more therefore to pick up the men, and this defence was accepted by my fellow-citizens as highly reasonable, while the generals seemed to be condemned out of their own mouths. For while they kept on asserting that it was possible to save the men, the fact still remained that they abandoned them to their fate, set sail, and were gone.
'However, I am not surprised, I confess, at this grave misconception[10] on the part of Critias, for at the date of these occurrences he was not in Athens. He was away in Thessaly, laying the foundations of a democracy with Prometheus, and arming the Penestae[11] against their masters. Heaven forbid that any of his transactions there should be re-enacted here. However, I must say, I do heartily concur with him on one point. Whoever desires to exclude you from the government, or to strength the hands of your secret foes, deserves and ought to meet with condign punishment; but who is most capable of so doing? That you will best discover, I think, by looking a little more closely into the past and the present conduct of each of us. Well, then! up to the moment at which you were formed into a senatorial body, when the magistracies were appointed, and certain notorius 'informers' were brought to trial, we all held the same views. But later on, when our friends yonder began to hale respectable honest folk to prison and to death, I, on my side, began to differ from them. From the moment when Leon of Salamis,[12] a man of high and well-deserved reputation, was put to death, though he had not committed the shadow of a crime, I knew that all his equals must tremble for themselves, and, so trembling, be driven into opposition to the new constitution. In the same way, when Niceratus,[13] the son of Nicias, was arrested; a wealthy man, who, no more than his father, had never done anything that could be called popular or democratic in his life; it did not require much insight to discover that his compeers would be converted into our foes. But to go a step further: when it came to Antiphon[14] falling at our hands--Antiphon, who during the war contributed two fast-sailing men-of-war out of his own resources, it was then plain to me, that all who had ever been zealous and patriotic must eye us with suspicion. Once more I could not help speaking out in opposition to my colleagues when they suggested that each of us ought to seize some one resident alien.[15] For what could be more certain than that their death-warrant would turn the whole resident foreign population into enemies of the constitution. I spoke out again when they insisted on depriving the populace of their arms; it being no part of my creed that we ought to take the strength out of the city; nor, indeed, so far as I could see, had the Lacedaemonians stept between us and destruction merely that we might become a handful of people, powerless to aid them in the day of need. Had that been their object, they might have swept us away to the last man. A few more weeks, or even days, would have sufficed to extinguish us quietly by famine. Nor, again, can I say that the importation of mercenary foreign guards was altogether to my taste, when it would have been so easy for us to add to our own body a sufficient number of fellow- citizens to ensure our supremacy as governors over those we essayed to govern. But when I saw what an army of malcontents this government had raised up within the city walls, besides another daily increasing host of exiles without, I could not but regard the banishment of people like Thrasybulus and Anytus and Alcibiades[16] as impolitic. Had our object been to strengthen the rival power, we could hardly have set about it better than by providing the populace with the competent leaders whom they needed, and the would-be leaders themselves with an army of willing adherents.
[10] Reading with Cobet {paranenomikenai}.
[11] I.e. serfs--Penestae being the local name in Thessaly for the villein class. Like the {Eilotes} in Laconia, they were originally a conquered tribe, afterwards increased by prisoners of war, and formed a link between the freemen and born slaves.
[12] Cf. 'Mem.' IV. iv. 3; Plat. 'Apol.' 8. 32.
[13] Cf. Lysias, 'Or.' 18. 6.
[14] Probably the son of Lysidonides. See Thirlwall, 'Hist. of Greece,' vol. iv. p. 179 (ed. 1847); also Lysias, 'Or.' 12. contra Eratosth. According to Lysias, Theramenes, when a member of the first Oligarchy, betrayed his own closest friends, Antiphon and Archeptolemus. See Prof. Jebb, 'Attic Orators,' I. x. p. 266.
[15] The resident aliens, or {metoikoi}, 'metics,' so technically called.
[16] Isocr. 'De Bigis,' 355; and Prof. Jebb's 'Attic Orators,' ii. 230. In the defence of his father's career, which the younger Alcibiades, the defendant in this case (B.C. 397 probably) has occasion to make, he reminds the court, that under the Thirty, others were banished from Athens, but his father was driven out of the civilised world of Hellas itself, and finally murdered. See Plutarch, 'Alcibiades,' ad fin.
