Most of the obscurity which surrounds these proceedings at Athens arises from the fact, that no notice has been taken of the intense and spontaneous emotion which the desertion of the men on the wrecks was naturally calculated to produce on the public mind. It would, in my judgment, have been unaccountable if such an effect had not been produced, quite apart from all instigations of Theramenês. The moment that we recognize this capital fact, the series of transactions becomes comparatively perspicuous and explicable.
Dr. Thirlwall, as well as Sievers (Commentat. de Xenophontis Hellen. pp. 25-30), suppose Theramenês to have acted in concert with the oligarchical party, in making use of this incident to bring about the ruin of generals odious to them, several of whom were connected with Alkibiadês. I confess, that I see nothing to countenance this idea: but at all events, the cause here named is only secondary, not the grand and dominant fact of the period.
[287] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 7, 8, 9.
[288] Xenoph. Hellen. i. 7, 34.
[289] I cannot concur with the opinion expressed by Dr. Thirlwall in Appendix iii. vol. iv, p. 501, of his History, on the subject of the psephism of Kannônus. The view which I give in the text coincides with that of the expositors generally, from whom Dr. Thirlwall dissents.
The psephism of Kannônus was the only enactment at Athens which made it illegal to vote upon the case of two accused persons at once. This had now grown into a practice in the judicial proceedings at Athens; so that two or more prisoners, who were ostensibly tried under some other law, and not under the psephism of Kannônus, with its various provisions, would yet have the benefit of this its particular provision, namely, severance of trial.
In the particular case before us, Euryptolemus was thrown back to appeal to the psephism itself; which the senate, by a proposition unheard of at Athens, proposed to contravene. The proposition of the senate offended against the law in several different ways. It deprived the generals of trial before a sworn dikastery; it also deprived them of the liberty of full defence during a measured time: but farther, it prescribed that they should all be condemned or absolved by one and the same vote; and, in this last respect, it sinned against the psephism of Kannônus. Euryptolemus in his speech, endeavoring to persuade an exasperated assembly to reject the proposition of the senate and adopt the psephism of Kannônus as the basis of the trial, very prudently dwells upon the severe provisions of the psephism, and artfully slurs over what he principally aims at, the severance of the trials, by offering his relative Periklês to be tried first. The words δίχα ἕκαστον (sect. 37) appear to me to be naturally construed with κατὰ τὸ Καννώνου ψήφισμα, as they are by most commentators, though Dr. Thirlwall dissents from it. It is certain that this was the capital feature of illegality, among many, which the proposition of the senate presented, I mean the judging and condemning all the generals by one vote. It was upon this point that the amendment of Euryptolemus was taken, and that the obstinate resistance of Sokratês turned (Plato, Apol. 20; Xenoph. Memor. i, 1, 18).
Farther, Dr. Thirlwall, in assigning what he believes to have been the real tenor of the psephism of Kannônus, appears to me to have been misled by the Scholiast in his interpretation of the much-discussed passage of Aristophanês, Ekklezias. 1089:—
Τουτὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα κατὰ τὸ Καννώνου σαφῶς
Ψήφισμα, βινεῖν δεῖ με διαλελημμένον,