These remarks tend to show that the necessity of a fresh collection and publication, if we may use that word, of the laws, had been felt prior to the time of the Thirty. But such a project could hardly be realized without at the same time revising the laws, as a body, removing all flagrant contradictions, and rectifying what might glaringly displease the age, either in substance or in style. Now the psephism of Tisamenus, one of the first measures of the renewed democracy after the Thirty, both prescribed such revision and set in motion a revising body; but an additional decree was now proposed and carried by Archinus, relative to the alphabet in which the revised laws should be drawn up. The Ionic alphabet—that is, the full Greek alphabet of twenty-four letters, as now written and printed—had been in use at Athens universally, for a considerable time, apparently for two generations; but from tenacious adherence to ancient custom, the laws had still continued to be consigned to writing in the old Attic alphabet of only sixteen or eighteen letters. It was now ordained that this scanty alphabet should be discontinued, and that the revised laws, as well as all future public acts, should be written up in the full Ionic alphabet.[494]
Partly through this important reform, partly through the revising body, partly through the agency of Nikomachus, who was still continued as anagrapheus, the revision, inscription, and publication of the laws in their new alphabet was at length completed. But it seems to have taken two years to perform, or at least two years elapsed before Nikomachus went through his trial of accountability.[495] He appears to have made various new propositions of his own, which were among those adopted by the nomothetæ: for these his accuser attacks him, on the trial of accountability, as well as on the still graver allegation, of having corruptly falsified the decisions of that body; writing up what they had not sanctioned, or suppressing that which they had sanctioned.[496]
The archonship of Eukleidês, succeeding immediately to the anarchy,—as the archonship of Pythodôrus, or the period of the Thirty, was denominated,—became thus a cardinal point or epoch in Athenian history. We cannot doubt that the laws came forth out of this revision considerably modified, though unhappily we possess no particulars on the subject. We learn that the political franchise was, on the proposition of Aristophon, so far restricted for the future, that no person could be a citizen by birth except the son of citizen-parents, on both sides; whereas previously, it had been sufficient if the father alone was a citizen.[497] The rhetor Lysias, by station a metic, had not only suffered great loss, narrowly escaping death from the Thirty, who actually put to death his brother Polemarchus, but had contributed a large sum to assist the armed efforts of the exiles under Thrasybulus in Peiræus. As a reward and compensation for such antecedents, the latter proposed that the franchise of citizen should be conferred upon him; but we are told that this decree, though adopted by the people, was afterwards indicted by Archinus as illegal or informal, and cancelled. Lysias, thus disappointed of the citizenship, passed the remainder of his life as an isoteles, or non-freeman on the best condition, exempt from the peculiar burdens upon the class of metics.[498]
Such refusal of citizenship to an eminent man like Lysias, who had both acted and suffered in the cause of the democracy, when combined with the decree of Aristophon above noticed, implies a degree of augmented strictness which we can only partially explain. It was not merely the renewal of her democracy for which Athens had now to provide. She had also to accommodate her legislation and administration to her future march as an isolated state, without empire or foreign dependencies. For this purpose, material changes must have been required: among others, we know that the Board of Hellenotamiæ—originally named for the collection and management of the tribute at Delos, but attracting to themselves gradually more extended functions, until they became ultimately, immediately before the Thirty, the general paymasters of the state—was discontinued, and such among its duties as did not pass away along with the loss of the foreign empire, were transferred to two new officers, the treasurer at war, and the manager of the theôrikon, or religious festival-fund.[499] Respecting these two new departments, the latter of which especially became so much extended as to comprise most of the disbursements of a peace-establishment, I shall speak more fully hereafter; at present, I only notice them as manifestations of the large change in Athenian administration consequent upon the loss of the empire. There were doubtless many other changes arising from the same cause, though we do not know them in detail; and I incline to number among such the alteration above noticed respecting the right of citizenship. While the Athenian empire lasted, the citizens of Athens were spread over the Ægean in every sort of capacity, as settlers, merchants, navigators, soldiers, etc.; which must have tended materially to encourage intermarriages between them and the women of other Grecian insular states. Indeed, we are even told that an express permission of connubium with Athenians was granted to the inhabitants of Eubœa,[500] a fact, noticed by Lysias, of some moment in illustrating the tendency of the Athenian empire to multiply family ties between Athens and the allied cities. Now, according to the law which prevailed before Eukleidês, the son of every such marriage was by birth an Athenian citizen, an arrangement at that time useful to Athens, as strengthening the bonds of her empire, and eminently useful in a larger point of view, among the causes of Pan-Hellenic sympathy. But when Athens was deprived both of her empire and her fleet, and confined within the limits of Attica, there no longer remained any motive to continue such a regulation, so that the exclusive city-feeling, instinctive in the Grecian mind, again became predominant. Such is, perhaps, the explanation of the new restrictive law proposed by Aristophon.
