Hellenica

Under this decree I urge you to try the generals, and, by Zeus, if it so please you, Pericles, my kinsman, first of them all; for it would be base for me to think more of him than of the general interests of the state.

Or if you do not wish to do this, try them under the following law, which applies to temple-robbers and traitors: namely, if anyone shall be a traitor to the state or shall steal sacred property, he shall be tried before a court, and if he be convicted, he shall not be buried in Attica, and his property shall be confiscated.

By whichever of these laws you choose, men of Athens, let the men be tried, each one separately,[*](It was a general principle of Athenian law—perhaps specifically stated in the decree of Cannonus (see above)—that each accused person had the right to a separate trial.) and let the day be divided into three parts, one wherein you shall gather and vote as to whether you judge them guilty or not, another wherein the accusers shall present their case, and another wherein the accused shall make their defence.

If this is done, the guilty will incur the severest punishment, and the guiltless will be set free by you, men of Athens, and will not be put to death unjustly.

As for yourselves, you will be granting a trial in accordance with the law and standing true to religion and your oaths, and you will not be fighting on the side of the Lacedaemonians by putting to death the men who captured seventy ships from them and defeated them,—by putting to death these men, I say, without a trial, in violation of the law.

What is it, pray, that you fear, that you are in such[*](406 B.C.) excessive haste? Do you fear lest you will lose the right to put to death and set free anyone you please if you proceed in accordance with the law, but think that you will retain this right if you proceed in violation of the law, by the method which Callixeinus persuaded the Senate to report to the people, that is, by a single vote?

Yes, but you might possibly be putting to death some one who is really innocent; and repentance afterwards—ah, remember how painful and unavailing it always is, and especially when one’s error has brought about a man’s death.

You would do a monstrous thing if, after granting in the past to Aristarchus,[*](In 411 B.C. Aristarchus helped to establish the short-lived oligarchical government of the Four Hundred.) the destroyer of the democracy and afterwards the betrayer of Oenoe to your enemies the Thebans, a day in which to defend himself as he pleased, and allowing him all his other rights under the law,—if, I say, you shall now deprive the generals, who have done everything to your satisfaction, and have defeated the enemy, of these same rights.

Let no such act be yours, men of Athens, but guard the laws, which are your own and above all else have made you supremely great, and do not try to do anything without their sanction.And now come back to the actual circumstances under which the mistakes are thought to have been committed by the generals. When, after winning the battle, they sailed in to the shore, Diomedon urged that they should one and all put out to sea in line and pick up the wreckage and the shipwrecked men, while Erasinides proposed that all should sail with the utmost speed against the enemy at Mytilene. But Thrasyllus said that both things[*](406 B.C.) would be accomplished if they should leave some of the ships there and should sail with the rest against the enemy;

and if this plan were decided upon, he advised that each of the generals, who were eight in number, should leave behind three ships from his own division, and that they should also leave the ten ships of the taxiarchs, the ten of the Samians, and the three of the nauarchs. These amount all told to forty-seven ships, four for each one of the lost vessels, which were twelve in number.

Among the captains who were left behind were both Thrasybulus and Theramenes, the man who accused the generals at the former meeting of the Assembly. And with the rest of the ships they planned to sail against the enemy’s fleet. Now what one of these acts did they not do adequately and well? It is but just, therefore, that those, on the one hand, who were detailed to go against the enemy should be held to account for their lack of success in dealing with the enemy, and that those, on the other hand, who were detailed to recover the shipwrecked, in case they did not do what the generals ordered, should be tried for not recovering them.

This much, however, I can say in defence of both parties, that the storm absolutely prevented them from doing any of the things which the generals had planned. And as witnesses to this fact you have those who were saved by mere chance, among whom is one of our generals, who came through safely on a disabled ship, and whom they now bid you judge by the same vote (although at that time he needed to be picked up himself) by which you judge those who did not do what they[*](406 B.C.) were ordered to do.

Do not, then, men of Athens, in the face of your victory and your good fortune, act like men who are beaten and unfortunate, nor, in the face of heaven’s visitation, show yourselves unreasonable by giving a verdict of treachery instead of helplessness, since they found themselves unable on account of the storm to do what they had been ordered to do; nay, it would be far more just for you to honour the victors with garlands than, yielding to the persuasions of wicked men, to punish them with death.

When Euryptolemus had thus spoken, he offered a resolution that the men be tried under the decree of Cannonus, each one separately; whereas the proposal of the Senate was to judge them all by a single vote. The vote being now taken as between these two proposals, they decided at first in favour of the resolution of Euryptolemus; but when Menecles interposed an objection under oath[*](Apparently questioning the legality of Euryptolemus’ proposal. Under the law such an objection should have suspended the consideration of the matter before the Assembly, but in this case it seems to have had no such result.) and a second vote was taken, they decided in favour of that of the Senate. After this they condemned the generals who took part in the battle, eight in all; and the six who were in Athens were put to death.

And not long afterwards the Athenians repented, and they voted that complaints[*](A προβολή was a complaint presented to the Assembly, alleging an offence against the state. The Assembly, acting as a grand jury, might then hold the accused for trial before a court.) be brought against any who had deceived the people, that they furnish bondsmen men until such time as they should be brought to[*](406 B.C.) trial, and that Callixeinus be included among them. Complaints were brought against four others also, and they were put into confinement by their bondsmen. But when there broke out afterwards a factional disturbance, in the course of which Cleophon[*](A popular leader of the democratic party.) was put to death, these men escaped, before being brought to trial; Callixeinus indeed returned, at the time when the Piraeus party returned to the city,[*](i.e., in the restoration which followed the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants (Xen. Hell. 2.4.39-43).) but he was hated by everybody and died of starvation.

The troops that were at Chios under Eteonicus[*](See I. vi. 36 f.)[*](406 B.C.) subsisted, so long as the summer lasted, upon the produce of the season and by working for hire up and down the island; when winter came on, however, and they were without food and poorly clad and unshod, they got together and agreed to make an attack upon Chios; and it was decided that those who approved this plan should carry a reed, so that they could tell how numerous they were.

Now when Eteonicus learned of the plot, he was uncertain how to deal with the matter on account of the great number of the reed-bearers. To attack them openly seemed to him to be dangerous, for he feared that they might rush to their arms, gain possession of the city, turn enemies, and so ruin everything, in case they should prevail; while, in the other case, to be putting allied soldiers to death in such numbers was also clearly a serious matter, for in this way the Lacedaemonians might incur harsh criticism among the other Greeks as well, and the troops might be disaffected toward the cause.

Accordingly he took with him fifteen men armed with daggers and proceeded through the city, and meeting a man suffering from ophthalmia as he was leaving a physician’s house, a reed in his hand, he put him to death.

And when an uproar resulted and people asked why the man had been put to death, Eteonicus ordered his followers to give out word that[*](406 B.C.) it was because he had the reed. As a result of this announcement all those who were carrying reeds threw them away, each man as he heard the report being afraid that he might be seen with one.

After this Eteonicus called together the Chians and bade them contribute money, in order that the sailors might get their pay and not attempt anything seditious; and the Chians did so. At the same time he ordered his men to embark upon their ships; and going along past each ship in its turn he encouraged and advised them at length, as though he knew nothing of what had happened, and distributed a month’s pay to all hands.