History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗

have had to speak either to one whom he did not

know, or whom he knew but did not trust. Indeed all the popular

party approached each other with suspicion, each thinking his

neighbour concerned in what was going on, the conspirators having in

their ranks persons whom no one could ever have believed capable of

joining an oligarchy; and these it was who made the many so

suspicious, and so helped to procure impunity for the few, by

confirming the commons in their mistrust of one another.

 

At this juncture arrived Pisander and his colleagues, who lost no

time in doing the rest. First they assembled the people, and moved

to elect ten commissioners with full powers to frame a constitution,

and that when this was done they should on an appointed day lay before

the people their opinion as to the best mode of governing the city.

Afterwards, when the day arrived, the conspirators enclosed the

assembly in Colonus, a temple of Poseidon, a little more than a mile

outside the city; when the commissioners simply brought forward this

single motion, that any Athenian might propose with impunity

whatever measure he pleased, heavy penalties being imposed upon any

who should indict for illegality, or otherwise molest him for so

doing. The way thus cleared, it was now plainly declared that all

tenure of office and receipt of pay under the existing institutions

were at an end, and that five men must be elected as presidents, who

should in their turn elect one hundred, and each of the hundred

three apiece; and that this body thus made up to four hundred should

enter the council chamber with full powers and govern as they judged

best, and should convene the five thousand whenever they pleased.

 

The man who moved this resolution was Pisander, who was throughout

the chief ostensible agent in putting down the democracy. But he who

concerted the whole affair, and prepared the way for the

catastrophe, and who had given the greatest thought to the matter, was

Antiphon, one of the best men of his day in Athens; who, with a head

to contrive measures and a tongue to recommend them, did not willingly

come forward in the assembly or upon any public scene, being ill

looked upon by the multitude owing to his reputation for talent; and

who yet was the one man best able to aid in the courts, or before

the assembly, the suitors who required his opinion. Indeed, when he

was afterwards himself tried for his life on the charge of having been

concerned in setting up this very government, when the Four Hundred

were overthrown and hardly dealt with by the commons, he made what

would seem to be the best defence of any known up to my time.

Phrynichus also went beyond all others in his zeal for the

oligarchy. Afraid of Alcibiades, and assured that he was no stranger

to his intrigues with Astyochus at Samos, he held that no oligarchy

was ever likely to restore him, and once embarked in the enterprise,

proved, where danger was to be faced, by far the staunchest of them

all. Theramenes, son of Hagnon, was also one of the foremost of the

subverters of the democracy—a man as able in council as in debate.

Conducted by so many and by such sagacious heads, the enterprise,

great as it was, not unnaturally went forward; although it was no

light matter to deprive the Athenian people of its freedom, almost a

hundred years after the deposition of the tyrants, when it had been

not only not subject to any during the whole of that period, but

accustomed during more than half of it to rule over subjects of its

own.

 

The assembly ratified the proposed constitution, without a single

opposing voice, and was then dissolved; after which the Four Hundred

were brought into the council chamber in the following way. On account

of the enemy at Decelea, all the Athenians were constantly on the wall

or in the ranks at the various military posts. On that day the persons

not in the secret were allowed to go home as usual, while orders

were given to the accomplices of the conspirators to hang about,

without making any demonstration, at some little distance from the

posts, and in case of any opposition to what was being done, to

seize the arms and put it down. There were also some Andrians and

Tenians, three hundred Carystians, and some of the settlers in

Aegina come with their own arms for this very purpose, who had

received similar instructions. These dispositions completed, the

Four Hundred went, each with a dagger concealed about his person,

accompanied by one hundred and twenty Hellenic youths, whom they

employed wherever violence was needed, and appeared before the

Councillors of the Bean in the council chamber, and told them to

take their pay and be gone; themselves bringing it for the whole of

the residue of their term of office, and giving it to them as they

went out.

 

Upon the Council withdrawing in this way without venturing any

objection, and the rest of the citizens making no movement, the Four

Hundred entered the council chamber, and for the present contented

themselves with drawing lots for their Prytanes, and making their

prayers and sacrifices to the gods upon entering office, but

afterwards departed widely from the democratic system of government,

and except that on account of Alcibiades they did not recall the

exiles, ruled the city by force; putting to death some men, though not

many, whom they thought it convenient to remove, and imprisoning and

banishing others. They also sent to Agis, the Lacedaemonian king, at

Decelea, to say that they desired to make peace, and that he might

reasonably be more disposed to treat now that he had them to deal with

instead of the inconstant commons.

