The Historians' History of the World 03

The Four Hundred then marched to the senate house, each man with a dagger concealed under his garment, and followed by their special bodyguard of 120 young men from various Grecian cities, the instruments of the assassinations ordered by Antiphon and his colleagues. In this array they marched into the senate house, where the senators were assembled, and commanded them to depart; at the same time tendering to them their pay for all the remainder of the year—seemingly about three months or more down to the beginning of Hecatombæon, the month of new nominations—during which their functions ought to have continued. The senators were no way prepared to resist the decree just passed under the forms of legality, with an armed body now arrived to enforce its execution. They obeyed and departed, each man as he passed the door receiving the salary tendered to him. That they should yield obedience to superior force, under the circumstances, can excite neither censure nor surprise; but that they should accept, from the hands of the conspirators, this anticipation of an unearned salary, was a meanness which almost branded them as accomplices, and dishonoured the expiring hour of the last democratical authority. The Four Hundred now at last found themselves triumphantly installed in the senate house, without the least resistance, either from within its walls or even from without, by any portion of the citizens.

Thus perished, or seemed to perish, the democracy of Athens, after an uninterrupted existence of nearly one hundred years since the revolution of Clisthenes. So incredible did it appear that the numerous, intelligent, and constitutional citizens of Athens should suffer their liberties to be overthrown by a band of four hundred conspirators, while the great mass of them not only loved their democracy, but had arms in their hands to defend it, that even their enemy and neighbour Agis, at Decelea, could hardly imagine the revolution to be a fact accomplished.

The ulterior success of the conspiracy—when all prospect of Persian gold, or improved foreign position, was at an end—is due to the combinations, alike nefarious and skillful, of Antiphon, wielding and organising the united strength of the aristocratical classes at Athens; strength always exceedingly great, but under ordinary circumstances working in fractions disunited and even reciprocally hostile to each other—restrained by the ascendent democratical institutions—and reduced to corrupt what it could not overthrow. Antiphon, about to employ this anti-popular force in one systematic scheme, and for the accomplishment of a predetermined purpose, keeps still within the same ostensible constitutional limits. He raises no open mutiny: he maintains inviolate the cardinal point of Athenian political morality—respect to the decision of the senate and political assembly, as well as to constitutional maxims.

He knows, however, that the value of these meetings, depends upon freedom of speech; and that, if that freedom be suppressed, the assembly itself becomes a nullity, or rather an instrument of positive imposture and mischief. Accordingly, he causes all the popular orators to be successively assassinated, so that no man dares to open his mouth on that side; while on the other hand, the anti-popular speakers are all loud and confident, cheering one another on, and seeming to represent all the feeling of the persons present. By thus silencing each individual leader, and intimidating every opponent from standing forward as spokesman, he extorts the formal sanction of the assembly and the senate to measures which the large majority of the citizens detest. That majority, however, are bound by their own constitutional forms; and when the decision of these, by whatever means obtained, is against them, they have neither the inclination nor the courage to resist. In no part of the world has this sentiment of constitutional duty, and submission to the vote of a legal majority, been more keenly and universally felt, than it was among the citizens of democratical Athens.[57] Antiphon thus finds means to employ the constitutional sentiment of Athens as a means of killing the constitution: the mere empty form, after its vital and protective efficacy has been abstracted, remains simply as a cheat to paralyse individual patriotism.