[162] Plutarch, Alkibiadês, c. 16. This is doubtless one of the statements which the composer of the Oration of Andokidês against Alkibiadês found current in respect to the conduct of the latter (sect. 123). Nor is there any reason for questioning the truth of it.
[163] Thucyd. v, 106. τὸ δὲ χωρίον αὐτοὶ ᾤκησαν, ἀποίκους ὕστερον πεντακοσίους πέμψαντες. Lysander restored some Melians to the island after the battle of Ægospotami (Xenoph. Hellen. ii, 2, 9): some, therefore, must have escaped or must have been spared.
[164] Such is also the opinion of Dr. Thirlwall, Hist. Gr. vol. iii, ch. xxiv, p. 348.
[165] Dionys. Hal. Judic. de Thucydid. c. 37-42, pp. 906-920, Reisk: compare the remarks in his Epistol. ad Cn. Pompeium, de Præcipuis Historicis, p. 774, Reisk.
[166] Plutarch, Alkibiad. 16. τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἀεὶ τὰ πραότατα τῶν ὀνομάτων τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασι τιθεμένους, παιδιὰς καὶ φιλανθρωπίας. To the same purpose Plutarch, Solon, c. 15.
[167] Compare also what Brasidas says in his speech to the Akanthians, v, 86 ἴσχυος δικαιώσει, ἣν ἡ τύχη ἔδωκεν, etc.
[168] See above, vol. v, ch. xliii, pp. 204-239, for the history of these events. I now take up the thread from that chapter.
[169] Mr. Mitford, in the spirit which is usual with him, while enlarging upon the suffering occasioned by this extensive revolution both of inhabitants and of property throughout Sicily, takes no notice of the cause in which it originated, namely, the number of foreign mercenaries whom the Gelonian dynasty had brought in and enrolled as new citizens (Gelon alone having brought in ten thousand, Diodor. xi, 72), and the number of exiles whom they had banished and dispossessed.
I will here notice only one of his misrepresentations respecting the events of this period, because it is definite as well as important (vol. iv, p. 9, chap. xviii, sect. 1).
“But thus (he says) in every little state, lands were left to become public property, or to be assigned to new individual owners. Everywhere, then, that favorite measure of democracy, the equal division of the lands of the state, was resolved upon: a measure impossible to be perfectly executed; impossible to be maintained as executed; and of very doubtful advantage, if it could be perfectly executed and perfectly maintained.”