Latin
1.40
Greek and Roman Historians, The Peloponnesian War 1.40
Not analysed yet
Athens' military resilience after its defeats in Sicily was remarkable, but the political credibility of the radical democracy had been battered: the rich had lost money, the thetes had lost men, all classes had lost their illusions. This was a situation ready to be exploited by intellectual activists, who disliked the democracy anyway. Thucydides gives a brilliant picture of the oligarchic revolution of 411 (the "Regime of the Four Hundred" oligarchs), but he can perhaps be criticized for not bringing out the importance of this intellectual factor, stressing instead the general atmosphere of suspicion and terror. A complete analysis of the revolution ought, however, to allow for the influence, on oligarchic leaders like Antiphon and the less extreme Theramenes, and no doubt on others, of the subversive teaching of the sophists (rhetorically adept "experts" who professed to impart their knowledge of such politically useful skills as rhetoric, usually in exchange for money). Theramenes is said to have been a pupil of the sophist Prodicus of Ceos. Thucydides mentions sophists only once, and then not in the context of 411 at all. The first impetus to the revolution was given by Alcibiades, who certainly was a product of the sophistic age. His motives, however, were selfish and short-term (he was aiming to achieve his own recall from exile), and he abandoned the oligarchs when he failed to get what he wanted. Nor had Peisander and Phrynichos, two other leading oligarchs, always been hostile to democracy. It is certain, however, that there were some who held, as a matter of sincere theoretical conviction, that there were merits in a "hoplite franchise" -that is, an undemocratic constitution in which the thetes would be barred from attending the Assembly or serving as jurors). Such a view, insofar as it was elitist, would naturally be attractive to the cavalry class, and it is an appealing suggestion that the original coup d'�tat was staged at the deme site of Colonus precisely because of its associations with the cult of Poseidon Hippios, "Horsey" Poseidon. But distinctions between extreme and moderate factions among the oligarchy must be made: Theramenes and Cleitophon were among the moderates who sought to justify the new arrangements by reference to Solon and Cleisthenes, who were wrongly represented, at this time, as having excluded the thetes from the Assembly. (Perhaps they used the slogan "ancestral constitution," but a contemporary sophist, Thrasymachus, implies that it was on everybody's lips.) However erroneous such an appeal to Solon was with regard to the facts -it is a good example of "invented tradition" -it is undoubtedly true that members of this group behaved more moderately than some of the other oligarchs (Theramenes helped to overthrow the Four Hundred).