Desolate Athens! though thy gods are fled,
Thy temples silent, and thy glory dead,
Though all thou hast of beautiful and brave
Sleep in the tomb, or moulder in the wave,
Though power and praise forsake thee, and forget,
Desolate Athens, thou art lovely yet!
—Winthrop Mackworth Praed.
[404 B.C.]
In the capitulation on which Athens surrendered, so far as its terms are reported by Xenophon, no mention appears to have been made of any change which was to take place in its form of government; and, if we might believe Diodorus, one article expressly provided that the Athenians should enjoy their hereditary constitution. This is probably an error; but if such language was used in the treaty it was apparently designed rather to insult than to deceive the people; and the framers of the article, who were also to be its expounders, had in their view not the free constitution under which the city had flourished since the time of Solon, but some ancient form of misrule, which had been long forgotten, but might still be recovered from oblivion by the industry of such antiquarians as Nicomachus. It is at least not to be doubted that the Spartan government, if it did not stipulate for the subversion of the democracy, looked forward to such a revolution as one of the most certain and important results of its victory. But it may have believed that its Athenian partisans would be strong enough to effect it without its interference. And we gather from a statement of Lysias, that Lysander, after he had seen the demolition of the walls begun, leaving his friends to complete their work, sailed away to Samos, now the only place in the Ægean where the authority of Sparta was not acknowledged.
If this was the case, he had scarcely laid siege to Samos before his presence was required at Athens. Theramenes, Critias, and their associates, wished to give a legitimate aspect to the power which they meant to usurp, and to overthrow the constitution in the name of the people. But they did not think it safe to trust to their own influence for the first step; and though Agis was still at hand, he might not enter so cordially into their views, and did not possess so much weight as Lysander. When therefore a day had been fixed for an assembly to consider the question of reforming the constitution, Lysander was sent for to attend the discussion. Theramenes had undertaken the principal part in the management of the business. He proposed that the supreme power should for the present be lodged with thirty persons, who should be authorised to draw up a new code of laws, which however was to be conformable to the ancient institutions, according to a model framed by Dracontides.