[99] Thucyd. viii, 96; vii, 21-55.
[100] Thucyd. viii, 97.
[101] It is to this assembly that I refer, with confidence, the remarkable dialogue of contention between Peisander and Sophoklês, one of the Athenian probûli, mentioned in Aristotel. Rhetoric. iii, 18, 2. There was no other occasion on which the Four Hundred were ever publicly thrown upon their defence at Athens.
This was not Sophoklês the tragic poet, but another person of the same name, who appears afterwards as one of the oligarchy of Thirty.
[102] Thucyd. viii, 97. Καὶ ἐκκλησίαν ξυνέλεγον, μίαν μὲν εὐθὺς τότε πρῶτον ἐς τὴν Πνύκα καλουμένην, οὗπερ καὶ ἄλλοτε εἰώθεσαν, ἐν ᾗπερ καὶ τοὺς τετρακοσίους καταπαύσαντες τοῖς πεντακισχιλίοις ἐψηφίσαντο τὰ πράγματα παραδοῦναι· εἶναι δὲ αὐτῶν, ὁπόσοι καὶ ὅπλα παρέχονται· καὶ μισθὸν μηδένα φέρειν, μηδεμιᾷ ἀρχῇ, εἰ δὲ μὴ, ἐπάρατον ἐποιήσαντο. Ἐγίγνοντο δὲ καὶ ἄλλαι ὕστερον πυκναὶ ἐκκλησίαι, ἀφ᾽ ὧν καὶ νομοθέτας καὶ τἄλλα ἐψηφίσαντο ἐς τὴν πολιτείαν.
In this passage I dissent from the commentators on two points. First, they understand this number Five Thousand as a real definite list of citizens, containing five thousand names, neither more nor less. Secondly, they construe νομοθέτας, not in the ordinary meaning which it bears in Athenian constitutional language, but in the sense of ξυγγραφεῖς (c. 67), “persons to model the constitution, corresponding to the ξυγγραφεῖς appointed by the aristocratical party a little before,” to use the words of Dr. Arnold.
As to the first point, which is sustained also by Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. Gr. ch. xxviii, vol. iv, p. 51, 2d ed.), Dr. Arnold really admits what is the ground of my opinion, when he says: “Of course the number of citizens capable of providing themselves with heavy arms must have much exceeded five thousand: and it is said in the defence of Polystratus, one of the Four Hundred (Lysias, p. 675, Reisk.), that he drew up a list of nine thousand. But we must suppose that all who could furnish heavy arms were eligible into the number of the Five Thousand, whether the members were fixed on by lot, by election, or by rotation; as it had been proposed to appoint the Four Hundred by rotation out of the Five Thousand (viii, 93).”
Dr. Arnold here throws out a supposition which by no means conforms to the exact sense of the words of Thucydidês—εἶναι δὲ αὐτῶν, ὁπόσοι καὶ ὅπλα παρέχονται. These words distinctly signify, that all who furnished heavy arms should be of the Five Thousand, should belong of right to that body, which is something different from being eligible into the number of the Five Thousand, either by lot, rotation, or otherwise. The language of Thucydidês, when he describes, in the passage referred to by Dr. Arnold, c. 93, the projected formation of the Four Hundred by rotation out of the Five Thousand, is very different: καὶ ἐκ τούτων ἐν μέρει τοὺς τετρακοσίους ἔσεσθαι, etc. M. Boeckh (Public Economy of Athens, bk. ii, ch. 21, p. 268, Eng. Tr.) is not satisfactory in his description of this event.
The idea which I conceive of the Five Thousand, as a number existing from the commencement only in talk and imagination, neither realized nor intended to be realized, coincides with the full meaning of this passage of Thucydidês, as well as with everything which he had before said about them.
I will here add that ὁπόσοι ὅπλα παρέχονται means persons furnishing arms, not for themselves alone, but for others also (Xenoph. Hellen. iii, 4, 15.)