LYSANDER
The presence of Lysander, and the nearness of the Peloponnesian troops, deterred the friends of liberty from expressing their sentiments on this proposition. But its nature and tendency were clear, and a murmur of disapprobation ran through the assembly. Theramenes treated it with contemptuous defiance; but Lysander silenced it by a graver argument. He bade the malcontents take notice, that they were at his mercy, and were no longer protected by the treaty. The fortifications had not been demolished within the time prescribed, and therefore in strictness of right the treaty was void. Their lives were forfeited and might be in jeopardy, if they should reject the proposition of Theramenes. It was adopted without further hesitation; and a list of the Thirty, of whom ten were named by Theramenes, ten by the Athenian ephors, and ten were nominally left to the choice of the assembly, was received with equal unanimity. The names which it comprised, some of which soon became infamously notorious were: Polyarches, Critias, Melobius, Hippolochus, Euclidas, Hiero, Mnesilochus, Chremo, Theramenes, Aresias, Diocles, Phædrias, Chærilaus, Anætius, Piso, Sophocles (not the poet, who was now dead), Eratosthenes, Charicles, Onomacles, Theognis, Æschines, Theogenes, Cleomedes, Erasistratus, Phido, Dracontides, Eumathes, Aristoteles, Hippomachus, Mnesithides. Besides these a board of Ten was appointed—perhaps by Lysander himself—to govern Piræus. As soon as this affair was despatched, Lysander departed with his fleet to Samos, and the Peloponnesian army evacuated Attica.
The Samians, blockaded by land and by sea, were forced to capitulate before the end of the summer; they were permitted to leave the city, but not to carry away any part of their property, except the clothes they wore.
These terms might be thought lenient, had they been guilty of any ferocious outrage; but perhaps Lysander did not view their conduct in that light. He was however probably anxious to return home and to exhibit the fruits of his victory to his admiring countrymen, and may have been therefore the more willing to treat with the besieged. When they had withdrawn, he supplied their place with the exiles who had been expelled at various times in the civil feuds of the island, put them in possession of all the property of the vanquished party and appointed a council of Ten, to govern them, and secure their obedience. He then dismissed the allies to their homes, and himself with the Lacedæmonian squadron returned to Laconia.
He brought with him the Athenian galleys surrendered in Piræus, the last fragments of that maritime power which he had broken, trophies from the prizes taken at Ægospotami, and 470 talents [£94,000 or $470,000], the remainder of the tribute which he had collected from the Asiatic cities during the absence of Cyrus. But we are inclined to conclude from a story which, though it is not mentioned by Xenophon, is related by several later writers, with circumstances too minute and probable to be rejected, that he had previously sent a larger sum—perhaps not much less than a thousand talents—which he is said to have entrusted to the care of Gylippus, the hero of Syracuse. Gylippus was subject to the same infirmity which had occasioned the disgrace of his father Cleandridas. He could not resist the temptation of embezzling a part of the treasure, was detected and banished, and put an end to his own life by fasting. But even the sum mentioned by Xenophon was probably the largest that had ever been carried at one time to Sparta. To this were added crowns, and various other presents, which had been bestowed upon Lysander by many cities, which were eager to testify their gratitude and admiration, or to gain the favour of the conqueror.
This influx of wealth was viewed with jealousy by several Spartans, who dreaded the effect it might produce both on their foreign policy, and their domestic institutions: the example of Gylippus, though by no means an extraordinary case, might seem to confirm their views: and it appears that a proposal was made to dedicate the whole to the Delphic god. But Lysander and his friends strenuously resisted this measure, and prevailed on the ephors or the people to let the treasure remain in the public coffers. A part was employed to commemorate the triumph of Sparta, and the merits of the individuals who had principally helped to achieve it. Lysander himself adorned one of the Spartan temples with memorials of his two victories, of Notium and Ægospotami; and the first might indeed justly be considered as having opened the way for the last. Tripods of extraordinary size were dedicated at Amyclæ; and at Delphi the statues of the tutelary twins, Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, and Poseidon, forming part of a great group, which comprised those of Lysander, who was represented receiving a crown from Poseidon, his soothsayer Abas, Hermon the Megarian, the master of his galley, and upwards of twenty-nine other persons, Spartans or natives of other cities, who had distinguished themselves at Ægospotami, long attested the gratitude of Sparta towards gods and men.
CRUELTIES OF THE THIRTY
In the meanwhile the party which had usurped the supreme authority at Athens, had been unfolding the real character of its domination. The first care of the Thirty was to provide themselves with instruments suited to their purposes; they filled all important posts with their creatures. The ephoralty seems to have merged in their own office. The council was already for the most part composed of their own partisans, and needed but few purifying changes; it was now to become the sole tribunal for state-trials.
It might be inferred from the language of Xenophon’s history, that the legislative functions which they professed to assume were merely nominal; but we collect from a hint which he drops elsewhere, that they availed themselves from time to time of this branch of their authority, to promulgate laws, or regulations of police, either by way of precaution or of pretext; and that they exercised a censorial control over the occupations and conduct of their subjects. But it is probable that they never intended to publish any code, much less any constitution which might limit their power. Their main object, in which they seem to have been unanimous, was to reverse the policy of Themistocles and Pericles: to reduce Athens to the rank of a petty town, cut off from the sea, without colonies or commerce, incapable of resisting the will of Sparta, or of exciting her jealousy. It seems to have been with the design of signifying this leading maxim of their administration in a sensible manner, that they altered their position of the bema from which the orators addressed the assembly in the Pnyx, so that it might no longer command a view of the sea and of Salamis. They still more distinctly intimated their intention, while they took a step towards carrying it into effect, by selling the materials of the magnificent arsenal, which it had cost a thousand talents to build, for three, to a contractor who undertook to demolish and clear it away. It was perhaps at a later period, and for their own security, that they destroyed the fortresses on the borders of Attica. If they had succeeded in their aims, the history of Athens might now have been said to have closed; for it would have ceased materially to affect the course of events in the rest of Greece, and could have possessed no interest but such as might belong to the internal changes or quarrels of the oligarchy.