Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/97

DOWNFALL OF THE FOUR HUXDKED. 75 elders entitled probuli had originally counselled their appoint- ment, now denounced them along with the rest, though severely taunted by the oligarchical leader Peisander for their inconsisten cy. Votes were finally passed : 1. To depose the Four Hundred ; 2. To place the whole government in the hands of The Five Thousand; 3. Every citizen, who furnished a panoply, either for himself or for any one else, was to be of right a member of this body of The Five Thousand ; 4. No citizen was to receive pay fjr any political function, on pain of becoming solemnly accursed, or excommunicated. 1 Such were the points determined by the logue of contention between Peisander and Sophokles, one of the Athenian probuli, mentioned in Aristotel. Ehctoric. iii, 18, 2. There was no other occasion on which the Four Hundred were ever publicly thrown upon their defence at Athens. This was not Sophokles the tragic poet, but another person of the same anme, who appears afterwards as one of the oligarchy of Thirty. 1 Thucyd. viii, 97. Kat KKxhijaiav fweAcyov, uiav (itv etuWf TOTE irpurw if TT/V Tivvna tcalovfiEVTiv, ovirep Kal uAAore dutiEaav, iv $Kp Kal rove rj-ca- Koaiovf /caraTravaavrec rote irevTaKiaxiTiioif iipTjQiffavTO ra trpa-y- fiara xapadovvai eivat 6e aiiruv, oTroaoi Kal 6ir%a irape%ov T a i Kal fticr&ov fit/deva Qepecv, fiTidefiia apxy, el <Je [*?), EKupaTov tiroirjaavTO, 'Ej'i'yvovro de Kal uW.ai vartpov irvKval e/c/cA^crtat, a<jt' uv Kal v ofio& ET a$ nal TO.?. /la eipi) QiaavTO ef rt/v iroTiiTeiav. In this passage I dissent from the commentators on two points. Fust, they understand this number Five Thousand as a real definite list of citizer s, containing five thousand names, neither more nor less. Secondly, they con- strue vofiodtTOf, not in the ordinary meaning which it bears in Athenian constitutional language, but in the sense of fvyypa^etf (c. 67), "persons to model the constitution, corresponding to the vyypa0etc appointed by the aristocratical party a little before," to use the words of Dr. Arnold. As to the first point, which is sustained also by Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. Gr. ch. xxviii, vol. iv, p. 51, 2d ed.), Dr. Arnold really admits what is the ground of my opinion, when he says : " Of course the number of citizens capable of providing themselves with heavy arms must have much exceeded Jive thousand: and it is said in the defence of Polystratus, one of the Four Hundred (Lysias, p. 675, Rei.sk.), that he drew up a list of nine thousand I5ut we must suppose that all who could furnish heavy arms were eligible t'r.Jc the number of the Five Thousand, whether the members were fixed on by lot, by election, or by rotation ; as it had been proposed to appoint the Four Hundred by rotation out of the Five Thousand (viii, 93)." Dr. Arnold here throws out a supposition which by no means conforms to UK, exact sense of the words of Thucydides elvai 6e OVTUV, OTTOUOI tat at. These words distin?tly signify, that all who furnished