board had been appointed, we are told, by a vote of the people; but it was a vote extorted by the declaration of Theramenes that such was the will of the Spartans. The task of drawing up a constitution was left to a more convenient season; the business of cutting down political opponents was at once begun bravely, and by none more bravely than by Theramenes (404 B.C.). But he thought it time to draw back when some of his colleagues declared that the good work could not be brought to an end without the aid of a Spartan garrison. Kritias, however, was not to be withheld, and his envoys brought from Sparta a force of hoplites, who were installed in the Akropolis. The Thirty were now free to get rid of all whom they were pleased to term Malignants: and among these victims was Leon of Salamis, whom Sokrates with four other citizens was bidden to apprehend and bring before the Thirty. With commendable prudence these tyrants had hit upon the clever plan of making men who disliked their policy participators in their crimes. Sokrates behaved now as he had behaved during the trial of the generals after Argennoussai; and his disregard of their commands was allowed to go unnoticed. Like the rest, Leon was made to drink the hemlock juice not because he loved the old laws, but because he had money which could be lavished on the Spartan assassins in the Akropolis. This was opening a mine which, as it seemed to Theramenes, it might be dangerous to work too far. In his belief the rulers must, unless they could maintain themselves by force, depend on the affections of the people, or they must fall. For such expostulations Kritias had a brief answer. No despot ever counted himself safe in his seat, until he had got rid of all who on any grounds might be obnoxious to him and if Theramenes thought that they were not tyrants because, instead of being one man, they were thirty in number, he was a simpleton. Thus far the Thirty had found their victims amongst the citizens: they now thought that a raid upon the Metoikoi or resident aliens might be turned to good profit. Each one of the Thirty was to pick out his prey among the wealthiest of this industrious class, and to cement more closely with the blood of these victims their fellowship of iniquity. Theramenes alone, it would seem, refused to join in this infamous scheme. His plain speaking roused the fears of the Tyrants and the mind of Kritias was made up. The senate was summoned to the council chamber, round which the Thirty

with hidden daggers kept guard, while Kritias proceeded to warn the senators that he and they were exposed to a common danger and that this danger came from Theramenes. No revolutions could be achieved without bloodshed, least of all at Athens, where the citizens had for ages grown up with a prejudice and a liking for freedom. The oligarchs had set up a more wholesome government with the aid of their saviours the Spartans; and from this government Theramenes wished to withdraw, just when the passions of the people were most roused by the remedies applied to reduce them to order. In this he was doing just what they might look for from one whose career had won for him the name of the buskin which might be placed on either foot at will.

Theramenes felt himself to be in deadly peril. With great calmness and great courage he insisted that the Thirty were acting on a policy which would win little favour at Sparta. They were simply destroying the city; and the Spartans could have done this without the least trouble by prolonging the siege for a few weeks longer. The charges of Kritias were all false. He and they who worked with him were the real foes of the state, by multiplying their enemies and lessening the number of their friends. The truth and force of this reply called forth the cheers of the senators, and alarmed the Tyrants; but Kritias was prepared for everything. Going out of the chamber, he ordered his bravoes to advance to the bar within which the senators sat, and then returning, told them that by one of the laws passed since the happy conquest of the city the Thirty were empowered to put to death without trial anyone not included in the list of enfranchised citizens, and that he took it on himself to expunge from that list the name of Theramenes. On hearing these words the victim leaped to the altar, warning the senators that that which was now done to him might at any moment be done to them. The only reply of Kritias was a command to the Eleven executioners to seize Theramenes, who drank the hemlock juice in the dungeon after the sun went down.

The day of retribution for the Thirty was drawing nigh, but for the time being his death left them in a very paradise of license. The gates of the city were shut to all whose names were not included in their list of citizens; and the owners of property in the country were dragged from their homes and

slain, because Kritias wished to have their lands himself or to bestow them on his accomplices. Those who could escape fled, and the neighbouring cities were filled with fugitives. Of these Thrasyboulos with a small company seized the fortress of Phylê, and Kritias learnt that a body of exiles was in possession of an almost impregnable rock, jutting from the main range of Parnes with which it was joined by a narrow and precipitous ridge. At once he set out with the Three Thousand and the Horsemen or Knights; but the enterprise ended in signal failure.

Thrasyboulos and the exiles now marched to Peiraieus; and the demolition of the walls, on which Sparta had relied for the suppression of popular government, became the direct means of its restoration. The temple of Artemis, in Mounychia, furnished a strong post, from which darters could shower their weapons over the heads of their own hoplites on the advancing enemy. The latter wavered, and the hoplites, rushing down, put them to flight. Seventy or more were slain, and among the dead was Kritias. Instead of attempting to carry off the bodies by force, the soldiers of the Tyrants demanded the usual truce for burial; and as the two parties were thus thrown together, one of the exiles, exerting a voice of singular power, besought silence, and, in simple words, asked why his countrymen should seek his death and that of his fellow fugitives. 'We have done you no harm; we have taken part with you in the most solemn feasts; we have been your comrades in peace and war. Why should you obey the most impious of tyrants, who in eight months have slain more Athenians than all the Peloponnesians killed in ten years of war?'

