The one outspoken voice for moderation among the Thirty, Theramenes, opposed the policy of accusing law-abiding citizens on trumped-up charges. He had always been interested in a balanced and responsible government, not a tyranny of the Few over the Many. The Thirty had established a Council of five hundred of their most trusted allies.[34] Now Theramenes challenged the Thirty to finish their constitutional duty by naming an Assembly, in accordance with the “ancestral constitution” they were supposed to be re-establishing.[35] He realized that the government of Athens was at a crossroads. It could either become a small junta propped up by a foreign garrison, or it could expand to be a government with broad participation and a popular mandate, but more restrained and responsible than the radical democracy that had brought ruin to the city. Theramenes had participated in the regimes of the Four Hundred and the Five Thousand in 411 (see ch. 17*), but had opposed the more repressive measures of that oligarchy—including the unseemly delay of the Four Hundred in naming an Assembly.
The people were aware of Theramenes’ proposals, and they saw him as their advocate with the government. The Thirty dared not anger the populace, but they knew that by broadening the franchise they risked losing everything. They determined to establish an Assembly of three thousand who would be the citizens of the new government. The number was perhaps chosen to look good to Athens’ Spartan overlords. The Thirty were, probably not by accident, a mirror image of the Gerousia or Senate of Sparta, which consisted of twenty-eight senators and the two kings. There were three thousand Spartiates or full citizens of Sparta, which the conservatives of the Thirty of Athens now wished to imitate.[36] In a speech against Theramenes, Critias says, “The constitution of Sparta is, no doubt, the best of all.”[37] But to enroll three thousand Athenians in the lists of citizens was at the same time a move to disenfranchise many more thousands of former citizens, who henceforth would be non-citizens and tacit enemies of the regime. Accordingly, Theramenes argued for increasing the number of citizens beyond three thousand. As he pointed out, “I consider that we are doing two incompatible things: we are both establishing a government based on oppression and also making the authorities weaker than the subjects.”[38] For fear of the Many, the Thirty risked making their regime too few to rule; so they delayed naming the new body and dithered about whom to include.
Finally, they arranged to have a military-style review of the men of Athens. The names of the Three Thousand were published; the men named were to report with their arms to the Agora, while other members of the infantry were to report in arms to other marshaling points. (Now that Socrates was in his sixties, he presumably was not expected to appear with the military-age Athenian men.) While the latter group was being reviewed, members of the Spartan garrison and Athenian officials seized their weapons and carried them to the Acropolis, where the garrison was housed. The Thirty had not only enfranchised their allies, but disarmed their potential foes.[39]
Now that the Thirty had (somewhat) broadened their base while, at least for the time being, disarming the opposition, the two leaders of the body squared off against each other. Critias had been pushing for a radical, Spartan-style oligarchy, Theramenes for a moderate, Athenian-style republic. Critias invited some of his young supporters to come to the next meeting of the Council with concealed daggers. At the meeting, he rose to denounce Theramenes as a subversive and a traitor, and called for his condemnation.[40] Theramenes defended himself ably, arguing the advantages of his moderate policies and warning how the peremptory actions of the oligarchy were alienating even their potential supporters.[41] The Council applauded his speech.
Now Critias ordered his henchmen to come forward to the railing separating the Thirty from the auditorium where the Council of Five Hundred sat, and to draw their daggers. He struck Theramenes’ name off the list of Three Thousand citizens, thus canceling his civil rights. He then intimidated the other members of the Thirty, with the threat of violence hanging over them as well as over Critias’ target, into condemning their colleague Theramenes. The condemned man jumped up and grasped the altar of Hestia as a suppliant, crying out to his colleagues that whatever they did to him, Critias might do to any one of them. He said he knew his supplication of the gods would not protect him from the Thirty, but he wanted them to publicly commit sacrilege in arresting him. The Eleven prison wardens duly came forward to arrest Theramenes and drag him from the altar and through the town square, where he loudly denounced the Thirty to the people.[42]
At this point the ancient historian Diodorus of Sicily tells us that Theramenes was a friend of Socrates, and that Socrates and two of his companions rushed forward to try to rescue Theramenes, but the prisoner warned them off.[43] The incident is not recorded by any contemporary sources, but the same scene does appear in another late source with a different protagonist. In the Lives of the Ten Orators the man who tries to save Theramenes is his friend Isocrates, who would be one of Plato’s rivals in the following years. Isocrates was famously just as timid as Socrates about public service, but he is likely to have been a close friend of Theramenes.[44]
In prison, Theramenes drank the hemlock, then swished out a drop in the manner of a drinking game, ominously wishing health to fair Critias.[45]
With Theramenes out of the way—and with the show of violence in the council house itself to belie any impression of a rule by law—Critias had a free hand to carry on his depredations. The Thirty now evicted from the city of Athens Athenian men who were not included in the Three Thousand, turning them into perioikoi or subject peoples such as the Spartans had. The Thirty then stepped up their proscriptions of former citizens. They also went after resident aliens, especially the wealthy.
[34].Aristotle Constitution of Athens 35.1; Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.11; Diodorus Siculus 14.4.2.
[35].Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.15-19; Diodorus Siculus 14.4.1-2; Aristotle Constitution of Athens 36.1.
[36].Munn 2000: 225; Krentz 1982: 64-65.
[37].Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.34.
[38].Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.19.
[39].Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.20. Aristotle Constitution of Athens 36, 37.2 puts the death of Theramenes before the disarming of the non-citizens.
[40].Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.24-34.
[41].Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.35-49.
[42].Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.50-56; Diodorus Siculus 14.4.6-7.
[43].Diodorus Siculus 14.5.1-3.
[44].Pseudo-Plutarch Lives of the Ten Orators = Moralia 836f-837a.
[45].Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.56.