Chapter XXXI (2)

Isokratês also (Areopagit. Or. vii, p. 144, p. 195, ed. Bekker)
conceived the constitution of Kleisthenês as including all
the three points noticed in the text: 1. A high pecuniary
qualification of eligibility for individual offices. 2. Election
to these offices by all the citizens, and accountability to the
same after office. 3. No employment of the lot.—He even contends
that this election is more truly democratical than sortition;
since the latter process might admit men attached to oligarchy,
which would not happen under the former,—ἔπειτα καὶ δημοτικωτέραν
ἐνόμιζον ταύτην τὴν κατάστασιν ἢ τὴν διὰ τοῦ λαγχάνειν
γιγνομένην· ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῇ κληρώσει τὴν τύχην βραβεύσειν, καὶ
πολλάκις λήψεσθαι τὰς ἀρχὰς τοὺς τῆς ὀλιγαρχίας ἐπιθυμοῦντας,
etc. This would be a good argument if there were no pecuniary
qualification for eligibility,—such pecuniary qualification is
a provision which he lays down, but which he does not find it
convenient to insist upon emphatically.

I do not here advert to the γραφὴ παρανόμων, the νομοφύλακες, and
the sworn νομόθεται,—all of them institutions belonging to the
time of Periklês at the earliest; not to that of Kleisthenês.

I am also inclined to believe that the Senate of Five Hundred, as constituted by Kleisthenês, was taken, not by election, but by lot, from the ten tribes,—and that every citizen became eligible to it. Election for this purpose—that is, the privilege of annually electing a batch of fifty senators, all at once, by each tribe—would probably be thought more troublesome than valuable; nor do we hear of separate meetings of each tribe for purposes of election. Moreover, the office of senator was a collective, not an individual office; the shock, therefore, to the feelings of semi-democratized Athens, from the unpleasant idea of a poor man sitting among the fifty prytanes, would be less than if they conceived him as polemarch at the head of the right wing of the army, or as an archon administering justice.

A farther difference between the constitution of Solon and that of Kleisthenês is to be found in the position of the Senate of Areopagus. Under the former, that senate had been the principal body in the state, and he had even enlarged its powers; under the latter, it must have been treated at first as an enemy, and kept down. For as it was composed only of all the past archons, and as, during the preceding thirty years, every archon had been a creature of the Peisistratids, the Areopagites collectively must have been both hostile and odious to Kleisthenês and his partisans,—perhaps a fraction of its members might even retire into exile with Hippias. Its influence must have been sensibly lessened by the change of party, until it came to be gradually filled by fresh archons springing from the bosom of the Kleisthenean constitution. But during this important interval, the new-modelled Senate of Five Hundred, and the popular assembly, stepped into that ascendency which they never afterwards lost. From the time of Kleisthenês forward, the Areopagites cease to be the chief and prominent power in the state: yet they are still considerable; and when the second fill of the democratical tide took place, after the battle of Platæa, they became the focus of that which was then considered as the party of oligarchical resistance. I have already remarked that the archons, during the intermediate time (about 509-477 B. C.), were all elected by the ekklesia, not chosen by lot,—and that the fourth (or poorest and most numerous) class on the census were by law then ineligible; while election at Athens, even when every citizen without exception was an elector and eligible, had a natural tendency to fall upon men of wealth and station. We thus see how it happened that the past archons, when united in the Senate of Areopagus, infused into that body the sympathies, prejudices, and interests of the richer classes. It was this which brought them into conflict with the more democratical party headed by Periklês and Ephialtês, in times when portions of the Kleisthenean constitution had come to be discredited as too much imbued with oligarchy.

One other remarkable institution, distinctly ascribed to Kleisthenês, yet remains to be noticed,—the Ostracism; upon which I have already made some remarks,[269] in touching upon the memorable Solonian proclamation against neutrality in a sedition. It is hardly too much to say that, without this protective process, none of the other institutions would have reached maturity.

[269] See above, chap. xi. vol. iii. p. 145.

By the ostracism, a citizen was banished without special accusation, trial, or defence, for a term of ten years,—subsequently diminished to five. His property was not taken away, nor his reputation tainted; so that the penalty consisted solely in the banishment from his native city to some other Greek city. As to reputation, the ostracism was a compliment rather than otherwise;[270] and so it was vividly felt to be, when, about ninety years after Kleisthenês, the conspiracy between Nikias and Alkibiadês fixed it upon Hyperbolus. The two former had both recommended the taking of an ostracizing vote, each hoping to cause the banishment of the other; but before the day arrived, they accommodated the difference. To fire off the safety-gun of the republic against a person so little dangerous as Hyperbolus, was denounced as the prostitution of a great political ceremony: “it was not against such men as him (said the comic writer, Plato),[271] that the oyster-shell (or potsherd) was intended to be used.” The process of ostracism was carried into effect by writing upon a shell, or potsherd, the name of the person whom a citizen thought it prudent for a time to banish; which shell, when deposited in the proper vessel, counted for a vote towards the sentence.

[270] Aristeidês Rhetor. Orat. xlvi. vol ii. p. 317, ed. Dindorf.

[271] Plutarch (Nikias, c. 11; Alkibiad. c. 13; Aristeid. c. 7):
Thucyd. viii, 73. Plato Comicus said, respecting Hyperbolus—

Οὐ γὰρ τοιούτων οὕνεκ᾽ ὄστραχ᾽ ηὑρέθη.

Theophrastus had stated that Phæax, and not Nikias, was the rival
of Alkibiadês on this occasion, when Hyperbolus was ostracized;
but most authors, says Plutarch, represent Nikias as the person.
It is curious that there should be any difference of statement
about a fact so notorious, and in the best-known time of Athenian
history.

