Knox, Demos and Politicians

7/29/2019 Knox, Demos and Politicians

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'So Mischievous a Beaste'? The Athenian 'Demos' and Its Treatment of Its Politicians

Author(s): Ronald A. KnoxSource: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Oct., 1985), pp. 132-161Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/642439 .

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Greece & Rome, Vol. XXXII No. 2, October1985

'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?THE ATHENIAN DEMOS AND ITS TREATMENT OF ITSPOLITICIANS'

By RONALD A. KNOX

IntroductionI take the question in my title from a memorably worded passagein Sir Thomas North's translation2 of Plutarch's Life of Demosthenes26, where Plutarch is describing Demosthenes' exile in 323 B.C.Demosthenes was now 60 and after more than 30 years of activeparticipation in Athenian political life, he had been condemned byan Athenian court for taking bribes from Harpalus, the late treasurerof Alexander the Great, who had fled to Athens with 700 talents.Demosthenes had been fined 50 talents by the court, and had beenput in prison when unable to pay. But he had escaped from prisonand now went into voluntary exile. North's Plutarch goes on:So he took his banishment unmanly, and remained the most part of his banishmentin the city of Aegina, or at the city of Troezen, where often-times he would casthis eyes towards the country of Attica, and weep bitterly. And some have writtencertainwordshe spake,which shewedno mind of a man of courage,nor were answer-able to the noble things he was wont to persuade in his orations. For it is reportedof him, that as he went out of Athens, he looked back again, and holding up hishandsto the castle, said in this sort: 'O Lady Minerva,lady patronessof this city:why doest thou delightin threeso mischievousbeasts:the owl, the dragon,and thepeople?'3Besides, he persuaded the young men that came to see him, and that were withhim, never to meddle in matters of state, assuring them, that if they had offeredhim two ways at the first, the one to go into the assemblyof the people, to makeorations in the pulpit,4 and the other to be put to death presently, and that he hadknown as he did then, the troubles a man is compelled to suffer that meddleth withthe affairsof the state,the fear,the envy, the accusations,and troubles n the same:she would ratherhavechosen the wayto have suffereddeath.

Whether or not Demosthenes ever really made these remarks, therecan be little doubt that Plutarch endorsed them. There are many otherpassages of Plutarch in which the Athenian demos appears difficultor jealous or ungrateful or fractious.6 And few extant ancient writerswould have disagreed with Plutarch's general approach. But there areplenty of modern scholars who would. In the last generation, at leastin the English-speaking world, most treatments of Athenian democracyhave sought to redress the balance of ancient criticism by emphasizingits positive achievements.7There are indeed cogent general arguments for approaching

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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 133Plutarch's characterization of the Athenian demoswith caution. Criticsof Plutarch may say, with A. W. Gomme,8 that Plutarch, as a citizenof the Roman Empire under Trajan, had never seen a democracy atwork and had no intuitive understanding of the vigorous political worldof 5th and 4th century Greece. There is certainly truth in that.Or again, Plutarch's critics might say that, like nearly all ancient writerswhose work has survived, he was of upper-class origin and that upper-class writers were naturally unsympathetic to the demosat Athens orelsewhere.9 This should put us certainly on our guard, but no more;it would be sad to fall into the opposite trap of thinking that becausea criticism is made by an upper-class author, it therefore must beprejudiced and invalid. Thirdly, and more generally still, one mayask whether, if the Athenian demos had been the XaAEmr7TTaTov97)pLovof Plutarch's Demosthenes, Athenian democracy could have survivedfor some two centuries as it did. Although not written about Plutarch'sview specifically, the following characteristically lively paragraphfromProfessor W. G. Forrest10can perhaps serve as an example of a generalriposte in favour of the Athenian demos.Athens failed too in the end but it must be clear by now where I would put the blame.Not with so many history books on the Athenian people, history books which, byan unhappy marriage of Thucydides and Plato, produce a story of democracy andcorruption advancing hand in hand from the restrained dignity of the days of Perikles,through the first debauches introduced by Kleon to the hideous degeneracy of thewild-eyed monster Kleophon. The Athenian people was not free from corruption,selfishness, stupidity and cruelty; no people is. But for something like a hundredyears it chose leaders, Themistokles, Aristeides, even Kimon in his limited way,Ephialtes, Perikles, Kleon; later a reformed Alkibiades, Thrasyboulos and a half-reformed Theramenes (for some of the oligarchs learned their lesson in 411); it choseleaders, some iK CjTV /EyLaoTWVOIKLtCV,ome not, with whose help it directed itsgovernment, onductedts warsandadministeredtsempire airly, olerantly, ensibly,justlyandon the whole unselfishly.It did fail but it failed because t producedandon some occasionslistened to a groupof men who did not shareits beliefs, whoseown personalambition,whose lack of sophrosyne, f you like, destroyedwhat theywere too clever to understand.In at leastone importantrespect,however,it seems to me that suchmodernreaction has gone too far. Granted that the Athenianpeoplechose its leaders,how did it treatthem once chosen?Did the people,in this regard,act 'fairly, tolerantly,sensibly, justly' or more like a'mischievousbeaste' as Plutarchbelieved?This paper is written inthe convictionthatPlutarch'scriticism in this respectis on the wholemerited and that modern defendersof democracyhave been over-reluctant o admitas much. I addressmyselfinparticularothepoliticalcasualtyrateamongAthenianpoliticians.



