Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/106

84 HISTORY OF GREECE. accomplices in thAt system of terrorism and assassination, where- by the democracy had been overthrown and the oligarchical rulers established in the senate-house. The earlier operations of the conspiracy, therefore, though among its worst features, could not be exposed to inquiry and trial without compromising these parties as fellow-criminals. Theramenes evaded tnis diffi- culty, by selecting for animadversion a recent act of the majority of the Four Hundred, which he and his partisans had opposed, and on which therefore he had no interests adverse either to justice or to the popular feeling. He stood foremost to impeach the last embassy sent by the Four Hundred to Sparta, sent with instruc- tions to purchase peace and alliance at almost any price, and connected with the construction of the fort at Ectioneia for the reception of an enemy's garrison. This act of manifest treason, in which Antiphon, Phrynichus, and ten other known envoys were concerned, was chosen as the special matter for public trial and unishment, not less on public grounds than with a view to his own favor in the renewed democracy. But the fact that it was Theramenes who thus denounced his old friends and fellow-con- spirators, after having lent hand and heart to their earlier and not less guilty deeds, was long remembered as a treacherous be- trayal, and employed in after days as an excuse for atroaous injustice against himself. 1 Of the twelve envoys who went on this mission, all except Phrynichus, Antiphon, Archeptolemus, and Onomakles, seem to have already escaped to Dekeleia or elsewhere. Phrynichus, as I have mentioned a few pages above, had been assassinated several days before. Respecting his memory, a condemnatory vote had already been just passed by the restored senate of Five Hundred, decreeing that his property should be confiscated and his house razed to the ground, and conferring the gift of citizenship, to- gether with a pecuniary recompense, on two foreigners wha 1 Lysias cont. Eratosthen. c. 11, p. 427, sects. 66-68. BovZopevos <5e (The- raraenes) r> iifieTepy nl.f/Qet Trtcrrdf SOKEIV elvai, 'Avn^tjvra KO fiov, tyi?t.Ta.Tovf ovTaf aiiTu, KOTj/^opuv inreKTeivev ' elf TOOOVTOV 6i ty&ev, diore apa ftev 6iii TTJV npbf ene'ivovf mariv Vfiuf KdTsdovA WUOTO, Ae TTJV Tryjdf vfiiif roiif 0f/lovf inrufaatv. Oomp vre Xcnophon, Hellen, r, 3. 30-33