Taylor thinks that the oration which now passes as that of
Andokidês against Alkibiadês, is really by Phæax, and was read
by Plutarch as the oration of Phæax in an actual contest of
ostracism between Phæax, Nikias, and Alkibiadês. He is opposed by
Ruhnken and Valckenaer (see Sluiter’s preface to that oration, c.
1, and Ruhnken, Hist. Critic. Oratt. Græcor. p. 135). I cannot
agree with either: I cannot think with him, that it is a real
oration of Phæax; nor with them, that it is a real oration in any
genuine cause of ostracism whatever. It appears to me to have
been composed after the ostracism had fallen into desuetude,
and when the Athenians had not only become somewhat ashamed
of it, but had lost the familiar conception of what it really
was. For how otherwise can we explain the fact, that the author
of that oration complains that he is about to be ostracized
without any secret voting, in which the very essence of the
ostracism consisted, and from which its name was borrowed (οὔτε
διαψηφισαμένων κρυβδὴν, c. 2)? His oration is framed as if the
audience whom he was addressing were about to ostracize one out
of the three, by show of hands. But the process of ostracizing
included no meeting and haranguing,—nothing but simple deposit of
the shells in a cask; as may be seen by the description of the
special railing-in of the agora, and by the story (true or false)
of the unlettered country-citizen coming into the city to give
his vote, and asking Aristeidês, without even knowing his person,
to write the name for him on the shell (Plutarch, Aristeid. c.
7). There was, indeed, previous discussion in the senate as
well as in the ekklesia, whether a vote of ostracism should be
entered upon at all; but the author of the oration to which I
allude does not address himself to _that_ question; he assumes
that the vote is actually about to be taken, and that one of the
three—himself, Nikias, or Alkibiadês—must be ostracized (c. 1).
Now, doubtless, in practice, the decision commonly lay between
two formidable rivals; but it was not publicly or formally put so
before the people: every citizen might write upon the shell such
name as he chose. Farther, the open denunciation of the injustice
of ostracism as a system (c. 2), proves an age later than the
banishment of Hyperbolus. Moreover, the author having begun by
remarking that he stands in contest with Nikias as well as with
Alkibiadês, says nothing more about Nikias to the end of the
speech.

I have already observed that all the governments of the Grecian cities, when we compare them with that idea which a modern reader is apt to conceive of the measure of force belonging to a government, were essentially weak, the good as well as the bad,—the democratical, the oligarchical, and the despotic. The force in the hands of any government, to cope with conspirators or mutineers, was extremely small, with the single exception of a despot surrounded by his mercenary troop; so that no tolerably sustained conspiracy or usurper could be put down except by the direct aid of the people in support of the government; which amounted to a dissolution, for the time, of constitutional authority, and was pregnant with reactionary consequences such as no man could foresee. To prevent powerful men from attempting usurpation was, therefore, of the greatest possible moment; and a despot or an oligarchy might exercise preventive means at pleasure,[272] much sharper than the ostracism, such as the assassination of Kimon, mentioned in my last chapter, as directed by the Peisistratids. At the very least, they might send away any one, from whom they apprehended attack or danger, without incurring even so much as the imputation of severity. But in a democracy, where arbitrary action of the magistrate was the thing of all others most dreaded, and where fixed laws, with trial and defence as preliminaries to punishment, were conceived by the ordinary citizen as the guarantees of his personal security and as the pride of his social condition,—the creation of such an exceptional power presented serious difficulty. If we transport ourselves to the times of Kleisthenês, immediately after the expulsion of the Peisistratids, when the working of the democratical machinery was as yet untried, we shall find this difficulty at its maximum; but we shall also find the necessity of vesting such a power somewhere absolutely imperative. For the great Athenian nobles had yet to learn the lesson of respect for any constitution; their past history had exhibited continual struggles between the armed factions of Megaklês, Lykurgus, and Peisistratus, put down after a time by the superior force and alliances of the latter. And though Kleisthenês, the son of Megaklês, might be firmly disposed to renounce the example of his father, and to act as the faithful citizen of a fixed constitution,—he would know but too well that the sons of his father’s companions and rivals would follow out ambitious purposes without any regard to the limits imposed by law, if ever they acquired sufficient partisans to present a fair prospect of success. Moreover, when any two candidates for power, with such reckless dispositions, came into a bitter personal rivalry, the motives to each of them, arising as well out of fear as out of ambition, to put down his opponent at any cost to the constitution, might well become irresistible, unless some impartial and discerning interference could arrest the strife in time. “If the Athenians were wise (Aristeidês is reported to have said,[273] in the height and peril of his parliamentary struggle with Themistoklês), they would cast both Themistoklês and me into the barathrum.”[274] And whoever reads the sad narrative of the Korkyræan sedition, in the third book of Thucydidês, together with the reflections of the historian upon it,[275] will trace the gradual exasperation of these party feuds, beginning even under democratical forms, until at length they break down the barriers of public as well as of private morality.

[272] See the discussion of the ostracism in Aristot. Politic.
iii, 8, where he recognizes the problem as one common to all
governments.

Compare, also, a good Dissertation—J. A. Paradys, De Ostracismo
Atheniensium, Lugduni Batavor. 1793; K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der
Griechischen Staatsalterthümer, ch. 130; and Schömann, Antiq.
Jur. Pub. Græc. ch. xxxv, p. 233.

[273] Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 3.

[274] The barathrum was a deep pit, said to have had iron spikes
at the bottom, into which criminals condemned to death were
sometimes cast. Though probably an ancient Athenian punishment,
it seems to have become at the very least extremely rare, if not
entirely disused, during the times of Athens historically known
to us; but the phrase continued in speech after the practice had
become obsolete. The iron spikes depend on the evidence of the
Schol. Aristophan. Plutus, 431,—a very doubtful authority, when
we read the legend which he blends with his statement.

