But presently arose the delicate, yet unavoidable question, “How are we to account for the omission of this sacred duty, in our official despatch to the Athenian people?” Here the generals differed among themselves, as Euryptolemus expressly states: Periklês and Diomedon carried it, against the judgment of their colleagues, that in the official despatch, which was necessarily such as could be agreed to by all, nothing should be said about the delegation to Theramenês and others; the whole omission being referred to the terrors of the storm. But though such was the tenor of the official report, there was nothing to hinder the generals from writing home and communicating individually with their friends in Athens as each might think fit; and in these unofficial communications, from them as well as from others who went home from the armament,—communications not less efficacious than the official despatch, in determining the tone of public feeling at Athens,—they did not disguise their convictions that the blame of not performing the duty belonged to Theramenês. Having thus a man like Theramenês to throw the blame upon, they did not take pains to keep up the story of the intolerable storm, but intimated that there had been nothing to hinder him from performing the duty if he had chosen. It is this which he accuses them of having advanced against him, so as to place him as the guilty man before the Athenian public: it was this which made him, in retaliation and self-defence, violent and unscrupulous in denouncing them as the persons really blamable.[281] As they had made light of this alleged storm, in casting the blame upon him, so he again made light of it, and treated it as an insufficient excuse, in his denunciations against them; taking care to make good use of their official despatch, which virtually exonerated him, by its silence, from any concern in the matter.
Such is the way in which I conceive the relations to have stood between the generals on one side and Theramenês on the other, having regard to all that is said both in Xenophon and in Diodorus. But the comparative account of blame and recrimination between these two parties is not the most important feature of the case. The really serious inquiry is, as to the intensity or instant occurrence of the storm. Was it really so instant and so dangerous, that the duty of visiting the wrecks could not be performed, either before the ships went back to Arginusæ, or afterwards? If we take the circumstances of the case, and apply them to the habits and feelings of the English navy, if we suppose more than one thousand seamen, late comrades in the victory, distributed among twenty damaged and helpless hulls, awaiting the moment when these hulls would fill and consign them all to a watery grave, it must have been a frightful storm indeed, which would force an English admiral even to go back to his moorings leaving these men so exposed, or which would deter him, if he were at his moorings, from sending out the very first and nearest ships at hand to save them. And granting the danger to be such that he hesitated to give the order, there would probably be found officers and men to volunteer, against the most desperate risks, in a cause so profoundly moving all their best sympathies. Now, unfortunately for the character of Athenian generals, officers, and men, at Arginusæ,—for the blame belongs, though in unequal proportions, to all of them,—there exists here strong presumptive proof that the storm on this occasion was not such as would have deterred any Grecian seamen animated by an earnest and courageous sense of duty. We have only to advert to the conduct and escape of Eteonikus and the Peloponnesian fleet from Mitylênê to Chios; recollecting that Mitylênê was separated from the promontory of Kanê on the Asiatic mainland, and from the isles of Arginusæ, by a channel only one hundred and twenty stadia broad,[282] about fourteen English miles. Eteonikus, apprized of the defeat by the Peloponnesian official signal-boat, desired that boat to go out of the harbor, and then to sail into it again with deceptive false news, to the effect that the Peloponnesians had gained a complete victory: he then directed his seamen, after taking their dinners, to depart immediately, and the masters of the merchant vessels silently to put their cargoes aboard, and get to sea also. The whole fleet, triremes and merchant vessels both, thus went out of the harbor of Mitylênê and made straight for Chios, whither they arrived in safety; the merchant vessels carrying their sails, and having what Xenophon calls “a fair wind.”[283] Now it is scarcely possible that all this could have taken place, had there blown during this time an intolerable storm between Mitylênê and Arginusæ. If the weather was such as to allow of the safe transit of Eteonikus and all his fleet from Mitylênê to Chios, it was not such as to form a legitimate obstacle capable of deterring any generous Athenian seaman, still less a responsible officer, from saving his comrades exposed on the wrecks near Arginusæ. Least of all was it such as ought to have hindered the attempt to save them, even if such attempt had proved unsuccessful. And here the gravity of the sin consists, in having remained inactive while the brave men on the wrecks were left to be drowned. All this reasoning, too, assumes the fleet to have been already brought back to its moorings at Arginusæ, discussing only how much was practicable to effect after that moment, and leaving untouched the no less important question, why the drowning men were not picked up before the fleet went back.
