Within seven years after the fall of the Four Hundred, Athens was again ruled by an oligarchy. The events which led to the establishment of this second oligarchy were in one respect like those to which the earlier oligarchy owed its origin, since they began with the destruction of an Athenian fleet: but, as they were simpler and less complicated, they can be more briefly narrated.
In the year 405 B.C. the Athenians sent nearly the whole of their naval force to oppose the Lacedæmonian fleet in the eastern waters of the Ægean sea, along the coast of Asia Minor. In number of ships the Athenian and Lacedæmonian fleets were nearly equal: in all else they were ill-matched antagonists. The Lacedæmonians were commanded by Lysander, the ablest admiral ever produced by Sparta: the condition of the Athenians was such as might be expected in the year immediately following an undiscriminating execution of the commanders of the fleet. Among the six[220] admirals Conon alone was a man of ability, discipline was lax, and the operations were worse designed and worse executed than any others in the whole course of the war. Lysander took the city of Lampsacus on the eastern shore of the narrow channel of the Hellespont which divides Europe from Asia. The Athenian commanders took station directly opposite on the western shore of the Hellespont, which at this point is only two miles wide, and there anchored their ships close to the open beach of Ægospotami. The nearest place from which they could get supplies was Sestos, two miles distant: and all the commanders except Conon and the captain of the Paralus, the despatch-boat, allowed their men to go ashore and wander far inland. Lysander watched his opportunity, found the ships for the most part deserted by their crews, and captured the whole of them (a hundred and eighty in number), except the Paralus and a little squadron of eight ships under the immediate command of Conon[221].
After the battle of Ægospotami Athens could make no effectual resistance. Lysander blockaded the city by land and sea, and in the spring of 404 B.C. the Athenians were compelled by starvation to capitulate and admit the Spartans. Lysander occupied the city, compelled the Athenians to pull down at least a great part of the long walls which defended Athens and Piræus, to readmit the members of the oligarchical party who had gone into exile, and to submit to be governed by them[222]. Arbitrary power was assumed by a Board of Thirty, who, being supported by Lysander, were able for eight months to oppress their fellow citizens with violence and rapacity such as had not been experienced in Athens even under the Four Hundred[223].
The governments both of the Four Hundred and of the Thirty were too short-lived to furnish us with materials for forming any precise estimate of Greek oligarchy in general. They never went beyond the stage of being revolutionary or half-established governments: and, being in constant terror of destruction, they were obliged to resort to cruel measures which a settled oligarchy would not need. The mere fact that Greek oligarchies were often long-lived governments suffices to show that they were not, like the rule of the Four Hundred or the Thirty, so sanguinary and oppressive as to provoke successful mutiny or rebellion: and we are entitled to believe that, as Athenian democracy was the best of Greek democracies, so Athenian oligarchy was the worst of Greek oligarchies.
IV. The conquest of the Greek cities by Macedonia.
The division of the Greek people into a large number of small independent cities was a system which answered well enough as long as the political horizon included no states other than Greek cities and Asiatic Empires. The Macedonians were a European people inhabiting a large territory to the north of Greece, and united under a strong military monarchy. They had formerly lived under a tribal monarchy of the heroic type: in the fourth century B.C. they may be compared with the Goths under Alaric or the Salian Franks under Clovis. They were devoted to military pursuits: they had some of the spirit of individual independence which is usually found in a rude people of warriors, and they showed it even under Alexander the Great, the strongest of all their kings[224]: but their king was their commander, and in time of war, so long as he commanded ably, he enjoyed supreme power. To resist such a people as the Macedonians the Greeks would have had to do the impossible: to unlearn in a moment all the maxims of jealous precaution against rival cities by which they had regulated their conduct, to give up the practice of politics in miniature and understand at once what was needed in politics on a larger scale. As it was, the old jealousy between Athens and Sparta continued to be as active as ever, only one or two Greek states joined in resistance to the invader, and after the battle of Chæroneia in 338 B.C. Greece lay at the mercy of Philip king of Macedonia.
[CHAPTER VI.]
ARISTOTLE'S CLASSIFICATION OF POLITIES.
I have now described, in a roughly chronological order, the different kinds of government which successively appeared in the Greek states from their infancy to their overthrow by Macedonia. I proceed to give clearer ideas both of the principles on which those governments were constructed and of the full meaning of certain terms employed in the foregoing descriptions of them, by stating the classification of polities which Aristotle gives us in his treatise on Politics. The time at which this work was written cannot be precisely determined, but part of it was certainly composed after, and other parts probably before, the battle of Chæroneia[225].