'I ask then is the man who tenders such advice in the full light of day justly to be regarded as a traitor, and not as a benefactor? Surely Critias, the peacemaker, the man who hinders the creation of many enemies, whose counsels tend to the acquistion of yet more friends,[17] cannot be accused of strengthening the hands of the enemy. Much more truly may the imputation be retorted on those who wrongfully appropriate their neighbours' goods and put to death those who have done no wrong. These are they who cause our adversaries to grow and multiply, and who in very truth are traitors, not to their friends only, but to themselves, spurred on by sordid love of gain.
[17] Or, 'the peacemaker, the healer of differences, the cementer of new alliances, cannot,' etc.
'I might prove the truth of what I say in many ways, but I beg you to look at the matter thus. With which condition of affairs here in Athens do you think will Thrasybulus and Anytus and the other exiles be the better pleased? That which I have pictured as desirable, or that which my colleagues yonder are producing? For my part I cannot doubt but that, as things now are, they are saying to themselves, 'Our allies muster thick and fast.' But were the real strength, the pith and fibre of this city, kindly disposed to us, they would find it an uphill task even to get a foothold anywhere in the country.
'Then, with regard to what he said of me and my propensity to be for ever changing sides, let me draw your attention to the following facts. Was it not the people itself, the democracy, who voted the constitution of the Four Hundred? This they did, because they had learned to think that the Lacedaemonians would trust any other form of government rather than a democracy. But when the efforts of Lacedaemon were not a whit relaxed, when Aristoteles, Melanthius, and Aristarchus,[18] and the rest of them acting as generals, were plainly minded to construct an intrenched fortress on the mole for the purpose of admitting the enemy, and so getting the city under the power of themselves and their associates;[19] because I got wind of these schemes, and nipped them in the bud, is that to be a traitor to one's friends?
[18] Cf. Thuc. viii. 90-92, for the behaviour of the Lacedaemonian party at Athens and the fortification of Eetioneia in B.C. 411.
[19] I.e. of the political clubs.
'Then he threw in my teeth the nickname 'Buskin,' as descriptive of an endeavour on my part to fit both parties. But what of the man who pleases neither? What in heaven's name are we to call him? Yes! you-- Critias? Under the democracy you were looked upon as the most arrant hater of the people, and under the aristocracy you have proved yourself the bitterest foe of everything respectable. Yes! Critias, I am, and ever have been, a foe of those who think that a democracy cannot reach perfection until slaves and those who, from poverty, would sell the city for a drachma, can get their drachma a day.[20] But not less am I, and ever have been, a pronounced opponent of those who do not think there can possibly exist a perfect oligarchy until the State is subjected to the despotism of a few. On the contrary, my own ambition has been to combine with those who are rich enough to possess a horse and shield, and to use them for the benefit of the State.[21] That was my ideal in the old days, and I hold to it without a shadow of turning still. If you can imagine when and where, in conjunction with despots or demagogues, I have set to my hand to deprive honest gentlefolk of their citizenship, pray speak. If you can convict me of such crimes at present, or can prove my perpetration of them in the past, I admit that I deserve to die, and by the worst of deaths.'
[20] I.e. may enjoy the senatorial stipend of a drachma a day = 9 3/4 pence.
[21] See Thuc. viii. 97, for a momentary realisation of that 'duly attempered compound of Oligarchy and Democracy' which Thucydides praises, and which Theramenes here refers to. It threw the power into the hands of the wealthier upper classes to the exclusion of the {nautikos okhlos}. See Prof. Jowett, vol. ii. note, ad loc. cit.
With these words he ceased, and the loud murmur of the applause which followed marked the favourable impression produced upon the senate. It was plain to Critias, that if he allowed his adversary's fate to be decided by formal voting, Theramenes would escape, and life to himself would become intolerable. Accordingly he stepped forward and spoke a word or two in the ears of the Thirty. This done, he went out and gave an order to the attendants with the daggers to stand close to the bar in full view of the senators. Again he entered and addressed the senate thus: 'I hold it to be the duty of a good president, when he sees the friends about him being made the dupes of some delusion, to intervene. That at any rate is what I propose to do. Indeed our friends here standing by