I have thought it right to go over these considerations, indispensable to the fair appreciation of this memorable event, in order that the reader may understand the feelings of the assembly and the public of Athens, when the generals stood before them, rebutting the accusations of Theramenês and recriminating in their turn against him. The assembly had before them the grave and deplorable fact, that several hundreds of brave seamen had been suffered to drown on the wrecks, without the least effort to rescue them. In explanation of this fact, they had not only no justification, at once undisputed and satisfactory, but not even any straightforward, consistent, and uncontradicted statement of facts. There were discrepancies among the generals themselves, comparing their official with their unofficial, as well as with their present statements, and contradictions between them and Theramenês, each having denied the sufficiency of the storm as a vindication for the neglect imputed to the other. It was impossible that the assembly could be satisfied to acquit the generals on such a presentation of the case; nor could they well know how to apportion the blame between them and Theramenês. The relatives of the men left to perish would be doubtless in a state of violent resentment against one or other of the two, perhaps against both. Under these circumstances, it could hardly have been the sufficiency of their defence,—it must have been rather the apparent generosity of their conduct towards Theramenês, in formally disavowing all charge of neglect against him, though he had advanced a violent charge against them,—which produced the result that we read in Xenophon. The defence of the generals was listened to with favor and seemed likely to prevail with the majority.[284] Many individuals present offered themselves as bail for the generals, in order that the latter might be liberated from custody: but the debate had been so much prolonged—we see from hence that there must have been a great deal of speaking—that it was now dark, so that no vote could be taken, because the show of hands was not distinguishable. It was therefore resolved to adjourn the whole decision until another assembly; but that in the mean time the senate should meet, should consider what would be the proper mode of trying and judging the generals, and should submit a proposition to that effect to the approaching assembly.
It so chanced that immediately after this first assembly, during the interval before the meeting of the senate or the holding of the second assembly, the three days of the solemn annual festival called Apaturia intervened; early days in the month of October. This was the characteristic festival of the Ionic race; handed down from a period anterior to the constitution of Kleisthenês, and to the ten new tribes each containing so many demes, and bringing together the citizens in their primitive unions of family, gens, phratry, etc., the aggregate of which had originally constituted the four Ionic tribes, now superannuated. At the Apaturia, the family ceremonies were gone through; marriages were enrolled, acts of adoption were promulgated and certified, the names of youthful citizens first entered on the gentile and phratric roll; sacrifices were jointly celebrated by these family assemblages to Zeus Phratrius, Athênê, and other deities, accompanied with much festivity and enjoyment. A solemnity like this, celebrated every year, naturally provoked in each of these little unions, questions of affectionate interest: “Who are those that were with us last year, but are not here now? The absent, where are they? The deceased, where or how did they die?” Now the crews of the twenty-five Athenian triremes, lost at the battle of Arginusæ, at least all those among them who were freemen, had been members of some one of these family unions, and were missed on this occasion. The answer to the above inquiry, in their case, would be one alike melancholy and revolting: “They fought like brave men, and had their full share in the victory: their trireme was broken, disabled, and made a wreck, in the battle: aboard this wreck they were left to perish, while their victorious generals and comrades made not the smallest effort to preserve them.” To hear this about fathers, brothers, and friends,—and to hear it in the midst of a sympathizing family circle,—was well calculated to stir up an agony of shame, sorrow, and anger, united; an intolerable sentiment, which required as a satisfaction, and seemed even to impose as a duty, the punishment of those who had left these brave comrades to perish. Many of the gentile unions, in spite of the usually festive and cheerful character of the Apaturia, were so absorbed by this sentiment, that they clothed themselves in black garments and shaved their heads in token of mourning, resolving to present themselves in this guise at the coming assembly, and to appease the manes of their abandoned kinsmen by every possible effort to procure retribution on the generals.[285]
Xenophon in his narrative describes this burst of feeling at the Apaturia as false and factitious, and the men in mourning as a number of hired impostors, got up by the artifices of Theramenês,[286] to destroy the generals. But the case was one in which no artifice was needed. The universal and self-acting stimulants of intense human sympathy stand here so prominently marked, that it is not simply superfluous but even misleading, to look behind for the gold and machinations of a political instigator. Theramenês might do all that he could to turn the public displeasure against the generals, and to prevent it from turning against himself: it is also certain that he did much to annihilate their defence. He may thus have had some influence in directing the sentiment against them, but he could have had little or none in creating it. Nay, it is not too much to say that no factitious agency of this sort could ever have prevailed on the Athenian public to desecrate such a festival as the Apaturia, by all the insignia of mourning. If they did so, it could only have been through some internal emotion alike spontaneous and violent, such as the late event was well calculated to arouse.
