Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/277

INCREASED TYRANNY OF THE THIRTY. 255 though Theramenes here became the victim of a much worse man than himself, it will not for that reason be proper to accord to him our admiration, which his own conduct will not at all be found to deserve. The reproaches of Kritias against him, founded on his conduct during the previous conspiracy of the Four Hundred, were in the main well founded. After having been one of the foremost originators of that conspiracy, he deserted his comrades as soon as he saw that it was likely to fail ; and Kritias had doubtless present to his mind the fate of Anti- phoG, who had been condemned and executed under the accusa- tion of Theramenes, together with a reasonable conviction that the latter would again turn against his colleagues in the same manner, if circumstances should encourage him to do so. Nor was Kritias wrong in denouncing the perfidy of Theramenes with regard to the generals after the battle of Arginusa?, the death of whom he was partly instrumental in bringing about, though only as an auxiliary cause, and not with that extreme stretch of nefarious stratagem, which Xenophon and others have imputed to him. He was a selfish, cunning, and faithless man, ready to enter into conspiracies, yet never foreseeing their consequences, and breaking faith to the ruin of colleagues whom he had first encouraged, when he found them more consistent and thorough- going in crime than himself. 1 Such high-handed violence, by Kritias and the majority of the Thirty, carried though, even against a member of their own Board, by intimidation of the senate, left a feeling of disgust ind dissension among their own partisans from which their |x>ver never recovered. Its immediate effect, however, was to render them, apparently, and in their own estimation, more powerful than ever. All open manifestation of dissent being now silenced, they proceeded to the uttermost limits of cruel and licentious tyranny. They made proclamation, that every one not included in the list of Three Thousand, should depart without the His admiration for the manner of death of Theramcnes doubtless contrib- uted to make him rank that Athenian with ThcmistoklOs and Pcrikles (Dc Orat.iii, 16, 59). 1 The epithets applied by Aristophanes to Theramenes (Ran. 541-966 coincide pretty exactly with those in the speech just noticed, which Xeno phon ascribes to Kritias against him.