The men who had caused and profited by these losses—often with great brutality towards the families of the exiles, as we know by the case of Lysias—were now at Athens, all individually well known to the sufferers. In like manner, the sons and brothers of Leon and the other victims of the Thirty, saw before them the very citizens by whose hands their innocent relatives had been consigned without trial to prison and execution. The amount of wrong suffered had been infinitely greater than in the time of the Four Hundred, and the provocation, on every ground, public and private, violent to a degree never exceeded in history. Yet with all this sting fresh in their bosoms, we find the victorious multitude, on the latter occasion as well as on the former, burying the past in an indiscriminate amnesty, and anxious only for the future harmonious march of the renovated and all-comprehensive democracy. We see the sentiment of commonwealth in the demos, twice contrasted with the sentiment of faction in an ascendant oligarchy; twice triumphant over the strongest counter-motives, over the most bitter recollections of wrongful murder and spoliation, over all that passionate rush of reactionary appetite which characterises the moment of political restoration.
“Bloody will be the reign of that king who comes back to his kingdom from exile”—says the Latin poet: bloody indeed had been the rule of Critias and those oligarchs who had just come back from exile: “harsh is a demos (observes Æschylus) which has just got clear of misery.” But the Athenian demos, on coming back from Piræus, exhibited the rare phenomenon of a restoration after cruel wrong suffered, sacrificing all the strong impulse of retaliation to a generous and deliberate regard for the future march of the commonwealth. Thucydides remarks that the moderation of political antipathy which prevailed at Athens after the victory of the people over the Four Hundred, was the main cause which revived Athens from her great public depression and danger. Much more forcibly does this remark apply to the restoration after the Thirty, when the public condition of Athens was at the lowest depth of abasement, from which nothing could have rescued her except such exemplary wisdom and patriotism on the part of her victorious demos. Nothing short of this could have enabled her to accomplish that partial resurrection—into an independent and powerful single state, though shorn of her imperial power—which will furnish material for the subsequent portion of our history.
If we wanted any further proof of their capacity for taking the largest and soundest views on a difficult political situation, we should find it in another of their measures at this critical period. The Ten who had succeeded to oligarchical presidency of Athens after the death of Critias and the expulsion of the Thirty, had borrowed from Sparta the sum of one hundred talents [£20,000 or $100,000] for the express purpose of making war on the exiles in Piræus. After the peace, it was necessary that such sum should be repaid, and some persons proposed that recourse should be had to the property of those individuals and that party who had borrowed the money. The apparent equity of the proposition was doubtless felt with peculiar force at a time when the public treasury was in the extreme of poverty. Put nevertheless both the democratical leaders and the people decidedly opposed it, resolving to recognise the debt as a public charge; in which capacity it was afterwards liquidated, after some delay arising from an unsupplied treasury.
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 realised 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.
Partly through this important reform, partly through the revising body, partly through the agency of Nicomachus, who was still continued as Anagrapheus [“Writer-up” of the old laws], 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 Nicomachus went through his trial of accountability. He appears to have made various new propositions of his own, which were among those adopted by the nomothetæ: for these he was attacked, on a 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.
The archonship of Euclides, succeeding immediately to the Anarchy (as 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. 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 Piræus. 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.
Greek Fire Irons
(In the British Museum)
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 theoricon, or religious festival-fund.