Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/217

RESOLUTION OF THE SENATE. 195 reason among many others, for disbelieving the bribes and the all-pervading machinations which Xenophon represents him as having put forth, in order to procure the condemnation of the generals. His speaking in the first public assembly, and his numerous partisans voting in the second, doubtless contributed much to that result, and by his own desire. But to ascribe to his bribes and intrigues the violent and overruling emotion of the Athenian public, is, in my judgment, a supposition alike unnat- ural and preposterous both with regard to them and with regard to him. When the senate met, after the Apaturia, to discharge the duty confided to it by the last public assembly, of determining in what manner the generals should be judged, and submitting their opinion for the consideration of the next assembly, the senator Kallixenus at the instigation of Theramenes, if Xenophon is to be believed proposed, and the majority of the senate adopted, the following resolution : " The Athenian people having already heard, in the previous assembly, both the accusation and the de- fence of the generals, shall at once come to a vote on the subject by tribes. For each tribe two urns shall be placed, and the herald of each tribe shall proclaim : All citizens who think the generals guilty, for not having rescued the warriors who had conquered in the battle, shall drop their pebbles into the foremost urn ; all who think otherwise, into the hindmost. Should the generals be pro- nounced guilty, by the result of the voting, they shall be delivered to the Eleven, and punished with death ; their property shall be confiscated, the tenth part being set apart for the goddess Athene." 1 One single vote was to embrace the case of all the eight generals. 2 The unparalleled burst of mournful and vindictive feeling at the festival of the Apaturia, extending by contagion from the rela- tives of the deceased to many other citizens, and the probability thus created that the coming assembly would sanction the most violent measures against the generals, probably emboldened Kallixenus to propose, and prompted the senate to adopt, this deplorable resolution. As soon as the assembly met, it was read and moved by Kallixenus himself, as coming from the senate in discharge of the commission imposed upon them by the people. Xcnoph. Hellen. i, 7, 8, 9. * Xcnoph. Ilcllcn. i, 7, 34.