[226] Herodot. vi, 36-37.

[227] Thus the Scythians broke into the Chersonese even during the government of Miltiadês son of Kimôn, nephew of Miltiadês the œkist, about forty years after the wall had been erected (Herodot. vi, 40). Again, Periklês reëstablished the cross-wall, on sending to the Chersonese a fresh band of one thousand Athenian settlers (Plutarch, Periklês, c. 19): lastly, Derkyllidas the Lacedæmonian built it anew, in consequence of loud complaints raised by the inhabitants of their defenceless condition,—about 397 B. C. (Xenophon. Hellen. iii, 2, 8-10). So imperfect, however, did the protection prove, that about half a century afterwards, during the first years of the conquests of Philip of Macedon, an idea was entertained of digging through the isthmus, and converting the peninsula into an island (Demosthenês, Philippic ii, 6, p. 92, and De Haloneso, c. 10, p. 86); an idea, however, never carried into effect.

[228] Herodot. vi, 38, 39.

[229] Herodot. v, 94. I have already said that I conceive this as a different war from that in which the poet Alkæus was engaged.

[230] Herodot. iii, 39.

[231] Herodot. vi, 104, 139, 140.

[232] Herodot. vi, 39-103. Cornelius Nepos, in his Life of Miltiadês, confounds in one biography the adventures of two persons,—Miltiadês son of Kypselus, the œkist,—and Miltiadês son of Kimôn, the victor of Marathon,—the uncle and the nephew.

[233] There is nothing that I know to mark the date except that it was earlier than the death of Hipparchus in 514 B. C., and also earlier than the expedition of Darius against the Scythians, about 516 B. C., in which expedition Miltiadês was engaged: see Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, and J. M. Schultz, Beitrag zu genaueren Zeitbestimmungen der Hellen. Geschichten von der 63^sten bis zur 72^sten Olympiade, p. 165, in the Kieler Philologische Studien 1841.

[234] Herodot. v, 62. The unfortunate struggle at Leipsydrion became afterwards the theme of a popular song (Athenæus, xv, p. 695): see Hesychius, v. Λειψύδριον, and Aristotle, Fragm. Ἀθηναίων Πολιτεία, 37, ed. Neumann.

If it be true that Alkibiadês, grandfather of the celebrated Alkibiadês, took part with Kleisthenês and the Alkmæonid exiles in this struggle (see Isokratês, De Bigis, Or. xvi, p. 351), he must have been a mere youth.

[235] Pausan. x, 5, 5.

[236] Herodot. i, 50, ii, 180. I have taken the three hundred talents of Herodotus as being Æginæan talents, which are to Attic talents in the ratio of 5 : 3. The Inscriptions prove that the accounts of the temple were kept by the Amphiktyons on the Æginæan scale of money: see Corpus Inscrip. Boeckh, No. 1688, and Boeckh, Metrologie, vii, 4.

[237] Herodot. vi, 62. The words of the historian would seem to imply that they only began to think of this scheme of building the temple after the defeat of Leipsydrion, and a year or two before the expulsion of Hippias; a supposition quite inadmissible, since the temple must have taken some years in building.

The loose and prejudiced statement in Philochorus, affirming that the Peisistratids caused the Delphian temple to be burnt, and also that they were at last deposed by the victorious arm of the Alkmæônids (Philochori Fragment. 70, ed. Didot) makes us feel the value of Herodotus and Thucydidês as authorities.

[238] Herodot. vi, 128; Cicero, De Legg. ii, 16. The deposit here mentioned by Cicero, which may very probably have been recorded in an inscription in the temple, must have been made before the time of the Persian conquest of Samos,—indeed, before the death of Polykratês in 522 B. C., after which period the island fell at once into a precarious situation, and very soon afterwards into the greatest calamities.

[239] Herodot. v, 62, 63.

[240] Herodot. v, 64, 65.

[241] Thucyd. vi, 56, 57.

[242] Thucyd. vi, 55. ὡς ὅ τε βωμὸς σημαίνει, καὶ ἡ στήλη περὶ τῆς τῶν τυράννων ἀδικίας, ἡ ἐν τῇ Ἀθηναίων ἀκροπόλει σταθεῖσα.

