The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]

Grecian Buckles

(In the British Museum)

CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE DEMOCRACY RESTORED

The period intervening between the defeat of Ægospotami (October, 405 B.C.), and the re-establishment 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.

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 had no empire, no tribute, no fleet, no fortifications at Piræus, no long walls, not a single fortified place in Attica except the city itself.

Of these losses, the Athenians made little account at the first epoch of their re-establishment; 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”; realising 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 re-entering 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 Piræus. 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).

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 as 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 Piræus, 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 Lacedæmonians, 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 Piræus 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 favourable 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.