[275] Thucyd. iii, 70, 81, 82.

Against this chance of internal assailants Kleisthenês had to protect the democratical constitution,—first, by throwing impediments in their way and rendering it difficult for them to procure the requisite support; next, by eliminating them before any violent projects were ripe for execution. To do either the one or the other, it was necessary to provide such a constitution as would not only conciliate the good-will, but kindle the passionate attachment, of the mass of citizens, insomuch that not even any considerable minority should be deliberately inclined to alter it by force. It was necessary to create in the multitude, and through them to force upon the leading ambitious men, that rare and difficult sentiment which we may term a constitutional morality; a paramount reverence for the forms of the constitution, enforcing obedience to the authorities acting under and within those forms, yet combined with the habit of open speech, of action subject only to definite legal control, and unrestrained censure of those very authorities as to all their public acts,—combined too with a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will be not less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own. This coexistence of freedom and self-imposed restraint,—of obedience to authority with unmeasured censure of the persons exercising it,—may be found in the aristocracy of England (since about 1688) as well as in the democracy of the American United States: and because we are familiar with it, we are apt to suppose it a natural sentiment; though there seem to be few sentiments more difficult to establish and diffuse among a community, judging by the experience of history. We may see how imperfectly it exists at this day in the Swiss cantons; and the many violences of the first French revolution illustrate, among various other lessons, the fatal effects arising from its absence, even among a people high in the scale of intelligence. Yet the diffusion of such constitutional morality, not merely among the majority of any community, but throughout the whole, is the indispensable condition of a government at once free and peaceable; since even any powerful and obstinate minority may render the working of free institutions impracticable, without being strong enough to conquer ascendency for themselves. Nothing less than unanimity, or so overwhelming a majority as to be tantamount to unanimity, on the cardinal point of respecting constitutional forms, even by those who do not wholly approve of them, can render the excitement of political passion bloodless, and yet expose all the authorities in the state to the full license of pacific criticism.

At the epoch of Kleisthenês, which by a remarkable coincidence is the same as that of the regifuge at Rome, such constitutional morality, if it existed anywhere else, had certainly no place at Athens; and the first creation of it in any particular society must be esteemed an interesting historical fact. By the spirit of his reforms,—equal, popular, and comprehensive, far beyond the previous experience of Athenians,—he secured the hearty attachment of the body of citizens; but from the first generation of leading men, under the nascent democracy, and with such precedents as they had to look back upon, no self-imposed limits to ambition could be expected: and the problem required was to eliminate beforehand any one about to transgress these limits, so as to escape the necessity of putting him down afterwards, with all that bloodshed and reaction, in the midst of which the free working of the constitution would be suspended at least, if not irrevocably extinguished. To acquire such influence as would render him dangerous under democratical forms, a man must stand in evidence before the public, so as to afford some reasonable means of judging of his character and purposes; and the security which Kleisthenês provided, was, to call in the positive judgment of the citizens respecting his future promise purely and simply, so that they might not remain too long neutral between two formidable political rivals,—pursuant in a certain way to the Solonian proclamation against neutrality in a sedition, as I have already remarked in a former chapter. He incorporated in the constitution itself the principle of _privilegium_ (to employ the Roman phrase, which signifies, not a peculiar favor granted to any one, but a peculiar inconvenience imposed), yet only under circumstances solemn and well defined, with full notice and discussion beforehand, and by the positive secret vote of a large proportion of the citizens. “No law shall be made against any single citizen, without the same being made against _all_ Athenian citizens; unless it shall so seem good to six thousand citizens voting secretly.”[276] Such was that general principle of the constitution, under which the ostracism was a particular case. Before the vote of ostracism could be taken, a case was to be made out in the senate and the public assembly to justify it. In the sixth prytany of the year, these two bodies debated and determined whether the state of the republic was menacing enough to call for such an exceptional measure.[277] If they decided in the affirmative, a day was named, the agora was railed round, with ten entrances left for the citizens of each tribe, and ten separate casks or vessels for depositing the suffrages, which consisted of a shell, or a potsherd, with the name of the person written on it whom each citizen designed to banish. At the end of the day, the number of votes was summed up, and if six thousand votes were found to have been given against any one person, that person was ostracized; if not, the ceremony ended in nothing.[278] Ten days were allowed to him for settling his affairs, after which he was required to depart from Attica for ten years, but retained his property, and suffered no other penalty.

[276] Andokidês, De Mysteriis, p. 12, c. 13. Μηδὲ νόμον ἐπ᾽ ἀνδρὶ
ἐξεῖναι θεῖναι, ἐὰν μὴ τὸν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσιν Ἀθηναίοις· ἐὰν μὴ
ἑξακισχιλίοις δόξῃ, κρυβδὴν ψηφιζομένοις. According to the usual
looseness in dealing with the name of Solon, this has been called
a law of Solon (see Petit. Leg. Att. p. 188), though it certainly
cannot be older than Kleisthenês.

“Privilegia ne irroganto,” said the law of the Twelve Tables at
Rome (Cicero, Legg. iii, 4-19).

[277] Aristotle and Philochorus, ap. Photium, App. p. 672 and
675, ed. Porson.

It would rather appear by that passage that the ostracism was
never formally abrogated; and that even in the later times, to
which the description of Aristotle refers, the form was still
preserved of putting the question whether the public safety
called for an ostracizing vote, long after it had passed both out
of use and out of mind.

[278] Philochorus, _ut supra_; Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 7; Schol.
ad Aristophan. Equit. 851; Pollux, viii, 19.

