Lysander was in no hurry to pass from the Hellespont to Athens. He knew that no farther corn-ships from the Euxine, and few supplies from other quarters, could now reach Athens; and that the power of the city to hold out against blockade must necessarily be very limited; the more limited, the greater the numbers accumulated within it. Accordingly, he permitted the Athenian garrisons which capitulated, to go only to Athens, and nowhere else.[327] His first measure was to make himself master of Chalkêdon and Byzantium, where he placed the Lacedæmonian Sthenelaus as harmost, with a garrison. Next, he passed to Lesbos, where he made similar arrangements at Mitylênê and other cities. In them, as well as in the other cities which now came under his power, he constituted an oligarchy of ten native citizens, chosen from among his most daring and unscrupulous partisans, and called a dekarchy, or dekadarchy, to govern in conjunction with the Lacedæmonian harmost. Eteonikus was sent to the Thracian cities which had been in dependence on Athens, to introduce similar changes. In Thasus, however, this change was stained by much bloodshed: there was a numerous philo-Athenian party whom Lysander caused to be allured out of their place of concealment into the temple of Heraklês, under the false assurance of an amnesty: when assembled under this pledge, they were all put to death.[328] Sanguinary proceedings of the like character, many in the presence of Lysander himself, together with large expulsions of citizens obnoxious to his new dekarchies, signalized everywhere the substitution of Spartan for Athenian ascendency.[329] But nowhere, except at Samos, did the citizens or the philo-Athenian party in the cities continue any open hostility, or resist by force Lysander’s entrance and his revolutionary changes. At Samos, they still held out: the people had too much dread of that oligarchy, whom they had expelled in the insurrection of 412 B.C., to yield without a farther struggle.[330] With this single reserve, every city in alliance or dependence upon Athens submitted without resistance both to the supremacy and the subversive measures of the Lacedæmonian admiral.
The Athenian empire was thus annihilated, and Athens left altogether alone. What was hardly less painful, all her kleruchs, or out-citizens, whom she had formerly planted in Ægina, Melos, and elsewhere throughout the islands, as well as in the Chersonese, were now deprived of their properties and driven home.[331] The leading philo-Athenians, too, at Thasus, Byzantium, and other dependent cities,[332] were forced to abandon their homes in the like state of destitution, and to seek shelter at Athens. Everything thus contributed to aggravate the impoverishment, and the manifold suffering, physical as well as moral, within her walls. Notwithstanding the pressure of present calamity, however, and yet worse prospects for the future, the Athenians prepared, as best they could, for an honorable resistance.
It was one of their first measures to provide for the restoration of harmony, and to interest all in the defence of the city, by removing every sort of disability under which individual citizens might now be suffering. Accordingly, Patrokleidês—having first obtained special permission from the people, without which it would have been unconstitutional to make any proposition for abrogating sentences judicially passed, or releasing debtors regularly inscribed in the public registers—submitted a decree such as had never been mooted since the period when Athens was in a condition equally desperate, during the advancing march of Xerxes. All debtors to the state, either recent or of long standing; all official persons now under investigation by the Logistæ, or about to be brought before the dikastery on the usual accountability after office; all persons who were liquidating by instalment debts due to the public, or had given bail for sums thus owing; all persons who had been condemned either to total disfranchisement, or to some specific disqualification or disability; nay, even all those who, having been either members or auxiliaries of the Four Hundred, had stood trial afterwards, and had been condemned to any one of the above-mentioned penalties, all these persons were pardoned and released; every register of the penalty or condemnation being directed to be destroyed. From this comprehensive pardon were excepted: Those among the Four Hundred who had fled from Athens without standing their trial; those who had been condemned either to exile or to death by the Areopagus, or any of the other constituted tribunals for homicide, or for subversion of the public liberty. Not merely the public registers of all the condemnations thus released were ordered to be destroyed, but it was forbidden, under severe penalties, to any private citizen to keep a copy of them, or to make any allusion to such misfortunes.[333]
Pursuant to the comprehensive amnesty and forgiveness adopted by the people in this decree of Patrokleidês, the general body of citizens swore to each other a solemn pledge of mutual harmony in the acropolis.[334] The reconciliation thus introduced enabled them the better to bear up under their distress;[335] especially as the persons relieved by the amnesty were, for the most part, not men politically disaffected, like the exiles. To restore the latter, was a measure which no one thought of: indeed, a large proportion of them had been and were still at Dekeleia, assisting the Lacedæmonians in their warfare against Athens.[336] But even the most prudent internal measures could do little for Athens in reference to her capital difficulty, that of procuring subsistence for the numerous population within her walls, augmented every day by outlying garrisons and citizens. She had long been shut out from the produce of Attica by the garrison at Dekeleia; she obtained nothing from Eubœa, and since the late defeat of Ægospotami, nothing from the Euxine, from Thrace, or from the islands. Perhaps some corn may still have reached her from Cyprus, and her small remaining navy did what was possible to keep Peiræus supplied,[337] in spite of the menacing prohibitions of Lysander, preceding his arrival to block it up effectually; but to accumulate any stock for a siege, was utterly impossible.
