252 HISTORY O/ GREECE. tent leaders The man who gives you this advice, and gives ii you openly, is he a traitor, or is he not rather a genuine friend ? It is you and jour supporters, Kritias, who, by your murders and robberies, strengthen the enemies of the government and betray your friends. Depend upon it, that Thrasybulus and Anytus are much better pleased with your policy than they would be with mine. You accuse me of having betrayed the Four Hundred ; but I did not desert them until they were themselves on the point of betraying Athens to her enemies. You call me The Buskin, as trying to fit both parties. But what am I to call you, who fit neither of them ? who, under the democracy, were the most violent hater of the people, and who, under the oligarchy, have become equally violent as a hater of oligarchical merit ? I am, and always have been, Kritias, an enemy both to extreme democ- racy and to oligarchical tyranny. I desire to constitute our political community out of those who can serve it on horseback and with heavy armor ; I have proposed this once, and I still stand to it. I side not either with democrats or despots, to the exclusion of the dignified citizens. Prove that I am now, or ever have been, guilty of such crime, and I shall confess myself deserving of ignominious death." This reply of Theramenes was received -with such a shout of applause by the majority of the senate, as showed that they were resolved to acquit him. To the fierce antipathies of the mortified Kritias, the idea of failure was intolerable ; indeed, he had now carried his hostility to such a point, that the acquittal of his ene- my would have been his own ruin. After exchanging a few words with the Thirty, he retired for a few moments, and directed the Eleven with the body of armed satellites to press close on the railing whereby the senators were fenced round, while the court before the senate- house was tilled with the mercenary hoplites Having thus got his force in hand, Kritias returned and again addressed the senate : " Senators (said he), I think it the duty of a good president, when he sees his friends around him duped, not to let them follow their own counsel. This is what I am now going to do ; indeed, these men, whom you see pressing upon us from without, tell us plainly that they will not tolerate the acquit- tal of one manifestly working to the ruin of the oligarchy. It is au article of our n^y constitution, that no man of the select Threa
