Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/411

CONSTITUTION OF SYRACUSE. 3g Hermokrates immediately employed in getting together triremes and mercenary soldiers to accomplish his restoration to Syracuse by force. 1 We shall presently see how he fared in this attempt. Meanwhile we may remark that the sentence of banishment, though in itself unjust, would appear amply justified in the eyes of his countrymen by his own subsequent resort to hostile mea- sures against them. The party opposed to Hermokrates had now the preponderance in Syracuse, and by their influence probably the sentence against him Was passed, under the grief and wrath occasioned by the defeat of Kyzikus. Unfortunately we have only the most scanty information as to the internal state of Syracuse during the period immediately succeeding the Athenian siege ; a period of marked popular sentiment and peculiar interest. As at Athens under the pressure of the Xerxeian invasion the energies of all the citi- zens, rich and poor, young and old, had been called forth for repulse of the common enemy, and had been not more than enough to achieve it. As at Athens after the battles of Salamis and Plataea, so at Syracuse after the destruction of the Athenian be- siegers the people, elate with the plenitude of recent effort, and conscious that the late successful defence had been the joint work of all, were in a state of animated democratical impulse, eager for the utmost extension and equality of political rights. Even before the Athenian siege, the government had been democratical ; a fact, which Thucydides notices as among the causes of the suc- cessful defence, by rendering the citizens unanimous in resistance, and by preventing the besiegers from exciting intestine discontent. 2 But in the period immediately after the siege, it underwent changes which are said to have rendered it still more democratical. On the proposition of an influential citizen named Diokles, a commis- sion of Ten was named, of which he was president, for the pur- pose of revising both the constitution and the legislation of the city. Some organic alterations were adopted, one of which was, that the lot should be adopted, instead of the principle of election, in the nomination of magistrates. Furthermore, a new code, or collection of criminal and civil enactments, was drawn up and sanctioned. We know nothing of its details, but we arc told th*t 1 Xen. Hellen. i, 1, 31 ; Diodor. xiii, 63. ^ Tfcu.yd. vii, 55