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Notes on the Revolution of the Four Hundred at Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

M. Cary
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Extract

What was the number of the ξυγγραφεῖς who were appointedat Athens in 411 B.C. to introduce modifications into the democratic constitution? Thucydides says ten, and Aristotle thirty (Thuc. VIII. 67. 1; Ἀθηνάιων πολιτεία 29 § 2). It is now generally assumed that the only way to resolve this discrepancy is to reject one of the two conflicting numbers as a mere mistake, and that the error is on the part of Thucydides.

Another solution has recently been put forward by Miss Mabel Lang, who concludes that Thucydides' ten ξυγγραφεῖς and Aristotle's thirty ξυγγραφεῖς were two distinct bodies, and that both authors after all were in the right. She points out that the Ten and the Thirty differed not only in their numbers, but in their attributes and achievements, and that they probably functioned on different occasions. Whereas the Ten were αὐτοκράτορες (i.e. had authority to by-pass the Council and present their report direct to the Popular Assembly), the Thirty lacked ‘autocratic’ power. Whereas the Thirty in due course submitted a scheme of reforms which was duly ratified by the Assembly (Ἀθ. Πολ. 29 § 5–30 § 1), the Ten never produced their programme (Thuc. VIII. 67. 2).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 72 , November 1952 , pp. 57 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1952

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References

1 AJP LXIX (1948), pp. 272–89.

2 In detriment to her own case, Lang dismisses this clause as ‘meaningless’. But who would insert a tag of lawyer's ‘common form’ into a programme for a popular assembly?

3 The Athenian oligarchs probably did not contemplate overtures to Sparta until a later stage. Peisander's adherents at Samos met Tissaphernes' rebuff with a resolution to carry on the warand dip deeper into their own pockets (Thuc. VIII. 63. 4).

4 There is no evidence that Peisander intended to mend the broken thread of the Persian negotiations. In any case, he would not have used the Five Thousand for this purpose.

5 On the proceedings at Colonus, see also pp. 58–9.

6 It has often been observed that neither constitution makes provision for a judiciary, and that in 30 § 3, and again in 31 § 1, the method of appointing to the Council is not set forth in full.

7 For a long but not exhaustive list of these ambiguities, see van der Ploog, L., Theramenes en zijn Tijd, pp. 70–1.Google Scholar

8 Kahrstedt, U., Forschungen, p. 253Google Scholar; Taeger, F., Gnomon 13 (1937). p. 353Google Scholar; van der ploog, op.cit. p.72.

9 Andocides II. 84; Lysias XXX. 2—a forgery detected.

10 The pseudographs in Demosthenes' De Corona are products of a later age which knew not the democracy.

11 Certain passages in Cicero's Epistolae ad Brutum, which long defied explanation and were therefore offered as proof that the Letters were forgeries, have been made to yield good senseby a similar operation. It is now generally accepted that some MS. sheets had become displaced.—See esp. Sternkopf, W., Hermes XLVI (1911), pp. 355–75.Google Scholar

12 It may be objected to the transpositions suggested above that they reduce PC to very little. But (1) Aristotle's text of PC may be incomplete; (2) brevity in a provisional constitution is a virtue.

13 Hermes LVII (1922), p. 619.

14 Classical Philology XXI (1926), pp. 72–5. Ferguson's chief piece ofevidence is the bill for the impeachment of Antiphon (I.G. II2. 12), in which the usual formula is replaced by The absorption of the Assembly's functions by the Council, as here indicated, was a leading feature of DC.

15 VIII. 97. 2.

16 See esp. Stevenson, G. H., JHS 1936, pp. 55–6.Google Scholar

17 After the fall of the Four Hundred the Athenians held πυκνὰι ἐκκλησίαι, in which they refashioned their constitution (Thuc. VIII. 97. 2). DC may have received a grooming in one of these.

18 Griechische Staatskunde, p. 77.

19 SB Berliner Akademie 1935, p. 35 ff.

20 As Wilcken has pointed out, the imperfect ‘ἐλένετο’ implies that Peisander's adherents repeated their slogans in refrain. ‘λαμπρῶς’, which is usually translated into ‘openly’, ‘unverhüllt’ (i.e. as a synonym of ἐμφανῶς or ἄντικρυς), should rather be taken to mean ‘flashily’ or ‘with fireworks’. Thucydides, who picked his words carefully in this passage, surely meant to convey that Peisander dazzled the Assembly with a coup de théâtre.

21 Such is the communis opinio. For the possibility that Aristotle did mention Peisander's constitution, see p. 59.

22 Griechische Geschichte III. 2, pp. 1485–7.

23 Thuc. VIII. 69. 1, 70. 1.

24 On the authority of Thuc. VIII. 74. 1 Lang and van der Ploog have independently established this point.

25 Griechische Geschichte II2. 2, p. 319.

26 Thuc. VIII. 86. 1. On the interpretation of this formula, see Stevenson, p. 50.

27 Op. cit. ch. 23. The overlaps in the unamended texts of chs. 30 and 31 misled Beloch into amalgamating DC and PC into a single act. This untenable conclusion prejudiced the whole of his case. On Beloch, see also Stevenson, p. 54.

28 Granted that Aristotle was at fault somewhere, it seems more likely that he erred in his chronology than in making a double mistake as to the authorship of DC and PC. The documents containing these acts could hardly have failed to indicate their authors in an unequivocal manner; but it is not so certain that their date-marks were unmistakable, for the Revolution no doubt disturbed the normal prytany-sequence. (In 411–410 the Treasurers of Athena abandoned the usual prytany-by-prytany dating and reckoned continuously from a fixed point.—IG. I. 184–5.)

29 Thuc. VIII. 97. 1–2.

30 Hermes LVII (1922), pp. 613–20.

31 Op. cit. pp. 75–6.

32 Thuc. VIII. 97. 1–2.

33 Ἀθ. Πολ. 30 §§ 1–2.

34 Thuc. VIII. 97. 1.

35 Stevenson, p. 59 (on a suggestion by Wade-Gery).

36 SB Berliner Akademie 1935, pp. 49–50.

37 Ἀθ. Πολ. 32 § 3.

38 Ibid., 31 § 2.

39 Theramenes en zijn Tijd, pp. 57–8.

40 Thuc. VIII. 67. 1–2. Could it be that Aristotle, not knowing about Thucydides' Ten, or having lost them out of mind, anticipated Wilcken in concluding that the δέκα αὐτοκράτορες of his ch. 32 must be the same as the of PC, and so was misled into dating PC (and consequently also DC) before the coup d'état?

The δέκα ἄνδες of PC are in all probability synonymous with ‘στστηγόι’ (a term used immediately above).

41 Classical Philology XXI (1926), p. 73.

42 Ἀθ. Πολ. 33 § 1.

43 Ἀθ. Πολ. 33 § 1. Under the restored democracy the archonship of Theopompus was officially dated as from midsummer 411 (the two-month office of Mnesilochus being deemed an ἀναρχία). But his actual entry into office could only have taken place after the departure of Mnesilochus.

44 Liddell and Scott, s.v. In Thuc. III. 68. 3 ‘ἐνιαυτός’ measures the interval between the temporary occupation of Plataea by Megarian refugees and its eventual destruction by the Thebans. In Hesiod, , Her. Scut. l. 87Google Scholar, it denotes the period of gestationof a child—approximately the same as that of Theopompus' archonship.