At length, about November, 405 B.C., Lysander reached the Saronic gulf, having sent intimation beforehand, both to Agis and to the Lacedæmonians, that he was approaching with a fleet of two hundred triremes. The full Lacedæmonian and Peloponnesian force (all except the Argeians), under king Pausanias, was marched into Attica to meet him, and encamped in the precinct of Acadêmus, at the gates of Athens; while Lysander, first coming to Ægina with his overwhelming fleet of one hundred and fifty sail; next, ravaging Salamis, blocked up completely the harbor of Peiræus. It was one of his first measures to collect together the remnant which he could find of the Æginetan and Melian populations, whom Athens had expelled and destroyed; and to restore to them the possession of their ancient islands.[338]
Though all hope had now fled, the pride, the resolution, and the despair of Athens, still enabled her citizens to bear up; nor was it until some men actually began to die of hunger, that they sent propositions to entreat peace. Even then their propositions were not without dignity. They proposed to Agis to become allies of Sparta, retaining their walls entire and their fortified harbor of Peiræus. Agis referred the envoys to the ephors at Sparta, to whom he at the same time transmitted a statement of their propositions. But the ephors did not even deign to admit the envoys to an interview, but sent messengers to meet them at Sellasia on the frontier of Laconia, desiring that they would go back and come again prepared with something more admissible, and acquainting them at the same time that no proposition could be received which did not include the demolition of the Long Walls, for a continuous length of ten stadia. With this gloomy reply the envoys returned. Notwithstanding all the suffering in the city, the senate and people would not consent even to take such humiliating terms into consideration. A senator named Archestratus, who advised that they should be accepted, was placed in custody, and a general vote was passed,[339] on the proposition of Kleophon, forbidding any such motion in future.
Such a vote demonstrates the courageous patience both of the senate and the people; but unhappily it supplied no improved prospects, while the suffering within the walls continued to become more and more aggravated. Under these circumstances, Theramenês offered himself to the people to go as envoy to Lysander and Sparta, affirming that he should be able to detect what the real intention of the ephors was in regard to Athens, whether they really intended to root out the population and sell them as slaves. He pretended, farther, to possess personal influence, founded on circumstances which he could not divulge, such as would very probably insure a mitigation of the doom. He was accordingly sent, in spite of strong protest from the senate of Areopagus and others,—but with no express powers to conclude,—simply to inquire and report. We hear with astonishment that he remained more than three months as companion of Lysander, who, he alleged, had detained him thus long, and had only acquainted him, after the fourth month had begun, that no one but the ephors had any power to grant peace. It seems to have been the object of Theramenês, by this long delay, to wear out the patience of the Athenians, and to bring them into such a state of intolerable suffering, that they would submit to any terms of peace which would only bring provisions into the town. In this scheme he completely succeeded; and considering how great were the privations of the people even at the moment of his departure, it is not easy to understand how they could have been able to sustain protracted and increasing famine for three months longer.[340]
We make out little that is distinct respecting these last moments of imperial Athens. We find only an heroic endurance displayed, to such a point that numbers actually died of starvation, without any offer to surrender on humiliating conditions.[341] Amidst the general acrimony, and exasperated special antipathies, arising out of such a state of misery, the leading men who stood out most earnestly for prolonged resistance became successively victims to the prosecutions of their enemies. The demagogue Kleophon was condemned and put to death, on the accusation of having evaded his military duty; the senate, whose temper and proceedings he had denounced, constituting itself a portion of the dikastery which tried him, contrary both to the forms and the spirit of Athenian judicatures.[342] Such proceedings, however, though denounced by orators in subsequent years as having contributed to betray the city into the hands of the enemy, appear to have been without any serious influence on the result, which was brought about purely by famine.
By the time that Theramenês returned after his long absence, so terrible had the pressure become, that he was sent forth again with instructions to conclude peace upon any terms. On reaching Sellasia, and acquainting the ephors that he had come with unlimited powers for peace, he was permitted to come to Sparta, where the assembly of the Peloponnesian confederacy was convened, to settle on what terms peace should be granted. The leading allies, especially Corinthians and Thebans, recommended that no agreement should be entered into, nor any farther measure kept, with this hated enemy now in their power; but that the name of Athens should be rooted out, and the population sold for slaves. Many of the other allies seconded the same views, which would have probably commanded a majority, had it not been for the resolute opposition of the Lacedæmonians themselves; who declared unequivocally that they would never consent to annihilate or enslave a city which had rendered such capital service to all Greece at the time of the great common danger from the Persians.[343] Lysander farther calculated on so dealing with Athens, as to make her into a dependency, and an instrument of increased power to Sparta, apart from her allies. Peace was accordingly granted on the following conditions: that the Long Walls and the fortifications of the Peiræus should be destroyed; that the Athenians should evacuate all their foreign possessions, and confine themselves to their own territory; that they should surrender all their ships of war; that they should readmit all their exiles; that they should become allies of Sparta, following her leadership both by sea and land, and recognizing the same enemies and friends.[344]
With this document, written according to Lacedæmonian practice on a skytalê,—or roll intended to go round a stick, of which the Lacedæmonian commander had always one, and the ephors another, corresponding,—Theramenês went back to Athens. As he entered the city, a miserable crowd flocked round him, in distress and terror lest he should have failed altogether in his mission. The dead and the dying had now become so numerous, that peace at any price was a boon; nevertheless, when he announced in the assembly the terms of which he was bearer, strongly recommending submission to the Lacedæmonians as the only course now open, there was still a high-spirited minority who entered their protest, and preferred death by famine to such insupportable disgrace. The large majority, however, accepted them, and the acceptance was made known to Lysander.[345]