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134 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?

The Political Casualty Rate: a crudesurvey"One cannot read far in Athenian history without coming across apolitician whose career is interrupted or ended by disgrace, broughton by a penalty inflicted by the law-courts or the Assembly, whethera fine, or exile, or confiscation of property, or loss of civic rights,or execution, or penalty of some other kind. By the political casualtyrate, I mean the number of such penalties in relation to the numberof politicians, and I include ostracism among the political penalties,for reasons which will be argued later.Was this casualty rate notably high at Athens? It is not difficultto produce a wealth of examples of political casualties. What is harderis to determine the significance of these when weighed against thecareers of politicians who escape disaster. At the risk of gross over-simplification, the following paragraphs aim to survey the casualtiesamong the more prominent Athenian politicians under thedemocracy, while pointing also to those who never lost their footingin the political race. (It must be admitted at once that 'more prominent'has to mean 'more prominent as they emerge from the sources'. Acontempofary Athenian might well have disagreed about theimportance of some of the names that follow and suggested othersin their place.)Ideally a survey of Athenian politicians under the democracy wouldstart from Cleisthenes' reforms in 507 B.c. But so little detail is knownof political careers at Athens in the first two decades after the reformsthat it is best to pass at once to those known to have been politicaland military leaders in the Persian Wars. Four names stand out, thoseof Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides and Xanthippus (father ofPericles). Of these Miltiades, the victor of Marathon, was fined 50talents in 489 when his expedition to Paros was a failure (Hdt. 6.136);Themistocles, who had done the most to win the battle of Salamis,was ostracized in the late 470s and hunted out of Greece some timethereafter (Thuc. 1.135ff.). Aristides and Xanthippus had both beenostracized in the 480s ([Ar.,] Ath. Pol. 22.6-7), but were recalled toAthens in 481 and cannot be proved to have suffered any politicaldisaster thereafter, although there is a decidedly weak tradition inPlutarch Aristides 26 that Aristides was fined for bribery and wentinto exile because he could not pay the fine.In the 470s and 460s, Athens' leading general was Cimon, Miltiades'son. He commanded all the successful campaigns of the early DelianLeague, but the Athenians ostracized him in 461 when popular opinionturned against his policy of alliance with Sparta and against hisconstitutional conservatism (Plutarch, Cimon 15-17, Pericles 9.4). Of