There is a difference of opinion among the authorities, as well
as among the expositors, whether the minimum of six thousand
applies to the votes given in all, or to the votes given against
any one name. I embrace the latter opinion, which is supported
by Philochorus, Pollux, and the Schol. on Aristophanês, though
Plutarch countenances the former. Boeckh, in his Public Economy
of Athens, and Wachsmuth, (i, 1, p. 272) are in favor of Plutarch
and the former opinion; Paradys (Dissertat. De Ostr. p. 25),
Platner, and Hermann (see K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Gr.
Staatsalt. ch. 130, not. 6) support the other, which appears to
me the right one.

For the purpose, so unequivocally pronounced, of the general law
determining the absolute minimum necessary for a _privilegium_,
would by no means be obtained, if the simple majority of votes,
among six thousand voters in all, had been allowed to take
effect. A person might then be ostracized with a very small
number of votes against him, and without creating any reasonable
presumption that he was dangerous to the constitution; which
was by no means either the purpose of Kleisthenês, or the
well-understood operation of the ostracism, so long as it
continued to be a reality.

It was not the maxim at Athens to escape the errors of the people, by calling in the different errors, and the sinister interest besides, of an extra-popular or privileged few; nor was any third course open, since the principles of representative government were not understood, nor indeed conveniently applicable to very small communities. Beyond the judgment of the people—so the Athenians felt—there was no appeal; and their grand study was to surround the delivery of that judgment with the best securities for rectitude and the best preservatives against haste, passion, or private corruption. Whatever measure of good government could not be obtained in that way, could not, in their opinion, be obtained at all. I shall illustrate the Athenian proceedings on this head more fully when I come to speak of the working of their mature democracy: meanwhile, in respect to this grand protection of the nascent democracy,—the vote of ostracism,—it will be found that the securities devised by Kleisthenês, for making the sentence effectual against the really dangerous man, and against no one else, display not less foresight than patriotism. The main object was, to render the voting an expression of deliberate public feeling, as distinguished from mere factious antipathy: the large minimum of votes required, one-fourth of the entire citizen population, went far to insure this effect,—the more so, since each vote, taken as it was in a secret manner, counted unequivocally for the expression of a genuine and independent sentiment, and could neither be coerced nor bought. Then again, Kleisthenês did not permit the process of ostracizing to be opened against any one citizen exclusively. If opened at all, every one without exception was exposed to the sentence; so that the friends of Themistoklês could not invoke it against Aristeidês,[279] nor those of the latter against the former, without exposing their own leader to the same chance of exile. It was not likely to be invoked at all, therefore, until exasperation had proceeded so far as to render both parties insensible to this chance,—the precise index of that growing internecive hostility, which the ostracism prevented from coming to a head. Nor could it even then be ratified, unless a case was shown to convince the more neutral portion of the senate and the ekklesia: moreover, after all, the ekklesia did not itself ostracize, but a future day was named, and the whole body of the citizens were solemnly invited to vote. It was in this way that security was taken not only for making the ostracism effectual in protecting the constitution, but to hinder it from being employed for any other purpose. And we must recollect that it exercised its tutelary influence, not merely on those occasions when it was actually employed, but by the mere knowledge that it might be employed, and by the restraining effect which that knowledge produced on the conduct of the great men. Again, the ostracism, though essentially of an exceptional nature, was yet an exception sanctified and limited by the constitution itself; so that the citizen, in giving his ostracizing vote, did not in any way depart from the constitution or lose his reverence for it. The issue placed before him—“Is there any man whom you think vitally dangerous to the state? if so, whom?”—though vague, was yet raised directly and legally. Had there been no ostracism, it might probably have been raised both indirectly and illegally, on the occasion of some special imputed crime of a suspected political leader, when accused before a court of justice, —a perversion, involving all the mischief of the ostracism, without its protective benefits.

[279] The practical working of the ostracism presents it as a
struggle between two contending leaders, accompanied with chance
of banishment to both—Periklês πρὸς τὸν Θουκυδίδην εἰς ἀγῶνα περὶ
τοῦ ὀστράκου καταστὰς, καὶ διακινδυνεύσας, ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἐξέβαλε,
κατέλυσε δὲ τὴν ἀντιτεταγμένην ἑταιρείαν (Plutarch, Periklês, c.
14; compare Plutarch, Nikias, c. 11).

Care was taken to divest the ostracism of all painful consequence except what was inseparable from exile; and this is not one of the least proofs of the wisdom with which it was devised. Most certainly, it never deprived the public of candidates for political influence: and when we consider the small amount of individual evil which it inflicted,—evil too diminished, in the cases of Kimon and Aristeidês, by a reactionary sentiment which augmented their subsequent popularity after return,—two remarks will be quite sufficient to offer in the way of justification. First, it completely produced its intended effect; for the democracy grew up from infancy to manhood without a single attempt to overthrow it by force,[280]—a result, upon which no reflecting contemporary of Kleisthenês could have ventured to calculate. Next, through such tranquil working of the democratical forms, a constitutional morality quite sufficiently complete was produced among the leading Athenians, to enable the people after a certain time to dispense with that exceptional security which the ostracism offered.[281] To the nascent democracy, it was absolutely indispensable; to the growing yet militant democracy, it was salutary; but the full-grown democracy both could and did stand without it. The ostracism passed upon Hyperbolus, about ninety years after Kleisthenês, was the last occasion of its employment. And even this can hardly be considered as a serious instance: it was a trick concerted between two distinguished Athenians (Nikias and Alkibiadês), to turn to their own political account a process already coming to be antiquated. Nor would such a manœuvre have been possible, if the contemporary Athenian citizens had been penetrated with the same, serious feeling of the value of ostracism as a safeguard of democracy, as had been once entertained by their fathers and grandfathers. Between Kleisthenês and Hyperbolus, we hear of about ten different persons as having been banished by ostracism. First of all, Hipparchus of the deme Cholargus, the son of Charmus, a relative of the recently-expelled Peisistratid despots;[282] then Aristeidês, Themistoklês, Kimon, and Thucydidês son of Melêsias, all of them renowned political leaders; also Alkibiadês and Megaklês (the paternal and maternal grandfathers of the distinguished Alkibiadês), and Kallias, belonging to another eminent family at Athens;[283] lastly, Damôn, the preceptor of Periklês in poetry and music, and eminent for his acquisitions in philosophy.[284] In this last case comes out the vulgar side of humanity, aristocratical as well as democratical; for with both, the process of philosophy and the persons of philosophers are wont to be alike unpopular. Even Kleisthenês himself is said to have been ostracized under his own law, and Xanthippus; but both upon authority too weak to trust.[285] Miltiadês was not ostracized at all, but tried and punished for misconduct in his command.