Dr. Thirlwall, after mentioning the departure of Hippias, proceeds as follows: “After his departure many severe measures were taken against his adherents, who appear to have been for a long time afterwards a formidable party. They were punished or repressed, some by death, others by exile or by the loss of their political privileges. The family of the tyrants was condemned to perpetual banishment, and appears to have been excepted from the most comprehensive decrees of amnesty passed in later times.” (Hist. of Gr. ch. xi, vol. ii, p. 81.)

I cannot but think that Dr. Thirlwall has here been misled by insufficient authority. He refers to the oration of Andokidês de Mysteriis, sects. 106 and 78 (sect. 106 coincides in part with ch. 18, in the ed. of Dobree). An attentive reading of it will show that it is utterly unworthy of credit in regard to matters anterior to the speaker by one generation or more. The orators often permit themselves great license in speaking of past facts, but Andokidês in this chapter passes the bounds even of rhetorical license. First, he states something not bearing the least analogy to the narrative of Herodotus as to the circumstances preceding the expulsion of the Peisistratids, and indeed tacitly setting aside that narrative; next, he actually jumbles together the two capital and distinct exploits of Athens,—the battle of Marathon and the repulse of Xerxês ten years after it. I state this latter charge in the words of Sluiter and Valckenaer, before I consider the former charge: “Verissime ad hæc verba notat Valckenaerius—Confundere videtur Andocidês diversissima; Persica sub Miltiade et Dario et victoriam Marathoniam (v, 14)—quæque evenere sub Themistocle, Xerxis gesta. Hic urbem incendio delevit, non ille (v, 20). Nihil magis manifestum est, quam diversa ab oratore confundi.” (Sluiter, Lection. Andocideæ, p. 147.)

The criticism of these commentators is perfectly borne out by the words of the orator, which are too long to find a place here. But immediately prior to those words he expresses himself as follows, and this is the passage which serves as Dr. Thirlwall’s authority: Οἱ γὰρ πατέρες οἱ ὑμέτεροι, γενομένων τῇ πόλει κακῶν μεγάλων, ὅτε οἱ τύραννοι εἶχον τὴν πόλιν, ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἔφυγε, νικήσαντες μαχόμενοι τοὺς τυράννους ἐπὶ Παλληνίῳ, στρατηγοῦντος Λεωγόρου τοῦ προπάππου τοῦ ἐμοῦ, καὶ Χαρίου οὗ ἐκεῖνος τὴν θυγατέρα εἶχεν ἐξ ἧς ὁ ἡμέτερος ἦν πάππος, κατελθόντες εἰς τὴν πατρίδα τοὺς μὲν ἀπέκτειναν, τῶν δὲ φυγὴν κατέγνωσαν, τοὺς δὲ μένειν ἐν τῇ πόλει ἐάσαντες ἠτίμωσαν.

Both Sluiter (Lect. And. p. 8) and Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. p. 80) refer this alleged victory of Leogoras and the Athenian demus to the action described by Herodotus (v, 64) as having been fought by Kleomenês of Sparta against the Thessalian cavalry. But the two events have not a single circumstance in common, except that each is a victory over the Peisistratidæ or their allies: nor could they well be the same event, described in different terms, seeing that Kleomenês, marching from Sparta to Athens, could not have fought the Thessalians at Pallênê, which lay on the road from Marathon to Athens. Pallênê was the place where Peisistratus, advancing from Marathon to Athens, on occasion of his second restoration, gained his complete victory over the opposing party, and marched on afterwards to Athens without farther resistance (Herodot. i, 63).

