Against Eratosthenes, who had been One of the Thirty: Spoken by Lysias Himself

I have often wondered, therefore, at the audacity of those who speak in his defence, except when I reflect that the same men who commit every sort of crime are wont also to commend those who act in a similar way.

For this is not the first occasion of his working in opposition to your people in the time of the Four Hundred[*](411 B.C.) also, seeking to establish an oligarchy in the army, he abandoned the war-ship which he was commanding and fled from the Hellespont with Iatrocles and others whose names I have no call to mention. On his arrival here he worked in opposition to those who were promoting a democracy. I will present you with witnesses to these facts.

Witnesses

Now his life in the interval I will here pass over: but when the sea-fight[*](The battle of Aegospotami, in 405 B.C.) took place, with the disaster that befell the city, and while we still had a democracy (at this point they started the sedition), five men were set up as overseers[*](In imitation of the Ephors, who were the five chief magistrates of Sparta.) by the so-called club men, to be organizers of the citizens as well as chiefs of the conspirators and opponents of your common wealth; and among these were Eratosthenes and Critias.

They placed tribal governors over the tribes, and directed what measures should be passed by their votes and who were to be magistrates; and they had absolute powers for any other steps that they chose to take. Thus by the plotting, not merely of your enemies, but even of these your fellow-citizens, you were at once prevented from passing any useful measure and reduced to a serious scarcity.

For they knew perfectly well that in other conditions they could not get the upper hand, but that if you were in distress they would succeed. And they supposed that in your eagerness to be relieved of your actual hardships you would give no thought to those that were to follow.

Now, to show that he was one of the overseers, I will offer you witnesses; not the men who then acted with him,—for I could not do that,—but those who heard it from Eratosthenes himself:

yet truly, if they were sensible,[*](i.e., the accomplices of Eratosthenes.) they would be bearing witness against those persons, and would severely punish their instructors in transgression; instead of holding themselves bound by their oaths to the detriment of the citizens, if they were sensible they would make light of breaking those oaths for the advantage of the city. So much then, I would say in regard to them: now call my witnesses. Go up on the dais.

Witnesses

You have heard the witnesses. Finally, when he was established in power, he had a hand in no good work, but in much that was otherwise. Yet, if he was really a good man, it behoved him in the first place to decline unconstitutional powers, or else to lay information before the Council exposing the falsity of all the impeachments, and showing that Batrachus and Aeschylides, so far from giving true information, were producing as impeachments the fabrications of the Thirty, devised for the injury of the citizens.

Furthermore, gentlemen, anyone who was ill-disposed towards your people lost nothing by holding his peace: for there were other men to speak and do things of the utmost possible detriment to the city. As for the men who say they are well-disposed, how is it that they did not show it at the moment, by speaking themselves to the most salutary purpose and deterring those who were bent on mischief?

He could say, perhaps, that he was afraid, and to some of you this plea will be satisfactory. Then he must take care that he is not found to have opposed the Thirty in discussion: otherwise the fact will declare him an approver of their conduct who was, moreover, so influential that his opposition would bring him to no harm at their hands. He ought to have shown this zeal in the interest rather of your safety than of Theramenes, who has committed numerous offences against you.

No, this man considered the city his enemy, and your enemies his friends; both of these points I will maintain by many evidences, showing that their mutual disputes were not concerned with your advantage but with their own, in the contest of their two parties[*](i.e., the extremists led by Critias, and the moderates led by Theramenes.) as to which should have the administration and control the city.

For if their quarrel had been in the cause of those who had suffered wrong, at what moment could a ruler have more gloriously displayed his own loyalty than on the seizure of Phyle by Thrasybulus?[*](In the autumn of 404 B.C. Phyle commanded the road from Thebes to Athens, about twelve miles from the latter.) But, instead of offering or bringing some aid to the men at Phyle, he went with his partners in power to Salamis and Eleusis, and haled to prison three hundred of the citizens, and by a single resolution[*](An illegality like that of the condemnation of the generals after Arginusae. The law required that each accused person should be voted on separately.) condemned them all to death.

After we had come to the Peiraeus, and the commotions had taken place, and the negotiations were in progress for our reconciliation, we were in good hopes on either side of a settlement between us, as both parties made evident.

For the Peiraeus party, having got the upper hand, allowed the others to move off: these went into the town, drove out the Thirty except Pheidon and Eratosthenes, and appointed their bitterest enemies as leaders, judging that the same men might fairly be expected to feel both hate for the Thirty and love for the party of the Peiraeus.

Now among these[*](The ten chief magistrates appointed after the expulsion of the Thirty to arrange terms with Thrasybolus and the democrats; but they only tried to win credit with Sparta.) were Pheidon, Hippocles, and Epichares of the district of Lamptra, with others who were thought to be most opposed to Charicles and Critias and their club: but as soon as they in their turn were raised to power, they set up a far sharper dissension and warfare between the parties of the town and of the Peiraeus,

and thereby revealed in all clearness that their faction was not working for the Peiraeus party nor for those who were being unjustly destroyed; and that their vexation lay, not in those who had been or were about to be put to death, but in those who had greater power or were more speedily enriched.

For having got hold of their offices and the city they made war on both sides,—on the Thirty who had wrought every kind of evil, and on you who had suffered it in every way. And yet one thing was clear to all men,—that if the exile of the Thirty was just, yours[*](The members of the court are treated as representatives of the popular cause.) was unjust while if yours was just, that of the Thirty was unjust; for it was not as answerable for some other acts that they were banished from the city, but simply for these.

It ought therefore to be a matter for the deepest resentment that Pheidon, after being chosen to reconcile and restore you, joined in the same courses as Eratosthenes and, working on the same plan, was ready enough to injure the superior members of his party on your account, but unwilling to restore the city to you who were in unjust exile: he went to Lacedaemon, and urged them to march out, insinuating that the city would be falling into the hands of the Boeotians, with other statements calculated to induce them.

Finding that he could not achieve this,—whether because the sacred signs impeded, or because the people themselves did not desire it,—he borrowed a hundred talents for the purpose of hiring auxiliaries, and asked for Lysander to be their leader, as one who was both a strong supporter of the oligarchy and a bitter foe of the city, and who felt a special hatred towards the party of the Peiraeus.

Bent on our city’s destruction, they hired all and sundry, and were enlisting the aid of cities and finally that of the Lacedaemonians and as many of their allies as they could prevail upon and thus they were preparing, not to reconcile, but to destroy the city, had it not been for some loyal men, to whom I bid you declare, by exacting requital from your enemies, that they no less will get your grateful reward.