After they had gotten rid of undesirables, the Thirty began to arrest respectable citizens, and notably the richest and most prominent. Their objective was not simply to rid the city of troublemakers, but to remove anyone who might have the power to challenge them. Furthermore, since they confiscated the property of their victims, they were enriching themselves at the same time. At this point Socrates was caught up in the machinations of the Thirty. “When the oligarchy took over,” says Socrates in the Apology, “the Thirty summoned me to the Rotunda along with four other men and ordered us to arrest Leon of Salamis and bring him back to be put to death. They issued similar orders to many others, wishing to make as many people as possible accomplices to their crimes. Then, however, I showed again not only in word but in deed that I’m not concerned about death, not one bit, if you’ll pardon my bluntness, but about how to avoid doing anything unjust or unrighteous, because that’s all I care about. That regime, ruthless as it was, did not intimidate me into doing anything unjust. When we left the Rotunda, the other four set off for Salamis to arrest Leon, while I went home.”[26]
Recalling this event more than fifty years later, Plato said, “among their other offenses [the Thirty] sent a dear friend of mine, the elderly Socrates, whom I would not hesitate to call the most upright man of his generation, with several others, to arrest one of the citizens on a capital charge, in order that they might implicate them willy-nilly in their own misdeeds. He, however, would not obey, but would risk any reprisal rather than take part in their crimes.” This action more than any other soured Plato on the oligarchy and alienated him from his relatives.[27] Even Theramenes mentioned the arrest of Leon as a signal case of judicial murder of an innocent man.[28]
Leon of Salamis was not just a rich man whose property the Thirty coveted. He had been a general of Athens who had played an important part in the Peloponnesian War.[29] He had also been a staunch supporter of the democrats against oligarchical factions throughout the war, and now stood as one of the few veteran generals who could stand up to the Thirty and rally the democrats against them.[30] Hence the Thirty saw Leon as an existential threat to their regime. Leon had been one of the generals trapped in Mytilene on the island of Lesbos whom the battle of Arginusae was fought to rescue (see ch. 19*).
“Were the Thirty,” asks one historian, “so diabolical in their scheming that they deliberately chose to implicate Socrates in the arrest of a man who was a former strategos [general] and colleague of the Arginusae generals—an action which would not only have caused Socrates great personal and public embarrassment, but would also have evoked bitter memories of the recent past in the minds of all Athenians?”[31] The action would, in fact, have nullified the heroic action Socrates took in trial of the generals (Leon had perhaps been captured by the Spartans at Mytilene and was therefore not put on trial with the others, but was their colleague nonetheless).
By ordering ordinary citizens to carry out their often harsh, even deadly, decrees, the Thirty were not only trying to make others their accomplices, but also seeing who would yield to intimidation and who would not. They were thus applying a test of obedience to their subjects. Anyone who demurred would become a target for later reprisals.
[26].Plato Apology 32c-d.
[27].Plato Letter VII, 324d-325a.
[28].Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.39.
[29]. Thucydides 8.23-24, 54-55, 73; Xenophon Hellenica 1.5.16, 1.6.16; Lysias 10.4-5, 27; MacDowell 1962: 133; McCoy 1975; Nails 2002: 185-186.
[30].Thucydides 8.54.3, 8.73.4; McCoy 1975:194-95.
[31].McCoy 1975:197.