If, then, we compare the statement given by Andokidês of the preceding circumstances, whereby the dynasty of the Peisistratids was put down, with that given by Herodotus, we shall see that the two are radically different; we cannot blend them together, but must make our election between them. Not less different are the representations of the two as to the circumstances which immediately ensued on the fall of Hippias: they would scarcely appear to relate to the same event. That “the adherents of the Peisistratidæ were punished or repressed, some by death, others by exile, or by the loss of their political privileges,” which is the assertion of Andokidês and Dr. Thirlwall, is not only not stated by Herodotus, but is highly improbable, if we accept the facts which he does state; for he tells us that Hippias capitulated and agreed to retire while possessing ample means of resistance,—simply from regard to the safety of his children. It is not to be supposed that he would leave his intimate partisans exposed to danger; such of them as felt themselves obnoxious would naturally retire along with him; and if this be what is meant by “many persons condemned to exile,” here is no reason to call it in question. But there is little probability that any one was put to death, and still less probability that any were punished by the loss of their political privileges. Within a year afterwards came the comprehensive constitution of Kleisthenês, to be described in the following chapter, and I consider it eminently unlikely that there were a considerable class of residents in Attica left out of this constitution, under the category of partisans of Peisistratus: indeed, the fact cannot be so, if it be true that the very first person banished under the Kleisthenean ostracism was a person named Hipparchus, a kinsman of Peisistratus (Androtion, Fr. 5, ed. Didot; Harpokration, v. Ἵππαρχος); and this latter circumstance depends upon evidence better than that of Andokidês. That there were a party in Attica attached to the Peisistratids, I do not doubt; but that they were “a powerful party,” (as Dr. Thirlwall imagines,) I see nothing to show; and the extraordinary vigor and unanimity of the Athenian people under the Kleisthenean constitution will go far to prove that such could not have been the case.

I will add another reason to evince how completely Andokidês misconceives the history of Athens between 510-480 B. C. He says that when the Peisistratids were put down, many of their partisans were banished, many others allowed to stay at home with the loss of their political privileges; but that afterwards, when the overwhelming dangers of the Persian invasion supervened, the people passed a vote to restore the exiles and to remove the existing disfranchisements at home. He would thus have us believe that the exiled partisans of the Peisistratids were all restored, and the disfranchised partisans of the Peisistratids all enfranchised, just at the moment of the Persian invasion, and with the view of enabling Athens better to repel that grave danger. This is nothing less than a glaring mistake; for the first Persian invasion was undertaken with the express view of restoring Hippias, and with the presence of Hippias himself at Marathon; while the second Persian invasion was also brought on in part by the instigation of his family. Persons who had remained in exile or in a state of disfranchisement down to that time, in consequence of their attachment to the Peisistratids, could not in common prudence be called into action at the moment of peril, to help in repelling Hippias himself. It is very true that the exiles and the disfranchised were readmitted, shortly before the invasion of Xerxês, and under the then pressing calamities of the state. But these persons were not philo-Peisistratids; they were a number gradually accumulated from the sentences of exile and (atimy or) disfranchisement every year passed at Athens,—for these were punishments applied by the Athenian law to various crimes and public omissions,—the persons so sentenced were not politically disaffected, and their aid would then be of use in defending the state against a foreign enemy.

In regard to “the exception of the family of Peisistratus from the most comprehensive decrees of amnesty passed in later times,” I will also remark that, in the decree of amnesty, there is no mention of them by name, nor any special exception made against them: among a list of various categories excepted, those are named “who have been condemned to death or exile either as murderers or as despots,” (ἢ σφαγεῦσιν ἢ τυράννοις, Andokid. c. 13.) It is by no means certain that the descendants of Peisistratus would be comprised in this exception, which mentions only the person himself condemned; but even if this were otherwise, the exception is a mere continuance of similar words of exception in the old Solonian law, anterior to Peisistratus; and, therefore, affords no indication of particular feeling against the Peisistratids.

Andokidês is a useful authority for the politics of Athens in his own time (between 420-390 B. C.), but in regard to the previous history of Athens between 510-480 B. C., his assertions are so loose, confused, and unscrupulous, that he is a witness of no value. The mere circumstance noted by Valckenaer, that he has confounded together Marathon and Salamis, would be sufficient to show this; but when we add to such genuine ignorance his mention of his two great-grandfathers in prominent and victorious leadership, which it is hardly credible that they could ever have occupied,—when we recollect that the facts which he alleges to have preceded and accompanied the expulsion of the Peisistratids are not only at variance with those stated by Herodotus, but so contrived as to found a factitious analogy for the cause which he is himself pleading,—we shall hardly be able to acquit him of something worse than ignorance in his deposition.

