to carry on the war with an enemy whose fleet now far outnumbered that of Athens, if the whole weight of Persia should further be placed in the scale against them. The speakers were silenced, and Peisandros added that the establishment of oligarchy would win for them the confidence of the Persian king; that Alkibiades was the only man who could do the work for them; that constitutional forms were a matter of small moment compared with the safety of the state; and that if they did not like oligarchy when they had fairly tried it, why, then it would be very easy to restore the democracy.1 Appointment of Athenian commissioners for settling affairs with Alkibiades and Impudence of assertion will go a long way with men who are worn down by a seemingly endless series of crushing disasters coming upon a struggle which had now lasted for nearly a generation. No one asked what grounds there were for believing that the influence of Alkibiades with Tissaphernes was what he represented it to be, or whether the Persian king would hold himself bound by the bargain of this satrap, even if that bargain should be made. In this unreflecting temper they resolved to send Peisandros with ten commissioners authorised to settle matters as they might think fit with Alkibiades and Tissaphernes, and to put Leon and Diomedon in place of Skironides and Phrynichos.2 Tissaphernes. Organisation of the oli garchic con spiracy at Athens. But before he could return to Samos Peisandros knew that he had still much to do at Athens. The Demos was not yet put down; the army at Samos was strongly opposed to any constitutional change; and there was no guarantee that the old energy of the Athenian people might not at any moment be roused against the oligarchic conspirators. It was necessary therefore to set in order the oligarchic machinery without which the foundations of the democracy could not possibly be thrown down. The polity of Athens rested on freedom of speech; and if this could be summarily repressed, the constitutional forms and the modes of legal procedure to which they were so much attached would be found most useful in riveting their chains. Well knowing how the mouths of the citizens must be gagged, Peisandros went round to all the political Clubs, and concerted with them a plan of action to be carried out by the leaders who should remain behind him. At the head of these was the Rhetor Antiphon. Gifted with great natural powers sharpened by a singular acuteness, he had taken to a calling which made it hard, if not impossible, for him to attain to a position like that of Perikles in the public assembly. The professed rhetorician was one who, it was supposed, had given his whole mind to devising 1 Thục. viii, 53. 2 Ib. viii. 54. tricks of debate and advocacy and with whom ordinary citizens stood at an unfair disadvantage. But if the occupation of Antiphon interfered with his popularity, it added largely to his gains. Disliking the demos partly perhaps because popular feeling had debarred him a public career, but more probably from a general leaning to oligarchy, he threw himself into the conspiracy for upsetting the Athenian constitution with an energy equal to his ability, and for this end worked with consummate skill the machinery of assassination. But in private life, we are told, he was a man of genial character, sober, kindly in his relations with his family, and affectionate in his intercourse with his friends. He had, in short, the estimable qualities of Nikias; and for the oligarchic Thucydides this was enough. Antiphon becomes in his eyes a man 'second to none of his age in virtue.' This employer of murdering bravoes was ably seconded not only by Theramenes, the son of Hagnon founder of Amphipolis, but by Phrynichos, who in his hatred and fear of Alkibiades hesitated not to inflict upon Athens a system which according to his own previous warning must be fatal to her empire and could not be beneficial to himself.1 A gleam of brightness seemed to fall on the arms of Athens after the departure of Leon and Diomedon for the Egean. Their first descent was on Rhodes, where they found the Peloponnesian fleet still drawn up on shore. After a victory over the Rhodians who came out to encounter them, they made Chalkê their naval station in preference to Kos, as furnishing a better look-out for the enemy's fleet in case it should put to sea. Meanwhile the Athenian fortress of Delphinion was fast approaching its completion, and urgent messages were sent to Rhodes for immediate help. But before it could arrive, Pedaritos with the whole force of the Chians, aided by some allies, fell upon the stockade around the Athenian ships and succeeded in taking part of it, together with some vessels which were drawn up on shore. The arrival of the Athenians changed the fortunes of the day. Pedaritos was slain and the loss to the Chians was heavy both in men and arms. It was at this moment when the Chians were still more strictly blockaded than they had been, and when they already felt keenly the pressure of famine, that Peisandros and the commissioners from Athens reached Magnesia with their proposals for the alliance of Persia with the now oligarchical city. Alkibiades saw at once that he was caught in a trap, the plain fact being that Tissaphernes had no intention of making any definite covenant with the Athenians. One course only remained open to him. By some means 1 Thục. viii. 68, 3. Victories of the Athenians at Rhodes and Chios. Death of Pedaritos. Abortive negotiation of the Athenian commissioners with Tissa phernes. he must make it appear that the failure of the negotiation was the work not of the satrap but of the Athenians themselves; and he sought to effect this by raising the terms for Tissaphernes at each conference. The first demand was for the surrender of all Ionia to the king: the second involved the cession of all the islands lying off the eastern shores of the Egean, and was carried even further. With both these demands the commissioners expressed their willingness to comply; and Alkibiades was almost at his wits' end to devise conditions more humiliating, when it struck him that they might be less complaisant if in a third conference the king should insist on maintaining in the Egean as large a fleet as might suit his purposes. The point beyond which Athenian oligarchs would refuse further to abase themselves and to dishonour their country was not easily reached; but Alkibiades had reached it at last by proposing terms which contemptuously swept away the real or so-called convention of Kallias. The commissioners, now thoroughly angry, departed with the feeling that they had been both insulted and cheated by Alkibiades. Unfortunately, the Athenian army at Samos drew their own inference from this rebuff of the oligarchic envoys: and this inference was that in his heart Alkibiades leant to the democracy, and that he might be induced to bring Tissaphernes into active alliance with it. His ability to do this was questioned by neither side. Progress of the oligar chic conspiracy in Samos. 