Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/331

RESTRICTED CITIZENSHIP. 309 they Lad not sanctioned, or suppressing that which they had sanctioned. 1 The archonship of Eukleides, succeeding immediately to the anarchy, as the archonship of Py thodorus, or the period of the Thirty, was denominated, became thus a cardinal point or epoch in Athenian history. We cannot doubt that the laws came forth out of this revision considerably modified, though unhappily we possess no particulars on the subject. We learn that the political franchise was, on the proposition of Aristophon, so far restricted for the future, that no person cculd be a citizen by birth except the son of citizen-parents, on both sides ; whereas previously, it had been sufficient if the father alone was a citizen. 2 The rhetor Lysias, by station a metic, had not only suffered great loss, narrowly escaping death from the Thirty, who actually pat to death his brother Polemarchus, but had contributed a large sum to assist the armed efforts of the exiles under Thrasybulus in Peiraus. As a reward and compensation for such antecedents, the latter proposed that the franchise of citizen should be conferred upon him ; but we are told that this decree, though adopted by the people, was afterwards indicted by Archinus as illegal or informal, and cancelled. Lysias, thus disappointed of the citizenship, passed the remainder of his life as an isoteles, or non-freeman on the best condition, exempt from the peculiar burdens upon the class of metics. 3 Such refusal of citizenship to an eminent man like Lysias, who had both acted and suffered in the cause of the democracy, when combined with the decree of Aristophon above noticed, implies a degree of augmented strictness which we can only partially explain. It was not merely the renewal of her democracy for which Athens had now to provide. She had also to accommodate her legislation and administration to her future march as an 1 I presume this to be the sense of sect. 21 of the Oration of Lysias against him : el (ilv vfyouf hl&rjv nepl r/yf uva-/pa^f/f, etc. ; also sects. 33-45 : napa- KaXoffj.Et' iv ry Kpiaei Tt/Mpetcrdai roi)f T^V v^ercpav vo^io^Effiav a(j>avtovTa< etc. The tenor of the oration, however, is unfortunately obscure. a ISSBUS, Or. viii, De Kiron. Sort. sect. 61; Demosthcn. cont. Eubulid. c. 1( p. 1307. Pluiarcb, Vit. x, Orat. (Lysias) p. 836 Taylor, Vit. Lysite, p. M.