 

Agis, however, did not believe in the tranquillity of the city, or

that the commons would thus in a moment give up their ancient liberty,

but thought that the sight of a large Lacedaemonian force would be

sufficient to excite them if they were not already in commotion, of

which he was by no means certain. He accordingly gave to the envoys of

the Four Hundred an answer which held out no hopes of an

accommodation, and sending for large reinforcements from

Peloponnese, not long afterwards, with these and his garrison from

Decelea, descended to the very walls of Athens; hoping either that

civil disturbances might help to subdue them to his terms, or that, in

the confusion to be expected within and without the city, they might

even surrender without a blow being struck; at all events he thought

he would succeed in seizing the Long Walls, bared of their

defenders. However, the Athenians saw him come close up, without

making the least disturbance within the city; and sending out their

cavalry, and a number of their heavy infantry, light troops, and

archers, shot down some of his soldiers who approached too near, and

got possession of some arms and dead. Upon this Agis, at last

convinced, led his army back again and, remaining with his own

troops in the old position at Decelea, sent the reinforcement back

home, after a few days’ stay in Attica. After this the Four Hundred

persevering sent another embassy to Agis, and now meeting with a

better reception, at his suggestion dispatched envoys to Lacedaemon to

negotiate a treaty, being desirous of making peace.

 

They also sent ten men to Samos to reassure the army, and to explain

that the oligarchy was not established for the hurt of the city or the

citizens, but for the salvation of the country at large; and that

there were five thousand, not four hundred only, concerned;

although, what with their expeditions and employments abroad, the

Athenians had never yet assembled to discuss a question important

enough to bring five thousand of them together. The emissaries were

also told what to say upon all other points, and were so sent off

immediately after the establishment of the new government, which

feared, as it turned out justly, that the mass of seamen would not

be willing to remain under the oligarchical constitution, and, the

evil beginning there, might be the means of their overthrow.

 

Indeed at Samos the question of the oligarchy had already entered

upon a new phase, the following events having taken place just at

the time that the Four Hundred were conspiring. That part of the

Samian population which has been mentioned as rising against the upper

class, and as being the democratic party, had now turned round, and

yielding to the solicitations of Pisander during his visit, and of the

Athenians in the conspiracy at Samos, had bound themselves by oaths to

the number of three hundred, and were about to fall upon the rest of

their fellow citizens, whom they now in their turn regarded as the

democratic party. Meanwhile they put to death one Hyperbolus, an

Athenian, a pestilent fellow that had been ostracized, not from fear

of his influence or position, but because he was a rascal and a

disgrace to the city; being aided in this by Charminus, one of the

generals, and by some of the Athenians with them, to whom they had

sworn friendship, and with whom they perpetrated other acts of the

kind, and now determined to attack the people. The latter got wind

of what was coming, and told two of the generals, Leon and Diomedon,

who, on account of the credit which they enjoyed with the commons,

were unwilling supporters of the oligarchy; and also Thrasybulus and

Thrasyllus, the former a captain of a galley, the latter serving

with the heavy infantry, besides certain others who had ever been

thought most opposed to the conspirators, entreating them not to

look on and see them destroyed, and Samos, the sole remaining stay

of their empire, lost to the Athenians. Upon hearing this, the persons

whom they addressed now went round the soldiers one by one, and

urged them to resist, especially the crew of the Paralus, which was

made up entirely of Athenians and freemen, and had from time out of

mind been enemies of oligarchy, even when there was no such thing

existing; and Leon and Diomedon left behind some ships for their

protection in case of their sailing away anywhere themselves.

Accordingly, when the Three Hundred attacked the people, all these

came to the rescue, and foremost of all the crew of the Paralus; and

the Samian commons gained the victory, and putting to death some

thirty of the Three Hundred, and banishing three others of the

ringleaders, accorded an amnesty to the rest, and lived together under

a democratic government for the future.

 

The ship Paralus, with Chaereas, son of Archestratus, on board, an

Athenian who had taken an active part in the revolution, was now

without loss of time sent off by the Samians and the army to Athens to

report what had occurred; the fact that the Four Hundred were in power

not being yet known. When they sailed into harbour the Four Hundred

immediately arrested two or three of the Parali and, taking the vessel

from the rest, shifted them into a troopship and set them to keep

guard round Euboea. Chaereas, however, managed to secrete himself as

soon as he saw how things stood, and returning to Samos, drew a

picture to the soldiers of the horrors enacting at Athens, in which

everything was exaggerated; saying that all were punished with

stripes, that no one could say a word against the holders of power,

that the soldiers’ wives and children were outraged, and that it was

intended to seize and shut up the relatives of all in the army at

Samos who were not of the government’s way of thinking, to be put to

death in case