So manifest was the impression made by these words that the Thirty gave orders for an inmediate retreat into the city. On the following morning they saw that their cause was desperate and fled to Eleusis, and their deposition was followed by the election of a new Board of Ten, one from each of the tribes. This election was a compromise, and it was a compromise which settled nothing. But the exiles in Peiraieus daily grew stronger both in men and arms, nor had many days passed before envoys were sent out from the Ten in the city and from the Thirty in Eleusis to pray for Lakedaimonian help, on the ground that Athens had revolted from Sparta. Lysandros, eagerly supporting the request, urged that he himself might be sent. His proposal was accepted, and the man who, ten

months before, had left Athens in ruins, stood once more within the borders of Attica.

This general had, in the meanwhile, crushed the resistance of the Samian Demos which, having refused to submit when the Athenian fleet had been insnared at Aigospotamoi, agreed at length to surrender on condition of being allowed to depart each man with one garment. So ended, in a distant island, the long struggle which had begun, nearly eight-and-twenty years earlier, with the surprise of Plataia by the Thebans. Lysandros now sailed home with the prow-ornainents of all the ships captured at Aigospotamoi, with the huge sum of 470 talents, the residue of the money which Cyrus had placed in his hands for the purpose of humiliating Athens, and with the whole Athenian navy with the exception of the twelve triremes which alone remained in the basin of Peiraieus. The empire of Sparta was established; but Lysandros was fully resolved that her empire should be empire for himself also.

The honours heaped on this successful leader roused the jealousy and the wrath of Pausanias, one of the Spartan kings; and Pausanias, when Lysandros had set out for Eleusis, prayed that he too might be allowed to lead a Spartan force in Attica. For this expedition contingents were furnished by all the allies except the Thebans and Corinthians.

The presence of Pausanias encouraged many to express freely their opinion of the tyrants who had fled to Eleusis, as well as of those who still held sway in Athens. In the complaints thus made the king probably saw fresh evidence of the schemes which had awakened his jealousy; but his first act was to summon Thrasyboulos and his followers to disperse. Their refusal was followed by a series of slight engagements, ending with one in which the exiles lost 150 men. Pausanias was thus victorious, and he could therefore afford now to act on his better judgement. On learning how matters stood, the Spartans answered by appointing fifteen commissioners to settle matters along with Pausanias. The convention agreed upon restored the exiles to their homes, and secured an amnesty to all except the Thirty with their Eleven executioners and the Ten who had done what they could to carry on the work of the expelled tyrants.

Before the victory of Thrasyboulos had been achieved at Athens, the stormy life of Alkibiades had been ended by

murder. Taking refuge with Pharnabazos after the disaster of Aigospotamoi, he soon saw through the schemes of Cyrus for dethroning his brother Artaxerxes who had succeeded his father Dareios Nothos. These schemes he was eager to reveal to the monarch himself at Sousa. But the eyes of Cyrus were as keenly watchful as those of Alkibiades: and his command, added to requests from Sparta, constrained Pharnabazos to give the order for his assassination. The murderers, it is said, were afraid to enter the house where he lived in a Phrygian village, and set it on fire. Their victim rushed out armed only with a dagger, and was struck down by a shower of arrows. So died the greatest perhaps, and the most systematic, of traitors.

The schemes which Alkibiades was anxious to reveal to the Persian king were destined to bring about a series of events which throw a wonderful light on certain characteristics of Greek military life, as well as on the state of things generally at the end of the Peloponnesian war. The close of the long strife left without employment large bodies of men who had been engaged in warfare so long as to feel little desire for more peaceful work. Of these instruments Cyrus resolved to avail himself, when on his father's death he found that the prize which he coveted had slipped from his grasp. Dareios had not declared him his successor, and Artaxerxes, his elder brother, though not born like himself in the purple, sat on the throne. Burning with rage, Cyrus made his way to the Egean coast, with the determination of avenging himself first on Tissaphernes who had charged him with plotting against his brother and then of sweeping that brother from his path. The war which he now openly carried on against Tissaphernes blinded Artaxerxes to the further designs for which that war served as a cloak. For the carrying out of his plans he found a thoroughly congenial spirit in the Lakedaimonian Klearchos. The large sum of 10,000 dareiks placed in his hands enabled him to raise a mercenary force which was to be at the orders of Cyrus in the event of his needing them. Similar gifts to other mercenary leaders procured the enlistment of other forces elsewhere; and the troops thus enlisted were gathered at Sardeis, when Cyrus determined to play out his game (401 B.C.). He saw around him a hundred thousand non-Hellenic troops whom he despised and upwards of seven thousand Greek hoplites whose presence was to him a sure pledge of victory. In this brilliant array