[280] It is not necessary in this remark to take notice, either
of the oligarchy of Four Hundred, or that of Thirty, called the
Thirty Tyrants, established during the closing years of the
Peloponnesian war, and after the ostracism had been discontinued.
Neither of these changes were brought about by the excessive
ascendency of any one or few men: both of them grew out of the
embarrassments and dangers of Athens in the latter period of her
great foreign war.

[281] Aristotle (Polit. iii, 8, 6) seems to recognize the
political necessity of the ostracism, as applied even to obvious
superiority of wealth, connection, etc. (which he distinguishes
pointedly from superiority of merit and character), and upon
principles of symmetry only, even apart from dangerous designs
on the part of the superior mind. No painter, he observes, will
permit a foot, in his picture of a man, to be of disproportionate
size with the entire body, though separately taken it may be
finely painted; nor will the chorus-master allow any one voice,
however beautiful, to predominate beyond a certain proportion
over the rest.

His final conclusion is, however, that the legislator ought, if
possible, so to construct his constitution, as to have no need of
such exceptional remedy; but, if this cannot be done, then the
second-best step is to apply the ostracism. Compare also v, 2, 5.

The last century of the free Athenian democracy realized the
first of these alternatives.

[282] Plutarch, Nikias, c. 11: Harpokration. v. Ἵππαρχος.

[283] Lysias cont. Alkibiad. A. c. 11, p. 143: Harpokration. v.
Ἀλκιβιάδης; Andokidês cont. Alkibiad. c. 11-12, pp. 129, 130:
this last oration may afford evidence as to the facts mentioned
in it, though I cannot imagine it to be either genuine, or
belonging to the time to which it professes to refer, as has been
observed in a previous note.

[284] Plutarch, Periklês. c. 4; Plutarch. Aristeid. c. 1.

[285] Ælian, V. H. xiii, 24; Herakleidês, περὶ Πολιτειῶν, c. 1,
ed. Köhler.

I should hardly have said so much about this memorable and peculiar institution of Kleisthenês, if the erroneous accusations against the Athenian democracy,—of envy, injustice, and ill-treatment of their superior men, had not been greatly founded upon it, and if such criticisms had not passed from ancient times to modern with little examination. In monarchical governments, a pretender to the throne, numbering a certain amount of supporters, is, as a matter of course, excluded from the country. The duke of Bordeaux cannot now reside in France,—nor could Napoleon after 1815,—nor Charles Edward in England during the last century. No man treats this as any extravagant injustice, yet it is the parallel of the ostracism,—with a stronger case in favor of the latter, inasmuch as the change from one regal dynasty to another does not of necessity overthrow all the collateral institutions and securities of the country. Plutarch has affirmed that the ostracism arose from the envy and jealousy inherent in a democracy,[286] and not from justifiable fears,—an observation often repeated, yet not the less demonstrably untrue. Not merely because ostracism so worked as often to increase the influence of that political leader whose rival it removed,—but still more, because, if the fact had been as Plutarch says, this institution would have continued as long as the democracy; whereas it finished with the banishment of Hyperbolus, at a period when the government was more decisively democratical than it had been in the time of Kleisthenês. It was, in truth, a product altogether of fear and insecurity,[287] on the part both of the democracy and its best friends,—fear perfectly well-grounded, and only appearing needless because the precautions taken prevented attack. So soon as the diffusion of a constitutional morality had placed the mass of the citizens above all serious fear of an aggressive usurper the ostracism was discontinued. And doubtless the feeling, that it might safely be dispensed with, must have been strengthened by the long ascendency of Periklês,—by the spectacle of the greatest statesman whom Athens ever produced, acting steadily within the limits of the constitution; as well as by the ill-success of his two opponents, Kimon and Thucydidês,—aided by numerous partisans and by the great comic writers, at a period when comedy was a power in the state such as it has never been before or since,—in their attempts to get him ostracized. They succeeded in fanning up the ordinary antipathy of the citizens towards philosophers, so far as to procure the ostracism of his friend and teacher Damôn: but Periklês himself, to repeat the complaint of his bitter enemy, the comic poet Kratinus,[288] “was out of the reach of the oyster-shell.” If Periklês was not conceived to be dangerous to the constitution, none of his successors were at all likely to be so regarded. Damôn and Hyperbolus were the two last persons ostracized: both of them were cases, and the only cases, of an unequivocal abuse of the institution, because, whatever the grounds of displeasure against them may have been, it is impossible to conceive either of them as menacing to the state,—whereas all the other known sufferers were men of such position and power, that the six or eight thousand citizens who inscribed each name on the shell, or at least a large proportion of them, may well have done so under the most conscientious belief that they were guarding the constitution against real danger. Such a change, in the character of the persons ostracized, plainly evinces that the ostracism had become dissevered from that genuine patriotic prudence which originally rendered it both legitimate and popular. It had served for two generations an inestimable tutelary purpose,—it lived to be twice dishonored,—and then passed, by universal acquiescence, into matter of history.

