ing popular sentiment, among whom the most conspicuous persons were Theramenes and Aristokratês.[1]
Though these men had stood forward prominently as contrivers and actors throughout the whole progress of the conspiracy, they now found themselves bitterly disappointed by the result. Individually, their ascendency with their colleagues was inferior to that of Peisander, Kallæschrus, Phrynichus, and others; while, collectively, the ill-gotten power of the Four Hundred was diminished in value, as much as it was aggravated in peril, by the loss of the foreign empire and the alienation of their Samian armament Now began the workings of jealousy and strife among the successful conspirators, each of whom had entered into the scheme with unbounded expectations of personal ambition for himself, each had counted on stepping at once into the first place among the new oligarchical body. In a democracy, observes Thucydidês, contentions for power and preeminence provoke in the unsuccessful competitors less of fierce antipathy and sense of injustice, than in an oligarchy; for the losing candidates acquiesce with comparatively little repugnance in the unfavorable vote of a large miscellaneous body of unknown citizens; but they are angry at being put aside by a few known comrades, their rivals as well as their equals: moreover, at the moment when an oligarchy of ambitious men has just raised itself on the ruins of a democracy, every man of the conspirators is in exaggerated expectation; every one thinks himself entitled to become at once the first man of the body, and is dissatisfied if he be merely put upon a level with the rest.[2]
- ↑ Thncyd. viii, 89, 90. The representation of the character and motives of Theramenêes, as given by Lysias in the Oration contra Eratosthenem (Orat. xii, sects. 66, 67, 79; Orat. xiii, cont. Agorat. sects. 12-17), is quite in harmony with that of Thucydidês (viii, 89) : compare Aristophan. Ran 541-966; Xenoph. Hellen. ii, 3, 27-30.
- ↑ Thucyd. viii, 89. (
Greek characters)I give in the text what appears to me the proper sense of this passage, the last words of which are obscure: see the long notes of the commentators,
