VIII. 97. 1. The meaning of the words is admirably explained by Grote in a note to chapter LXII. of his History of Greece.

Arnold's Thucydides, note to VIII. 97. 1.

Grote, History of Greece, octavo edition, vol. VI. p. 152, cabinet edition, vol. VIII. p. 267.

Thucydides V. 26.

Within seven years after the fall of the Four Hundred, Athens was again ruled by an oligarchy. The events which led to the establishment of this second oligarchy were in one respect like those to which the earlier oligarchy owed its origin, since they began with the destruction of an Athenian fleet: but, as they were simpler and less complicated, they can be more briefly narrated.

In the year 405 B.C. the Athenians sent nearly the whole of their naval force to oppose the Lacedæmonian fleet in the eastern waters of the Ægean sea, along the coast of Asia Minor. In number of ships the Athenian and Lacedæmonian fleets were nearly equal: in all else they were ill-matched antagonists. The Lacedæmonians were commanded by Lysander, the ablest admiral ever produced by Sparta: the condition of the Athenians was such as might be expected in the year immediately following an undiscriminating execution of the commanders of the fleet. Among the six admirals Conon alone was a man of ability, discipline was lax, and the operations were worse designed and worse executed than any others in the whole course of the war. Lysander took the city of Lampsacus on the eastern shore of the narrow channel of the Hellespont which divides Europe from Asia. The Athenian commanders took station directly opposite on the western shore of the Hellespont, which at this point is only two miles wide, and there anchored their ships close to the open beach of Ægospotami. The nearest place from which they could get supplies was Sestos, two miles distant: and all the commanders except Conon and the captain of the Paralus, the despatch-boat, allowed their men to go ashore and wander far inland. Lysander watched his opportunity, found the ships for the most part deserted by their crews, and captured the whole of them (a hundred and eighty in number), except the Paralus and a little squadron of eight ships under the immediate command of Conon.

Xenophon, Hellenica I. 7. § 1, and II. 1. § 16.

Xenophon, Hellenica II. 1.

After the battle of Ægospotami Athens could make no effectual resistance. Lysander blockaded the city by land and sea, and in the spring of 404 B.C. the Athenians were compelled by starvation to capitulate and admit the Spartans. Lysander occupied the city, compelled the Athenians to pull down at least a great part of the long walls which defended Athens and Piræus, to readmit the members of the oligarchical party who had gone into exile, and to submit to be governed by them. Arbitrary power was assumed by a Board of Thirty, who, being supported by Lysander, were able for eight months to oppress their fellow citizens with violence and rapacity such as had not been experienced in Athens even under the Four Hundred.

Xenophon, Hellenica II. 2.

Xenophon, Hellenica II. 3.

The governments both of the Four Hundred and of the Thirty were too short-lived to furnish us with materials for forming any precise estimate of Greek oligarchy in general. They never went beyond the stage of being revolutionary or half-established governments: and, being in constant terror of destruction, they were obliged to resort to cruel measures which a settled oligarchy would not need. The mere fact that Greek oligarchies were often long-lived governments suffices to show that they were not, like the rule of the Four Hundred or the Thirty, so sanguinary and oppressive as to provoke successful mutiny or rebellion: and we are entitled to believe that, as Athenian democracy was the best of Greek democracies, so Athenian oligarchy was the worst of Greek oligarchies.

IV. The conquest of the Greek cities by Macedonia.

The division of the Greek people into a large number of small independent cities was a system which answered well enough as long as the political horizon included no states other than Greek cities and Asiatic Empires. The Macedonians were a European people inhabiting a large territory to the north of Greece, and united under a strong military monarchy. They had formerly lived under a tribal monarchy of the heroic type: in the fourth century B.C. they may be compared with the Goths under Alaric or the Salian Franks under Clovis. They were devoted to military pursuits: they had some of the spirit of individual independence which is usually found in a rude people of warriors, and they showed it even under Alexander the Great, the strongest of all their kings: but their king was their commander, and in time of war, so long as he commanded ably, he enjoyed supreme power. To resist such a people as the Macedonians the Greeks would have had to do the impossible: to unlearn in a moment all the maxims of jealous precaution against rival cities by which they had regulated their conduct, to give up the practice of politics in miniature and understand at once what was needed in politics on a larger scale. As it was, the old jealousy between Athens and Sparta continued to be as active as ever, only one or two Greek states joined in resistance to the invader, and after the battle of Chæroneia in 338 B.C. Greece lay at the mercy of Philip king of Macedonia.

Especially on the famous occasion when Alexander did not dare to put his general Philotas to death till he had been condemned by the assembled chieftains and warriors. Grote, part II. chapter XCIV.