[286] Plutarch, Themistoklês, 22; Plutarch, Aristeidês, 7,
παραμυθία φθόνου καὶ κουφισμός. See the same opinions repeated by
Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, ch. 48, vol. i, p. 272,
and by Platner, Prozess and Klagen bey den Attikern, vol. i, p.
386.

[287] Thucyd. viii, 73, διὰ δυνάμεως καὶ ἀξιώματος φόβον.

[288] Kratinus ap. Plutarch, Periklês, 13.

Ὁ σχινοκέφαλος Ζεὺς ὁδὶ προσέρχεται
Περικλέης, τᾠδεῖον ἐπὶ τοῦ κρανíου
Ἔχων, ἐπειδὴ τοὔστρακον παροίχεται.

For the attacks of the comic writers upon Damôn, see Plutarch,
Periklês, c. 4.

A process analogous to the ostracism subsisted at Argos,[289] at Syracuse, and in some other Grecian democracies. Aristotle states that it was abused for factious purposes: and at Syracuse, where it was introduced after the expulsion of the Gelonian dynasty, Diodorus affirms that it was so unjustly and profusely applied, as to deter persons of wealth and station from taking any part in public affairs; for which reason it was speedily discontinued. We have no particulars to enable us to appreciate this general statement. But we cannot safely infer that because the ostracism worked on the whole well at Athens, it must necessarily have worked well in other states,—the more so, as we do not know whether it was surrounded with the same precautionary formalities, nor whether it even required the same large minimum of votes to make it effective. This latter guarantee, so valuable in regard to an institution essentially easy to abuse, is not noticed by Diodorus in his brief account of the Petalism,—so the process was denominated at Syracuse.[290]

[289] Aristot. Polit. iii, 8, 4; v, 2, 5.

[290] Diodor. xi, 55-87. This author describes very imperfectly
the Athenian ostracism, transferring to it apparently the
circumstances of the Syracusan Petalism.

Such was the first Athenian democracy, engendered as well by the reaction against Hippias and his dynasty as by the memorable partnership, whether spontaneous or compulsory, between Kleisthenês and the unfranchised multitude. It is to be distinguished, both from the mitigated oligarchy established by Solon before, and from the full-grown and symmetrical democracy which prevailed afterwards from the beginning of the Peloponnesian war towards the close of the career of Periklês. It was, indeed, a striking revolution, impressed upon the citizen not less by the sentiments to which it appealed than by the visible change which it made in political and social life. He saw himself marshalled in the ranks of hoplites, alongside of new companions in arms,—he was enrolled in a new register, and his property in a new schedule, in his deme and by his demarch, an officer before unknown,—he found the year distributed afresh, for all legal purposes, into ten parts bearing the name of prytanies, each marked by a solemn and free-spoken ekklesia, at which he had a right to be present,—that ekklesia was convoked and presided by senators called prytanes, members of a senate novel both as to number and distribution,—his political duties were now performed as member of a tribe, designated by a name not before pronounced in common Attic life, connected with one of ten heroes whose statues he now for the first time saw in the agora, and associating him with fellow-tribemen from all parts of Attica. All these and many others were sensible novelties, felt in the daily proceedings of the citizen. But the great novelty of all was, the authentic recognition of the ten new tribes as a sovereign dêmos, or people, apart from all specialties of phratric or gentile origin, with free speech and equal law; retaining no distinction except the four classes of the Solonian property-schedule with their gradations of eligibility. To a considerable proportion of citizens this great novelty was still farther endeared by the fact that it had raised them out of the degraded position of metics and slaves; and to the large majority of all the citizens, it furnished a splendid political idea, profoundly impressive to the Greek mind,—capable of calling forth the most ardent attachment as well as the most devoted sense of active obligation and obedience. We have now to see how their newly-created patriotism manifested itself.

Kleisthenês and his new constitution carried with them so completely the popular favor, that Isagoras had no other way of opposing it except by calling in the interference of Kleomenês and the Lacedæmonians. Kleomenês listened the more readily to this call, as he was reported to have been on an intimate footing with the wife of Isagoras. He prepared to come to Athens; but his first aim was to deprive the democracy of its great leader Kleisthenês, who, as belonging to the Alkmæônid family, was supposed to be tainted with the inherited sin of his great-grandfather Megaklês, the destroyer of the usurper Kylôn. Kleomenês sent a herald to Athens, demanding the expulsion “of the accursed,”—so this family were called by their enemies, and so they continued to be called eighty years afterwards, when the same manœuvre was practised by the Lacedæmonians of that day against Periklês. This requisition had been recommended by Isagoras, and was so well-timed that Kleisthenês, not venturing to disobey it, retired voluntarily, so that Kleomenês, though arriving at Athens only with a small force, found himself master of the city. At the instigation of Isagoras, he sent into exile seven hundred families, selected from the chief partisans of Kleisthenês: his next attempt was to dissolve the new Senate of Five Hundred and place the whole government in the hands of three hundred adherents of the chief whose cause he espoused. But now was seen the spirit infused into the people by their new constitution. At the time of the first usurpation of Peisistratus, the Senate of that day had not only not resisted, but even lent themselves to the scheme. But the new Senate of Kleisthenês resolutely refused to submit to dissolution, and the citizens manifested themselves in a way at once so hostile and so determined, that Kleomenês and Isagoras were altogether baffled. They were compelled to retire into the acropolis and stand upon the defensive; and this symptom of weakness was the signal for a general rising of the Athenians, who besieged the Spartan king on the holy rock. He had evidently come without any expectation of finding, or any means of overpowering, resistance; for at the end of two days his provisions were exhausted, and he was forced to capitulate. He and his Lacedæmonians, as well as Isagoras, were allowed to retire to Sparta; but the Athenians of the party captured along with him were imprisoned, condemned,[291] and executed by the people.