Thrasybulus and the gallant handful of exiles who had first seized Phylê, received no larger reward than one thousand drachmæ for a common sacrifice and votive offering, together with wreaths of olive as a token of gratitude from their countrymen.[501] The debt which Athens owed to Thrasybulus was indeed such as could not be liquidated by money. To his individual patriotism, in great degree, we may ascribe not only the restoration of the democracy, but its good behavior when restored. How different would have been the consequences of the restoration and the conduct of the people, had the event been brought about by a man like Alkibiadês, applying great abilities principally to the furtherance of his own cupidity and power!
At the restoration of the democracy, however, Alkibiadês was already no more. Shortly after the catastrophe at Ægospotami, he had sought shelter in the satrapy of Pharnabazus, no longer thinking himself safe from Lacedæmonian persecution in his forts on the Thracian Chersonese. He carried with him a good deal of property, though he left still more behind him, in these forts; how acquired, we do not know. But having crossed apparently to Asia by the Bosphorus, he was plundered by the Thracians in Bithynia, and incurred much loss before he could reach Pharnabazus in Phrygia. Renewing the tie of personal hospitality which he had contracted with Pharnabazus four years before,[502] he now solicited from the satrap a safe-conduct up to Susa. The Athenian envoys—whom Pharnabazus, after his former pacification with Alkibiadês in 408 B.C., had engaged to escort to Susa, but had been compelled by the mandate of Cyrus to detain as prisoners—were just now released from their three years’ detention, and enabled to come down to the Propontis;[503] and Alkibiadês, by whom this mission had originally been projected, tried to prevail on the satrap to perform the promise which he had originally given, but had not been able to fulfil. The hopes of the sanguine exile, reverting back to the history of Themistoklês, led him to anticipate the same success at Susa as had fallen to the lot of the latter; nor was the design impracticable, to one whose ability was universally renowned, and who had already acted as minister to Tissaphernês.
The court of Susa was at this time in a peculiar position. King Darius Nothus, having recently died, had been succeeded by his eldest son Artaxerxes Mnemon;[504] but the younger son Cyrus, whom Darius had sent for during his last illness, tried after the death of the latter to supplant Artaxerxes in the succession, or at least was suspected of so trying. Being seized and about to be slain, the queen-mother Parysatis prevailed upon Artaxerxes to pardon him, and send him again down to his satrapy along the coast of Ionia, where he labored strenuously, though secretly, to acquire the means of dethroning his brother; a memorable attempt, of which I shall speak more fully hereafter. But his schemes, though carefully masked, did not escape the observation of Alkibiadês, who wished to make a merit of revealing them at Susa, and to become the instrument of defeating them. He communicated his suspicions as well as his purpose to Pharnabazus; whom he tried to awaken by alarm of danger to the empire, in order that he might thus get himself forwarded to Susa as informant and auxiliary.