Moreover, what can be more improbable than the allegation that a great number of men were hired to personate the fathers or brothers of deceased Athenian citizens, all well known to their really surviving kinsmen? What more improbable, than the story that numbers of men would suffer themselves to be hired, not merely to put on black clothes for the day, which might be taken off in the evening, but also to shave their heads, thus stamping upon themselves an ineffaceable evidence of the fraud, until the hair had grown again? That a cunning man, like Theramenês, should thus distribute his bribes to a number of persons, all presenting naked heads which testified his guilt, when there were real kinsmen surviving to prove the fact of personation? That having done this, he should never be arraigned or accused for it afterwards,—neither during the prodigious reaction of feeling which took place after the condemnation of the generals, which Xenophon himself so strongly attests, and which fell so heavily upon Kallixenus and others,—nor by his bitter enemy Kritias, under the government of the Thirty? Not only Theramenês is never mentioned as having been afterwards accused, but, for aught that appears, he preserved his political influence and standing, with little if any abatement. This is one forcible reason among many others, for disbelieving the bribes and the all-pervading machinations which Xenophon represents him as having put forth, in order to procure the condemnation of the generals. His speaking in the first public assembly, and his numerous partisans voting in the second, doubtless contributed much to that result, and by his own desire. But to ascribe to his bribes and intrigues the violent and overruling emotion of the Athenian public, is, in my judgment, a supposition alike unnatural and preposterous both with regard to them and with regard to him.
When the senate met, after the Apaturia, to discharge the duty confided to it by the last public assembly, of determining in what manner the generals should be judged, and submitting their opinion for the consideration of the next assembly, the senator Kallixenus—at the instigation of Theramenês, if Xenophon is to be believed—proposed, and the majority of the senate adopted, the following resolution: “The Athenian people having already heard, in the previous assembly, both the accusation and the defence of the generals, shall at once come to a vote on the subject by tribes. For each tribe two urns shall be placed, and the herald of each tribe shall proclaim: All citizens who think the generals guilty, for not having rescued the warriors who had conquered in the battle, shall drop their pebbles into the foremost urn; all who think otherwise, into the hindmost. Should the generals be pronounced guilty, by the result of the voting, they shall be delivered to the Eleven, and punished with death; their property shall be confiscated, the tenth part being set apart for the goddess Athênê.”[287] One single vote was to embrace the case of all the eight generals.[288]
The unparalleled burst of mournful and vindictive feeling at the festival of the Apaturia, extending by contagion from the relatives of the deceased to many other citizens,—and the probability thus created that the coming assembly would sanction the most violent measures against the generals,—probably emboldened Kallixenus to propose, and prompted the senate to adopt, this deplorable resolution. As soon as the assembly met, it was read and moved by Kallixenus himself, as coming from the senate in discharge of the commission imposed upon them by the people.
It was heard by a large portion of the assembly with well-merited indignation. Its enormity consisted in breaking through the established constitutional maxims and judicial practices of the Athenian democracy. It deprived the accused generals of all fair trial; alleging, with a mere faint pretence of truth which was little better than utter falsehood, that their defence as well as their accusation had been heard in the preceding assembly. Now there has been no people, ancient or modern, in whose view the formalities of judicial trial were habitually more sacred and indispensable than in that of the Athenians; formalities including ample notice beforehand to the accused party, with a measured and sufficient space of time for him to make his defence before the dikasts; while those dikasts were men who had been sworn beforehand as a body, yet were selected by lot for each occasion as individuals. From all these securities the generals were now to be debarred; and submitted, for their lives, honors, and fortunes, to a simple vote of the unsworn public assembly, without hearing or defence. Nor was this all. One single vote was to be taken in condemnation or absolution of the eight generals collectively. Now there was a rule in Attic judicial procedure, called the psephism of Kannônus,—originally adopted, we do not know when, on the proposition of a citizen of that name, as a psephism or decree for some particular case, but since generalized into common practice, and grown into great prescriptive reverence,—which peremptorily forbade any such collective trial or sentence, and directed that a separate judicial vote should, in all cases, be taken for or against each accused party. The psephism of Kannônus, together with all the other respected maxims of Athenian criminal justice, was here audaciously trampled under foot.[289]
As soon as the resolution was read in the public assembly, Euryptolemus, an intimate friend of the generals, denounced it as grossly illegal and unconstitutional, presenting a notice of indictment against Kallixenus, under the Graphê Paranomôn, for having proposed a resolution of that tenor. Several other citizens supported the notice of indictment, which, according to the received practice of Athens, would arrest the farther progress of the measure until the trial of its proposer had been consummated. Nor was there ever any proposition made at Athens, to which the Graphê Paranomôn more closely and righteously applied.