[291] Herodot. v, 70-72; compare Schol. ad Aristophan. Lysistr.
274.

Kleisthenês, with the seven hundred exiled families, was immediately recalled, and his new constitution materially strengthened by this first success. Yet the prospect of renewed Spartan attack was sufficiently serious to induce him to send envoys to Artaphernês, the Persian satrap at Sardis, soliciting the admission of Athens into the Persian alliance: he probably feared the intrigues of the expelled Hippias in the same quarter. Artaphernês, having first informed himself who the Athenians were, and where they dwelt,—replied that, if they chose to send earth and water to the king of Persia, they might be received as allies, but upon no other condition. Such were the feelings of alarm under which the envoys had quitted Athens, that they went the length of promising this unqualified token of submission. But their countrymen, on their return, disavowed them with scorn and indignation.[292]

[292] Herodot. v, 73.

It was at this time that the first connection began between Athens and the little Bœotian town of Platæa, situated on the northern slope of the range of Kithæron, between that mountain and the river Asôpus,—on the road from Athens to Thebes; and it is upon this first occasion that we become acquainted with the Bœotians and their polities. In one of my preceding volumes,[293] the Bœotian federation has already been briefly described, as composed of some twelve or thirteen autonomous towns under the headship of Thebes, which was, or professed to have been, their mother-city. Platæa had been, so the Thebans affirmed, their latest foundation;[294] it was ill-used by them, and discontented with the alliance. Accordingly, as Kleomenês was on his way back from Athens, the Platæans took the opportunity of addressing themselves to him, craved the protection of Sparta against Thebes, and surrendered their town and territory without reserve. The Spartan king, having no motive to undertake a trust which promised nothing but trouble, advised them to solicit the protection of Athens, as nearer and more accessible for them in case of need. He foresaw that this would embroil the Athenians with Bœotia; and such anticipation was in fact his chief motive for giving the advice, which the Platæans followed. Selecting an occasion of public sacrifice at Athens, they dispatched thither envoys, who sat down as suppliants at the altar, surrendered their town to Athens, and implored protection against Thebes. Such an appeal was not to be resisted, and protection was promised; it was soon needed, for the Thebans invaded the Platæan territory, and an Athenian force marched to defend it. Battle was about to be joined, when the Corinthians interposed with their mediation, which was accepted by both parties. They decided altogether in favor of Platæa, pronouncing that the Thebans had no right to employ force against any seceding member of the Bœotian federation.[295] But the Thebans, finding the decision against them, refused to abide by it, and, attacking the Athenians on their return, sustained a complete defeat: the latter avenged this breach of faith by joining to Platæa the portion of Theban territory south of the Asôpus, and making that river the limit between the two. By such success, however, the Athenians gained nothing, except the enmity of Bœotia,—as Kleomenês had foreseen. Their alliance with Platæa, long continued, and presenting in the course of this history several incidents touching to our sympathies, will be found, if we except one splendid occasion,[296] productive only of burden to the one party, yet insufficient as a protection to the other.

[293] See vol. ii, p. 295, part ii, ch. 3.

[294] Thucyd. iii, 61.

[295] Herodot. vi, 108. ἐᾷν Θηβαίους Βοιωτῶν τοὺς μὴ βουλομένους
ἐς Βοιωτοὺς τελέειν. This is an important circumstance in regard
to Grecian political feeling: I shall advert to it hereafter.

[296] Herodot. vi, 108. Thucydidês (iii, 58), when recounting
the capture of Platæa by the Lacedæmonians in the third year of
the Peloponnesian war, states that the alliance between Platæa
and Athens was then in its 93rd year of date; according to which
reckoning it would begin in the year 519 B. C., where Mr. Clinton
and other chronologers place it.

I venture to think that the immediate circumstances, as recounted
in the text from Herodotus (whether Thucydidês conceived them
in the same way, cannot be determined), which brought about the
junction of Platæa with Athens, cannot have taken place in 519 B.
C., but must have happened _after_ the expulsion of Hippias from
Athens in 510 B. C.,—for the following reasons:—

1. No mention is made of Hippias, who yet, if the event had
happened in 519 B. C., must have been the person to determine
whether the Athenians should assist Platæa or not. The Platæan
envoys present themselves at a public sacrifice in the attitude
of suppliants, so as to touch the feelings of the Athenian
citizens generally: had Hippias been then despot, _he_ would have
been the person to be propitiated and to determine for or against
assistance.

2. We know no cause which should have brought Kleomenês with a
Lacedæmonian force near to Platæa in the year 519 B. C.: we know
from the statement of Herodotus (v, 76) that no Lacedæmonian
expedition against Attica took place at that time. But in the
year to which I have referred the event, Kleomenês is on his
march near the spot upon a known and assignable object. From the
very tenor of the narrative, it is plain that Kleomenês and his
army were not designedly in Bœotia, nor meddling with Bœotian
affairs, at the time when the Platæans solicited his aid; he
declines to interpose in the matter, pleading the great distance
between Sparta and Platæa as a reason.

3. Again, Kleomenês, in advising the Platæans to solicit
Athens, does not give the advice through good-will towards
them, but through a desire to harass and perplex the Athenians,
by entangling them in a quarrel with the Bœotians. At the
point of time to which I have referred the incident, this was
a very natural desire: he was angry, and perhaps alarmed, at
the recent events which had brought about his expulsion from
Athens. But what was there to make him conceive such a feeling
against Athens during the reign of Hippias? That despot was on
terms of the closest intimacy with Sparta: the Peisistratids
were (ξείνους—ξεινίους ταμάλιστα—Herod. v, 63, 90, 91) “the
particular guests” of the Spartans, who were only induced to
take part against Hippias from a reluctant obedience to the
oracles procured, one after another, by Kleisthenês. The motive,
therefore, assigned by Herodotus, for the advice given by
Kleomenês to the Platæans, can have no application to the time
when Hippias was still despot.