Pharnabazus was already jealous and unfriendly in spirit towards Lysander and the Lacedæmonians, of which we shall soon see plain evidence, and perhaps towards Cyrus also, since such were the habitual relations of neighboring satraps in the Persian empire. But the Lacedæmonians and Cyrus were now all-powerful on the Asiatic coast, so that he probably did not dare to exasperate them, by identifying himself with a mission so hostile and an enemy so dangerous to both. Accordingly, he refused compliance with the request of Alkibiadês; granting him, nevertheless, permission to live in Phrygia, and even assigning to him a revenue. But the objects at which the exile was aiming soon became more or less fully divulged, to those against whom they were intended. His restless character, enterprise, and capacity, were so well known as to raise exaggerated fears as well as exaggerated hopes. Not merely Cyrus, but the Lacedæmonians, closely allied with Cyrus, and the dekadarchies, whom Lysander had set up in the Asiatic Grecian cities, and who held their power only through Lacedæmonian support, all were uneasy at the prospect of seeing Alkibiadês again in action and command, amidst so many unsettled elements. Nor can we doubt that the exiles whom these dekadarchies had banished, and the disaffected citizens who remained at home under their government in fear of banishment or death, kept up correspondence with him, and looked to him as a probable liberator. Moreover, the Spartan king, Agis, still retained the same personal antipathy against him, which had already some years before procured the order to be despatched, from Sparta to Asia, to assassinate him. Here are elements enough, of hostility, vengeance, and apprehension, afloat against Alkibiadês, without believing the story of Plutarch, that Kritias and the Thirty sent to apprize Lysander that the oligarchy at Athens could not stand, so long as Alkibiadês was alive. The truth is, that though the Thirty had included him in the list of exiles,[505] they had much less to dread from his assaults or plots, in Attica, than the Lysandrian dekadarchies in the cities of Asia. Moreover, his name was not popular even among the Athenian democrats, as will be shown hereafter, when we come to recount the trial of Sokratês. Probably, therefore, the alleged intervention of Kritias and the Thirty, to procure the murder of Alkibiadês, is a fiction of the subsequent encomiasts of the latter at Athens, in order to create for him claims to esteem as a friend and fellow-sufferer with the democracy.
A special despatch, or skytalê, was sent out by the Spartan authorities to Lysander in Asia, enjoining him to procure that Alkibiadês should be put to death. Accordingly, Lysander communicated this order to Pharnabazus, within whose satrapy Alkibiadês was residing, and requested that it might be put in execution. The whole character of Pharnabazus shows that he would not perpetrate such a deed, towards a man with whom he had contracted ties of hospitality, without sincere reluctance and great pressure from without; especially as it would have been easy for him to connive underhand at the escape of the intended victim. We may therefore be sure that it was Cyrus, who, informed of the revelations contemplated by Alkibiadês, enforced the requisition of Lysander; and that the joint demand of the two was too formidable even to be evaded, much less openly disobeyed. Accordingly, Pharnabazus despatched his brother Magæus and his uncle Sisamithres with a band of armed men, to assassinate Alkibiadês in the Phrygian village where he was residing. These men, not daring to force their way into his house, surrounded it and set it on fire; but Alkibiadês, having contrived to extinguish the flames, rushed out upon his assailants with a dagger in his right hand, and a cloak wrapped round his left to serve as a shield. None of them dared to come near him; but they poured upon him showers of darts and arrows until he perished, undefended as he was either by shield or by armor. A female companion with whom he lived, Timandra, wrapped up his body in garments of her own, and performed towards it all the last affectionate solemnities.[506]
Such was the deed which Cyrus and the Lacedæmonians did not scruple to enjoin, nor the uncle and brother of a Persian satrap to execute, and by which this celebrated Athenian perished, before he had attained the age of fifty. Had he lived, we cannot doubt that he would again have played some conspicuous part,—for neither his temper nor his abilities would have allowed him to remain in the shade,—but whether to the advantage of Athens or not, is more questionable. Certain it is, that taking his life throughout, the good which he did to her bore no proportion to the far greater evil. Of the disastrous Sicilian expedition, he was more the cause than any other individual, though that enterprise cannot properly be said to have been caused by any individual, but rather to have emanated from a national impulse. Having first, as a counsellor, contributed more than any other man to plunge the Athenians into this imprudent adventure, he next, as an exile, contributed more than any other man, except Nikias, to turn that adventure into ruin, and the consequences of it into still greater ruin. Without him, Gylippus would not have been sent to Syracuse, Dekeleia would not have been fortified, Chios and Milêtus would not have revolted, the oligarchical conspiracy of the Four Hundred would not have been originated. Nor can it be said that his first three years of political action as Athenian leader, in a speculation peculiarly his own,—the alliance with Argos, and the campaigns in Peloponnesus,—proved in any way advantageous to his country. On the contrary, by playing an offensive game where he had hardly sufficient force for a defensive, he enabled the Lacedæmonians completely to recover their injured reputation and ascendency through the important victory of Mantineia. The period of his life really serviceable to his country, and really glorious to himself, was that of three years ending with his return to Athens in 407 B.C. The results of these three years of success were frustrated by the unexpected coming down of Cyrus as satrap: but, just at the moment when it behooved Alkibiadês to put forth a higher measure of excellence, in order to realize his own promises in the face of this new obstacle, at that critical moment we find him spoiled by the unexpected welcome which had recently greeted him at Athens, and falling miserably short even of the former merit whereby that welcome had been earned.