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136 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?fall of the regimes of the Four Hundred and the Five Thousand, theybehaved with considerable restraint in not instituting a witch-huntagainst those who had browbeaten them into voting away thedemocracy.12 The most capable Athenian leader in the later years ofthe war was arguably Alcibiades, who went into voluntary exile twiceto avoid trial, in 415 and 407, being on the first occasion condemnedto death in his absence, with his property confiscated and publiclyauctioned (Thuc. 6.15, 61, Xen., Hell. 1.5.11-17, Plut., Alc. 20-22,35-6). In his stormy relationship with the demos there were certainlyfaults on both sides: against him it can be urged that he may wellhave been guilty of profaning the Mysteries in 415, and that sincehe on both occasions exiled himself to avoid trial, he, not the demos,was the author of his misfortunes; on the other hand the fact thatwith his political experience he had no confidence in his chances inan Athenian court could be argued to show that the juryman of thetime was a XaAE7rrT(avov 89PLov.In 407, at least, the demos appears to actwith petulance in either dismissing or failing to reappoint the generalsof 407, despite their victories and services in 410-408, because of thecomparatively small naval defeat at Notium, suffered by Alcibiades'second-in-command in his absence (Xen., Hell. 1.5.16); and after thebattle of Arginusae in 406, it is notorious that the eight Atheniangenerals who had won the battle were condemned to death in anunconstitutional collective vote, and the six who returned to Athensexecuted, for not picking up shipwrecked men (Xen., Hell. 1.7).However, such irresponsibly hasty collective condemnation is un-paralleled in Athenian democratic history (apart perhaps from theexecution of the Hellenotamiae noticed earlier), and it can be arguedthat the strain of the last years of the Peloponnesian War distortednormal Athenian practice.In 404-3 B.C. the continuity of Athenian democracy was againtemporarily broken, by the regimes of the Thirty and the Ten. Whendemocracy was restored, much could be said in general praise of theAthenians' patience and courage in rebuilding their political strengthat home and abroad in the first decades of the fourth century. Therewas no more stasis; the amnesty with the oligarchs in 403 was broadlyhonoured by the demos, even in the opinion of writers not otherwiseinclined to praise it (Xen., Hell. 2.4.43, [Ar.,] Ath. Pol. 41.3, Plato,Seventh Letter 325B). Nevertheless in the restored democracy, politicscontinued to be hazardous for a high proportion of the prominentpoliticians of whom we hear. The author of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia(6.2, 7.2)13 names five Athenians politically prominent in 396:Thrasybulus, Aisimus and Anytus, who favoured peaceful policies,and Epicrates and Cephalus, who were prepared to risk renewed war



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 137with Sparta. The most eminent of these was Thrasybulus, who hadhelped to preserve Athenian democracy in the fleet in 411, and hadled the democrats in exile in 404-3, services to democracy which didnot save him from conviction in court for his proposal, judged un-constitutional, to give citizenship to the slaves who had joined thedemocratic exiles at Phyle ([Ar.,] Ath. Pol. 40.2); but his politicalcareer was not seriously damagedl4 and he remained highly influentialat Athens until his death on campaign in 389. Of Aesimus's fortunes,the little that is recorded does not include any political disaster; butAnytus, one of the prosecutors of Socrates, is implied by DiogenesLaertius (2.43) to have been exiled when the Athenian repented oftheir condemnation of Socrates. Of the two more radical politicianswhom Hellenica Oxyrhynchia mentions, Cephalus and Epicrates,Cephalus remained active in the 380s and passed through politicsunscathed; but Epicrates, after serving on a peace embassy to Spartain 392/1, was prosecuted along with his fellow ambassador Andocidesthe orator; both of them went into exile rather than face trial andboth were condemned to death in their absence (Philochorus (F. Gr.Hist. 328) F 149, Demosthenes 19.277). Two other prominentAthenians in trouble in the 390s or 380s are known from Demosthenes(24.134-5): Thrasybylus of Collyte (to be distinguished from his better-known namesake from Steiria mentioned above) was one of the exileswho fought for democracy in 403, but was later twice imprisoned andtwice condemned in trials before the assembly; and Agyrrhius, uncleof Callistratus, who introduced pay for the assembly, and was referredto by Demosthenes as a good democrat, spent many years in gaol aftera conviction for embezzlement.From the international point of view, the most distinguishedAthenian in the 390s must have been Conon. One of the defeatedgenerals at Aegospotami in 405, he had fled to Evagoras in Cyprus,'fearing the anger of the people' (Diodorus 13.106, cf. Justin 5.6.10).In 397 his appointment as admiral of the Persian navy gave him theopportunity to help Athens, and after his defeat of the Spartan navyat Cnidus in 394, the Athenians showered honours upon him (Dem.20.68-70, Tod G.H.I. 11.128 with references). But this happy relation-ship will have owed at least something to the fact that from 405 untilhis death he was hardly ever in Athens. In Persian service he wassafely out of the Athenian political firing-line.Moving on to the 370s and 360s, one finds four men who towerabove the rest in the sources: Callistratus, primarily an orator andfinancier; and Chabrias, Iphicrates and Timotheus, son of Conon,primarily generals. Chabrias and Iphicrates had long and distinguishedcareers, surviving attacks in the law courts. Timotheus's career was