[243] Herodot. v, 66-69 ἑσσούμενος δὲ ὁ Κλεισθένης τὸν δῆμον προσεταιρίζεται—ὡς γὰρ δὴ τὸν Ἀθηναίων δῆμον, πρότερον ἀπωσμένον πάντων, τότε πρὸς τὴν ἑωϋτοῦ μοίρην προσεθήκατο, etc.

[244] Aristot. Polit. iii, 1, 10; vi, 2, 11. Κλεισθένης,—πολλοῖς ἐφυλέτευσε ξένους καὶ δούλους μετοίκους.

Several able critics, and Dr. Thirlwall among the number, consider this passage as affording no sense, and assume some conjectural emendation to be indispensable; though there is no particular emendation which suggests itself as preëminently plausible. Under these circumstances, I rather prefer to make the best of the words as they stand; which, though unusual, seem to me not absolutely inadmissible. The expression ξένος μέτοικος (which is a perfectly good one, as we find in Aristoph. Equit. 347,—εἴπου δικιδίον εἶπας εὖ κατὰ ξένου μετοίκου) may be considered as the correlative to δούλους μετοίκους,—the last word being construed both with δούλους and with ξένους. I apprehend that there always must have been in Attica a certain number of intelligent slaves living apart from their masters (χωρὶς οἰκοῦντες), in a state between slavery and freedom, working partly on condition of a fixed payment to him, partly for themselves, and perhaps continuing to pass nominally as slaves after they had bought their liberty by instalments. Such men would be δοῦλοι μέτοικοι: indeed, there are cases in which δοῦλοι signifies freedmen (Meier, De Gentilitate Atticâ, p. 6): they must have been industrious and pushing men, valuable partisans to a political revolution. See K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alterth. ch. 111, not. 15.

[245] Herodot. v, 69. Κλεισθένης,—ὑπεριδὼν Ἴωνας, ἵνα μὴ σφισι αἱ αὐταὶ ἔωσι φυλαὶ καὶ Ἴωσι.

[246] Such a disposition seems evident in Herodot. i, 143.

[247] In illustration of what is here stated, see the account of the modifications of the constitution of Zurich, in Blüntschli, Staats und Rechts Geschichte der Stadt Zurich, book iii. ch. 2, p. 322; also, Kortüm, Entstehungs Geschichte der Freistädtischen Bünde im Mittelalter, ch. 5, pp. 74-75.

[248] Respecting these Eponymous Heroes of the Ten Tribes, and the legends connected with them, see chapter viii of the Ἐπιτάφιος Λόγος, erroneously ascribed to Demosthenês.

[249] Herodot. v, 69. δέκα δὲ καὶ τοὺς δήμους κατένεμε ἐς τὰς φυλάς.

Schömann contends that Kleisthenês established exactly one hundred demes to the ten tribes (De Comitiis Atheniensium, Præf. p. xv and p. 363, and Antiquitat. Jur. Pub. Græc. ch. xxii, p. 260), and K. F. Hermann (Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alt. ch. 111) thinks that this is what Herodotus meant to affirm, though he does not believe the fact to have really stood so.

I incline, as the least difficulty in the case, to construe δέκα with φυλὰς and not with δήμους, as Wachsmuth (i, 1, p. 271) and Dieterich (De Clisthene, a treatise cited by K. F. Hermann, but which I have not seen) construe it.

[250] The deme Melitê belonged to the tribe Kekropis; Kollytus, to the tribe Ægêis; Kydathenæon, to the tribe Pandionis; Kerameis or Kerameikus, to the Akamantis; Skambônidæ, to the Leontis.

All these five were demes within the city of Athens, and all belonged to different tribes.

Peiræus belonged to the Hippothoöntis; Phalêrum, to the Æantis; Xypetê, to the Kekropis; Thymætadæ, to the Hippothoöntis. These four demes, adjoining to each other, formed a sort of quadruple local union, for festivals and other purposes, among themselves; though three of them belonged to different tribes.

See the list of the Attic demes, with a careful statement of their localities in so far as ascertained, in Professor Ross, Die Demen von Attika. Halle, 1846. The distribution of the city-demes, and of Peiræus and Phalêrum, among different tribes, appears to me a clear proof of the intention of the original distributors. It shows that they wished from the beginning to make the demes constituting each tribe discontinuous, and that they desired to prevent both the growth of separate tribe-interests and ascendency of one tribe over the rest. It contradicts the belief of those who suppose that the tribe was at first composed of continuous demes, and that the breach of continuity arose from subsequent changes.