411 B.C. The spring of the next year, the twenty-first of this weary war, was ushered in by no good omens for the endurance of Athenian empire. While Astyochos remained inactive at Rhodes, the Chians after the death of Pedaritos had chosen as their commander a Spartan named Leon who had come out as a hoplite serving on board the fleet of which Antisthenes was the admiral.' With him they received a reinforcement of twelve ships which were keeping guard off Miletos. They were thus enabled to oppose six-and-thirty ships to the two-and-thirty triremes of the Athenians; and in the fight which followed they were now for the first time not defeated. In short, the tide had begun to turn in their favour, while their enemies were almost daily harassed by fresh distractions. The return of Peisandros and his fellow envoys after their ignominious dismissal by Alkibiades had convinced the traitors in the Athenian camp that no aid was to be looked for from Tissaphernes, and that the relation of Alkibiades himself with the Athenian oligarchs was one of open war. They affected to feel special satisfaction in being rid of a man so little likely to work in harmony with them; and they resolved only the more determinately to do by themselves what they had hoped to achieve by his aid. Their first step was 1 Thục. viii. 61, 62. to make overtures to such of the present Samian government as might seem favourably inclined to oligarchy. Shortsighted as well as treacherous, they still fancied that oligarchy would advance the interests of Athens; and as by this they meant enrichment and license for themselves, they were ready to carry on the war from their own private resources. Their activity, in short, was the result of an absorbing and pitiless selfishness, in strange contrast with that nobler energy which in the stirring words of Herodotos the Athenians had displayed when, just a hundred years before, they had risen up against the Peisistratidai. Revolt of 2 3 There was, in truth, no end to their folly and madness. They would have it that oligarchy must strengthen an empire which Phrynichos had solemnly warned them it would Thasos. most assuredly dissolve; and in this frenzy they dispatched Peisandros with five of the commissioners to Athens to complete the work of revolution there, and to establish oligarchies in any towns which they might visit on their way. With the remaining five Diotrephes was sent as general to operate in the Thrace-ward regions. His first exploit was to suppress the government of the people in Thasos and to place the oligarchs in power. Two months later the oligarchs showed their gratitude for the boon by fortifying the town and openly joining the enemies of Athens. Political as. With the aid of some hoplites which he gathered as he went along Peisandros did his errand well. In the several cities which he passed the few were enabled to thrust aside the many; and when he reached Athens, he found that there was little more for him to do. He had probably sent to his partisans full tidings of the breach with Alkibiades, and the conspirators were perhaps not sorry to be quit of his interference and to carry on their work purely as a political revolution without reference to any foreign aid. They boldly attacked the citadel, and for the time freedom of speech was at an end. The first blow had fallen upon Androkles, a man who had been prominent among the accusers of Alkibiades before his departure to Sicily; and by a strange irony, while that restless schemer was throwing his influence into the opposite scale, this unhappy victim was offered up for the special purpose of winning his favour and with it the money of Tissaphernes. The work of assassination once begun was not allowed to flag until it had achieved its purpose. Not many murders, however, were needed to silence the people. In the assembly the conspirators asserted loudly that no pay ought under any circumstances to be issued to any citizens except while they were actually serving in war, and that not more than five thousand must be allowed to retain the franchise, the principle being that they only should have a vote who could contribute substantially to the needs of the state. Even this was a cheat.. The conspirators had no intention of sharing power, if they should secure it, with others; and they took their measures accordingly. Not a subject was proposed for discussion except after their dictation; the men who rose to speak cn these subjects belonged to their faction, and the very words of their speeches were pre-arranged. At the same time beyond the walls of the assembly young men, hired as bravoes and murderers, struck down citizens whose presence might be inconvenient, and picked off especially all the popular speakers. The man who ventured to oppose a measure or utter a protest against revolution disappeared soon and for ever; and with the silencing of all opposition followed perfect impunity for the assassins. The order of society was for the time broken up. No man could put trust even in those whom he had looked upon as his friends. While Antiphon with his partisans took advantage of these vague and indefinite terrors, he availed himself, with even greater ingenuity, of the existing constitutional forms for the more effectual subjugation of the people. The Council of the Five Hundred still held their meetings; and if there were some who had spirit enough to absent themselves from the Senate-house, there were others who would feel that even their absence might tell as much against them as a speech in opposition to oligarchic innovations. Their presence was indeed all that Antiphon wanted, for if they were present, they must vote; and by their vote they must be bound. The revolution, in short, was practically accomplished; and the highest and best characteristic of the Athenian people-their respect for law and order—was thus ingeniously used as an instrument for establishing and keeping up a reign of terror. While this terror was at its height, Peisandros with his colleagues arrived. They set themselves at once to complete the work which a series of dastardly murders had brought so nearly to a successful issue. Their first proposal was to appoint ten commissioners, Peisandros seemingly being one of them, with absolute powers, charged to be ready by a given day with a plan for the better government of the city. On the day named, the assembly was summoned, not, as usual, to the Pnyx within the walls, where the interference of the 1 Thục. viii, Cô. FF |