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138 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?equally distinguished; but it came to a sad end in 354 when he wascondemned for treason after Athenian naval defeat at Embata andwithdrew into exile from inability to pay his fine of 100 talents(Isocrates 15.129; Nepos, Timotheus3.5). Likewise, Callistratus, afteran able career in the 370s and 360s, was impeached by ElaayyEALaaround 361 and went into exile; and when a few years later he venturedto come back from exile without permission, the Athenians put himto death (Lycurgus, Leocrates 93).From all this it emerges that Athenian political life in the first halfof the 4th century, as in the 5th, was a minefield for the politician.The pattern in the late fourth century, when the democracy wasstruggling against the rising power of Macedon, was broadly similar.To avoid labouring this survey to the point of exhaustion, I shall sayonly that although there were men in the forefront of politics wholived through their careers without disgrace - notably Eubulus andLycurgus, with less distinction Chares and Hegesippus - as many ormore names suggest themselves of those whose careers ended in ruinby vote of the assembly or the lawcourts - Demosthenes, Aeschines,Philocrates, Timarchus, Hyperides, Demades.s1 (It is perhaps worthmentioning as a curiosity that if one examines the fortunes of the 'TenAttic Orators', whose works became a canon of oratory on literarygrounds long after their death, a bizarrely high casualty rate emerges.Of the ten, we have to exclude from consideration four who were eithernot Athenian citizens (Lysias and Dinarchus) or were citizens but tookno active part in politics (Isocrates and Isaeus); but of the six whodid take an active part in politics, only one - Lycurgus - died inAthens in his bed. The other five - Antiphon, Andocides, Demosthenes,Aeschines, Hyperides - suffered either exile or death when they lostthe confidence of the people.)16

Attempted Statistical CheckThe survey above shows, I hope, that if we look for what I have calledpolitical casualties under Athenian democracy, there areplenty of themto hand; and they are not confined to isolated periods of crisis butare a regular feature throughout the history of the democracy. Anysurvey of this kind is, however, bound to be highly subjective. It isnot simply that one can argue about the quality of the evidence inindividual cases (and every reader is likely to have found some pieceof my phrasing tendentious or unfair); that does not matter particularlyif it is the broad pattern of frequent condemnations which we areout to establish. More important, there is an obvious risk that in asurvey of this kind the enquirer registers the casualties because he



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 139is looking for them, but fails to register enough of the politicians whoquietly avoid political disgrace.It is very difficult to find an objective procedure by which to checkone's own bias in selection. It is impossible to draw up a completelist of 'Athenian politicians'. For one thing, for no year do we havea complete list of Athenian magistrates17 and members of the bouleof Five Hundred; and if we had, it would be of limited use, becausemany of the active politicians (the so-called p-4TopESor T0oAhLEdvEVOL)18held no official position (naturally enough, when most magistrates aswell as members of the boule were appointed by lot, not elected onmerit or prominence, and when service on the boule was limited totwo (probably not continuous) years). Conversely, in each year's boule,there were many who attended and voted but did not take a moreactive part, by speaking and making proposals (see Dem. 22.35-36 forthe distinction between active and less active bouleutai). Moreover onecould clearly debate where, in a democracy, the line could be drawnbetween an 'active politician' or 'leader' and an ordinary politicallyconscientious citizen exercising his right to speak in the Assembly.To try to circumvent these difficulties, I have had recourse to arough and ready procedure, which would no doubt make a modernstatistician blench, but which seems better than having no objectivecheck at all. I have taken as a sample all those Athenian citizens aboutwhom enough is known to fill at least a whole page in Kirchner'sProsopographiaAttica. The advantage of this is that Kirchner's bookis essentially a biographical dictionary of Athenian citizens, not apolitical study as such, and that citizens about whom enough is knownto fill a page or more have not survived in the historical record (or beenchosen by Kirchner) merely becauseof having been condemned in somepolitical scandal. They are genuinely prominent citizens with whoseselection no oligarchic force in my own sub-conscious could interfere.The 'at least a page' criterion yielded 57 of them.

From the sample of 57, I then had to excise five men whose activitiesfell outside the period of classical democracy (Solon, Peisistratus andHippias at one end, Demetrius of Phalerum and Demochares at theother), and a further eleven, mostly writers, who would not be regardedas politicians in any normal sense: Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Cratinus,Eupolis, Euripides, Isocrates, Mantitheos, Menander, Plato Comicus,Plato the Philosopher, and Socrates. (I excluded Socrates with onlyslight misgivings, in spite of his service on the boule in 406 (Xen.,Hell. 1.7.15); on the other hand with greater misgivings, I did notexclude Sophocles the dramatist, in view of his generalship in 441/0(Androtion (F. Gr. Hist. 324) F38) and perhaps c. 423 (Plut., Nicias15.2) and probable service as Hellenotamias (443/2) and membership