Of course there were many cases in which adjoining demes belonged to the same tribe; but not one of the ten tribes was made up altogether of adjoining demes.

[251] See Boeckh, Corp. Inscriptt. Nos. 85, 128, 213, etc.: compare Demosthen. cont. Theokrin. c. 4. p. 1326 R.

[252] We may remark that this register was called by a special name, the Lexiarchic register; while the primitive register of phrators and gentiles always retained, even in the time of the orators, its original name of the common register—Harpokration, v. Κοινὸν γραμματεῖον καὶ ληξιαρχικόν.

[253] See Schömann, Antiq. Jur. P. Græc. ch. xxiv. The oration of Demosthenês against Eubulidês is instructive about these proceedings of the assembled demots: compare Harpokration, v. Διαψήφισις, and Meier, De Bonis Damnatorum, ch. xii, p. 78, etc.

[254] Aristot. Fragment. de Republ., ed. Neumann.—Ἀθην. πολιτ. Fr. 40, p. 88; Schol. ad Aristophan. Ran. 37; Harpokration, v. Δήμαρχος—Ναυκραρικά; Photius, v. Ναυκραρία.

[255] Herodot. vi, 109-111.

[256] Harpokration, v. Ἀποδέκται.

[257] See the valuable treatise of Schömann, De Comitiis, passim; also his Antiq. Jur. Publ. Gr. ch. xxxi; Harpokration, v. Κυρία Ἐκκλησία; Pollux, viii, 95.

[258] See in particular on this subject the treatise of Schömann, De Sortitione Judicum (Gripswald, 1820), and the work of the same author, Antiq. Jur. Publ. Græc. ch. 49-55, p. 264, seqq.; also Heffter, Die Athenäische Gerichtsverfassung, part ii, ch. 2, p. 51, seqq.; Meier and Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, pp. 127-135.

The views of Schömann respecting the sortition of the Athenian jurors have been bitterly attacked, but in no way refuted, by F. V. Fritzsche (De Sortitione Judicum apud Athenienses Conmentatio, Leipsic, 1835).

Two or three of these dikastic tickets, marking the name and the deme of the citizen, and the letter of the decury to which during that particular year he belonged, have been recently dug up near Athens:—

(Boeckh, Corp. Inscrip. Nos. 207-208.)

Fritzsche (p. 73) considers these to be tickets of senators, not of dikasts, contrary to all probability.

For the Heliastic oath, and its remarkable particulars, see Demosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. See also Aristophanês, Plutus, 277 (with the valuable Scholia, though from different hands and not all of equal correctness) and 972; Ekklesiazusæ, 678, seqq.

[259] Plutarch, Arist. 7; Herodot. vi, 109-111.

[260] Aristotle puts these two together; election of magistrates by the mass of the citizens, but only out of persons possessing a high pecuniary qualification; this he ranks as the least democratical democracy, if one may use the phrase (Politic. iii, 6-11), or a mean between democracy and oligarchy,—an ἀριστοκρατία, or πολιτεῖα, in his sense of the word (iv, 7, 3). He puts the employment of the lot as a symptom of decisive and extreme democracy, such as would never tolerate a pecuniary qualification of eligibility.

So again Plato (Legg. iii, p. 692), after remarking that the legislator of Sparta first provided the senate, next the ephors, as a bridle upon the kings, says of the ephors that they were “something nearly approaching to an authority emanating from the lot,”—οἷον ψάλιον ἐνέβαλεν αὐτῇ τὴν τῶν ἐφόρων δύναμιν, ἐγγὺς τῆς κληρωτῆς ἀγαγὼν δυνάμεως.

