92.
For this reason they pushed forward the
construction of their work with posterns and entrances and means of
introducing the enemy, being eager to have it finished in time.
[2]
Meanwhile the murmurs against them were at first confined to a few persons
and went on in secret, until Phrynichus, after his return from the embassy
to Lacedaemon, was laid wait for and stabbed in full market by one of the
Peripoli, falling down dead before he had gone far from the council chamber.
The assassin escaped; but his accomplice, an Argive, was taken and put to the torture by the Four
Hundred, without their being able to extract from him the name of his
employer, or anything further than that he knew of many men who used to
assemble at the house of the commander of the Peripoli and at other houses.
Here the matter was allowed to drop.
This so emboldened Theramenes and Aristocrates and the rest of their
partisans in the Four Hundred and out of doors, that they now resolved to
act.
[3]
For by this time the ships had sailed round from Las, and anchoring at
Epidaurus had overrun Aegina; and Theramenes asserted that, being bound for Euboea, they would never have
sailed in to Lacedae and come back to anchor at Epidaurus, unless they had
been invited to come to aid in the designs of which he had always accused
the government.
Further inaction had therefore now become impossible.
[4]
In the end, after a great many seditious harangues and suspicions, they set
to work in real earnest.
The heavy infantry in Piraeus building the wall in Eetionia, among whom was
Aristocrates, a colonel, with his own tribe, laid hands upon Alexicles, a
general under the oligarchy and the devoted adherent of the cabal, and took
him into a house and confined him there.
[5]
In this they were assisted by one Hermon, commander of the Peripoli in
Munychia, and others, and above all had with them the great bulk of the
heavy infantry.
[6]
As soon as the news reached the Four Hundred, who happened to be sitting in
the council chamber, all except the disaffected wished at once to go to the
posts where the arms were, and menaced Theramenes and his party.
Theramenes defended himself, and said that he was ready immediately to go
and help to rescue Alexicles; and taking with him one of the generals belonging to his party, went down
to Piraeus, followed by Aristarchus and some young men of the cavalry.
[7]
All was now panic and confusion.
Those in the city imagined that Piraeus was already taken and the prisoner
put to death, while those in Piraeus expected every moment to be attacked by
the party in the city.
[8]
The older men, however, stopped the persons running up and down the town
and making for the stands of arms; and Thucydides the Pharsalian, Proxenus of the city, came forward and threw
himself in the way of the rival factions, and appealed to them not to ruin
the state, while the enemy was still at hand waiting for his opportunity,
and so at length succeeded in quieting them and in keeping their hands off
each other.
[9]
Meanwhile Theramenes came down to Piraeus, being himself one of the
generals, and raged and stormed against the heavy infantry, while
Aristarchus and the adversaries of the people were angry in right earnest.
[10]
Most of the heavy infantry, however, went on with the business without
faltering, and asked Theramenes if he thought the wall had been constructed
for any good purpose, and whether it would not be better that it should be
pulled down.
To this he answered that if they thought it best to pull it down, he for
his part agreed with them.
Upon this the heavy infantry and a number of the people in Piraeus
immediately got up on the fortification and began to demolish it.
[11]
Now their cry to the multitude was that all should join in the work who
wished the Five Thousand to govern instead of the Four Hundred.
For instead of saying in so many words ‘all who wished the
commons to govern’ they still disguised themselves under the name of the Five Thousand; being afraid that these might really exist, and that they might be speaking
to one of their number and get into trouble through ignorance.
Indeed this was why the Four Hundred neither wished the Five Thousand to
exist, nor to have it known that they did not exist; being of opinion that to give themselves so many partners in empire would
be downright democracy, while the mystery in question would make the people
afraid of one another.
Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton. 1910.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