4. That Herodotus did not conceive the victory gained by the
Athenians over Thebes as having taken place _before_ the
expulsion of Hippias, is evident from his emphatic contrast
between their warlike spirit and success when liberated from the
despots, and their timidity or backwardness while under Hippias
(Ἀθηναῖοι τυραννευόμενοι μὲν, οὐδαμῶν τῶν σφέας περιοικεόντων
ἔσαν τὰ πολέμια ἀμείνους, ἀπαλλαχθέντες δὲ τυράννων, μακρῷ πρῶτοι
ἐγένοντο· δηλοῖ ὦν ταῦτα, ὅτι κατεχόμενοι μὲν, ἐθελοκάκεον,
etc. v, 78). The man who wrote thus cannot have believed that,
in the year 519 B. C., while Hippias was in full sway, the
Athenians gained an important victory over the Thebans, cut off
a considerable portion of the Theban territory for the purpose
of joining it to that of the Platæans, and showed from that time
forward their constant superiority over Thebes by protecting her
inferior neighbor against her.

These different reasons, taking them altogether, appear to me
to show that the first alliance between Athens and Platæa, as
Herodotus conceives and describes it, cannot have taken place
before the expulsion of Hippias, in 510 B. C.; and induce me to
believe, either that Thucydidês was mistaken in the date of that
event, or that Herodotus has not correctly described the facts.
Not seeing any reason to suspect the description given by the
latter, I have departed, though unwillingly, from the date of
Thucydidês.

The application of the Platæans to Kleomenês, and his advice
grounded thereupon, may be connected more suitably with his first
expedition to Athens, after the expulsion of Hippias, than with
his second.

Meanwhile Kleomenês had returned to Sparta full of resentment against the Athenians, and resolved on punishing them, as well as on establishing his friend Isagoras as despot over them. Having been taught, however, by humiliating experience, that this was no easy achievement, he would not make the attempt, without having assembled a considerable force; he summoned allies from all the various states of Peloponnesus, yet without venturing to inform them what he was about to undertake. He at the same time concerted measures with the Bœotians, and with the Chalkidians of Eubœa, for a simultaneous invasion of Attica on all sides. It appears that he had greater confidence in their hostile dispositions towards Athens than in those of the Peloponnesians, for he was not afraid to acquaint them with his design,—and probably the Bœotians were incensed with the recent interference of Athens in the affair of Platæa. As soon as these preparations were completed, the two kings of Sparta, Kleomenês and Demaratus, put themselves at the head of the united Peloponnesian force, marched into Attica, and advanced as far as Eleusis on the way to Athens. But when the allies came to know the purpose for which they were to be employed, a spirit of dissatisfaction manifested itself among them. They had no unfriendly sentiment towards Athens; and the Corinthians especially, favorably disposed rather than otherwise towards that city, resolved to proceed no farther, withdrew their contingent from the camp, and returned home. At the same time, king Demaratus, either sharing in the general dissatisfaction, or moved by some grudge against his colleague which had not before manifested itself, renounced the undertaking also. And these two examples, operating upon the preëxisting sentiment of the allies generally, caused the whole camp to break up and return home without striking a blow.[297]

[297] Herodot. v, 75.

We may here remark that this is the first instance known in which Sparta appears in act as recognized head of an obligatory Peloponnesian alliance,[298] summoning contingents from the cities to be placed under the command of her king. Her headship, previously recognized in theory, passes now into act, but in an unsatisfactory manner, so as to prove the necessity of precaution and concert beforehand,—which will be found not long wanting.

[298] Compare Kortüm, Zur Geschichte Hellenischer
Staats-Verfassungen, p. 35 (Heidelberg, 1821).

I doubt, however, his interpretation of the words in Herodotus
(v, 63)—εἴτε ἰδίῳ στόλῳ, εἴτε δημοσίῳ χρησόμενοι.

Pursuant to the scheme concerted, the Bœotians and Chalkidians attacked Attica at the same time that Kleomenês entered it. The former seized Œnoê and Hysiæ, the frontier demes of Attica on the side towards Platæa, while the latter assailed the north-eastern frontier, which faces Eubœa. Invaded on three sides, the Athenians were in serious danger, and were compelled to concentrate all their forces at Eleusis against Kleomenês, leaving the Bœotians and Chalkidians unopposed. But the unexpected breaking up of the invading army from Peloponnesus proved their rescue, and enabled them to turn the whole of their attention to the other frontier. They marched into Bœotia to the strait called Euripus, which separates it from Eubœa, intending to prevent the junction of the Bœotians and Chalkidians, and to attack the latter first apart. But the arrival of the Bœotians caused an alteration in their scheme; they attacked the Bœotians first, and gained a victory of the most complete character,—killing a large number, and capturing seven hundred prisoners. On the very same day they crossed over to Eubœa, attacked the Chalkidians, and gained another victory so decisive that it at once terminated the war. Many Chalkidians were taken, as well as Bœotians, and conveyed in chains to Athens, where after a certain detention they were at last ransomed for two minæ per man; and the tenth of the sum thus raised was employed in the fabrication of a chariot and four horses in bronze, which was placed in the acropolis to commemorate the victory. Herodotus saw this trophy when he was at Athens. He saw too, what was a still more speaking trophy, the actual chains in which the prisoners had been fettered, exhibiting in their appearance the damage undergone when the acropolis was burnt by Xerxês: an inscription of four lines described the offerings and recorded the victory out of which they had sprung.[299]

[299] Herodot. v, 77; Ælian, V. H. vi, 1; Pausan. i, 28, 2.