Upon which passage there are some good remarks in Schömann’s edition of Plutarch’s Lives of Agis and Kleomenês (Comment. ad Ag. c. 8, p. 119). It is to be recollected that the actual mode in which the Spartan ephors were chosen, as I have already stated in my first volume, cannot be clearly made out, and has been much debated by critics:—

“Mihi hæc verba, quum illud quidem manifestum faciant, quod etiam aliunde constat, sorte captos ephoros non esse, tum hoc alterum, quod Hermannus statuit, creationem sortitioni non absimilem fuisse, nequaquam demonstrare videntur. Nimirum nihil aliud nisi prope accedere ephororum magistratus ad cos dicitur, qui sortito capiantur. Sortitis autem magistratibus hoc maxime proprium est, ut promiscue—non ex genere, censu, dignitate—a quolibet capi possint: quamobrem quum ephori quoque fere promiscue fierent ex omni multitudine civium, poterat haud dubie magistratus eorum ἐγγὺς τῆς κληρωτῆς δυνάμεως esse dici, etiamsi αἱρετοὶ essent—h. e. suffragiis creati. Et video Lachmannum quoque, p. 165, not. 1, de Platonis loco similiter judicare.”

The employment of the lot, as Schömann remarks, implies universal admissibility of all citizens to office: though the converse does not hold good,—the latter does not of necessity imply the former. Now, as we know that universal admissibility did not become the law of Athens until after the battle of Platæa, so we may conclude that the employment of the lot had no place before that epoch,—i. e. had no place under the constitution of Kleisthenês.

[261] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 9-16.

[262] See a passage about such characters in Plato, Republic, v, p. 475 B.

[263] Plutarch, Arist. 22.

[264] So at least the supporters of the constitution of Kleisthenês were called by the contemporaries of Periklês.

[265] Plutarch, Arist. ut sup. γράφει ψήφισμα, κοινὴν εἶναι τὴν πολιτείαν, καὶ τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἐξ Ἀθηναίων πάντων αἱρεῖσθαι.

[266] So in the Italian republics of the twelfth and thirteenth century, the nobles long continued to possess the exclusive right of being elected to the consulate and the great offices of state, even after those offices had come to be elected by the people: the habitual misrule and oppression of the nobles gradually put an end to this right, and even created in many towns a resolution positively to exclude them. At Milan, towards the end of the twelfth century, the twelve consuls, with the Podestat, possessed all the powers of government: these consuls were nominated by one hundred electors chosen by and among the people. Sismondi observes: “Cependant le peuple imposa lui-même a ces électeurs, la règle fondamentale de choisir tous les magistrats dans le corps de la noblesse. Ce n’étoit point encore la possession des magistratures que l’on contestoit aux gentilshommes: on demandoit seulement qu’ils fussent les mandataires immédiats de la nation. Mais plus d’une fois, en dépit du droit incontestable des citoyens, les consuls regnant s’attribuèrent l’élection de leurs successeurs.” (Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, chap. xii, vol. ii, p. 240.)

[267] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 15. τὴν ἐπὶ Κλεισθένους ἐγείρειν ἀριστοκρατίαν πειρωμένου: compare Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 2, and Isokratês, Areopagiticus, Or. vii, p. 143, p. 192, ed. Bek.

[268] Herodotus speaks of Kallimachus the Polemarch, at Marathon, as ὁ τῷ κυάμῳ λαχὼν Πολέμαρχος (vi, 110).

I cannot but think that in this case he transfers to the year 490 B. C. the practice of his own time. The polemarch, at the time of the battle of Marathon, was in a certain sense the first stratêgus; and the stratêgi were never taken by lot, but always chosen by show of hands, even to the end of the democracy. It seems impossible to believe that the stratêgi were elected, and that the polemarch, at the time when his functions were the same as theirs, was chosen by lot.

Herodotus seems to have conceived the choice of magistrates by lot as being of the essence of a democracy (Herodot. iii, 80).

Plutarch also (Periklês, c. 9) seems to have conceived the choice of archons by lot as a very ancient institution of Athens: nevertheless, it results from the first chapter of his life of Aristeidês,—an obscure chapter, in which conflicting authorities are mentioned without being well discriminated,—that Aristeidês was chosen archon by the people,—not drawn by lot: an additional reason for believing this is, that he was archon in the year following the battle of Marathon, at which, he had been one of the ten generals. Idomeneus distinctly affirmed this to be the fact.—οὐ κυαμευτὸν, ἀλλ᾽ ἑλομένων Ἀθηναίων (Plutarch, Arist. c. 1).

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.

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

[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—

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.

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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.