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140 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?of the ten Trpo'/ovAoLn 413 (Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.141.9 a 2619); nordid I exclude Xenophon, who was exiled by the people of Athensfor a political offence, even if not exactly an offence committed inthe course of democratic politics (Xen., Anab. 3.1.5, Pausanias 5.6.4,Diogenes Laertius 2.51).)This left 41 prominent and politically active Athenians, who arelisted in the table below, arrangedin broad chronological order accord-ing to date of disgrace, or date of principal political activity, or a mixtureof the two. Although this is a Procrustean procedure in the case of(e.g.) Aristophon, who probably suffered no penalty, and lived to beabout a hundred (schol. to Aesch. 1.64), with a public career stretchingfrom 403 to the 330s, the attempted chronological order is intendedto reveal the extent to which penalties appear regularly or irregularlythroughout the period of Athenian democracy. For the same reasondates (some of them disputed but unlikely to be wrong by more thana year) have been inserted beside the penalties where possible.The seven columns of penalties are in roughly ascending order ofseverity from fines and ostracism to exile, confiscation of propertyand death. Ostracism, in the second column, is different from the restin not being a penalty for a specific and criminal offence, but in asmuch as it removed an Athenian from Athens for ten years, it seemsreasonable to treat it as a political penalty in the broader sense (thispoint is argued further below in Appendix 1). Columns three, four,and five cover three distinguishable types of exile: I call it voluntaryexile when a man went into exile to avoid being condemned by courtsor assembly, either because he was guilty, or because he had no faithin the jury's ability to see his innocence; such action was normallyconstrued at Athens as an admission of guilt, and he was normally(but not invariably, as we see with Alcibiades (no. 18) in 407)condemned in his absence. 'Exile resulting from a fine' took placewhen a fine was imposed which was too heavy for the condemnedman to pay, and he chose to avoid imprisonment (which would other-wise result until he had paid his fine) by going into exile. This wasclearly a less voluntary form of exile than the first. In column fiveare exiles which were specifically imposed as a sentence by courts orassembly. (In a few cases (cf. notes to 19, 36, and 41 in Appendix2) it is difficult to be sure whether a man was condemned to exile,or to death in his absence, since the practical result was identical:an exile would normally be put to death if he returned to Athenswithout permission (like Callistratus, no. 24) and a man condemnedto death in his absence was in effect made an exile if he wished toremain alive.) Confiscation of property, in column six, was frequently(and perhaps normally) imposed along with sentences of death or



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 141exile;20it is extremely likely that in some instances where the sourcesgive us only brief allusions to a sentence of death or exile, confiscationalso took place although they do not mention it. If so, the numberof confiscations in the table should be higher. I have not includeda column for imprisonment, since it was not a recognized penalty foran offence, but a temporary condition while a man awaited trial, orthe payment of his fine or execution; nor have I included atimia(disfranchisement) which is more rarely attested than the otherpenalties21and which tends to raise severe problems of interpretationwhen it does.Where a penalty suffered by one of the 41 is well attested, I markit with an 'x'; 'xx' consequently means that the penalty was incurredtwice. In the death column, however, since death sentences were oftennot executed because the condemned man had escaped into exile beforesentence, an 'x' indicates merely that the sentence was passed; whereit was also executed I append a dagger 't'. A question mark '?' meansthat there is evidence for the item in question, but also a substantialdegree of doubt, owing to the weakness of the source, or to obscurityof language, or to disagreement among sources. For example, the fineof Cleon (no. 9) appearing as a ? only is based on an obscure jokein Aristophanes, Acharnians 6 about Cleon's having vomited up fivetalents, which can (but need not) be interpreted as a fine.22

TABLE: Athenian Politicians active 490-322 B.C.(The principal sources on which the table is based will be found in Appendix 2)

ExileOstra- Vol. after Confis-Fine cism Exile Fine Exile cation Death1. Miltiades x2. Aristides ? x4823. Themistocles x472 x x x4. Cimon x4615. Thucydides ?? x443 ? ?(son of Melesias)6. Pericles x4307. Sophocles8. Thucydides x(son of Olorus)9. Cleon ?10. Nicias11. Demosthenes

(general)12. Hyperbolus x41613. Alcibiades xx415,407 x415 x415



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142 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?TABLE (cont)

ExileOstra- Vol. after Confis-Fine cism Exile Fine Exile cation Death14. Antiphon (x) (xt)41115. Peisander (x411) (x) ?16. Theramenes17. Cleophon xf40418. Critias x19. Andocides xx415,391 x410 ? x39120. Thrasybulus x40321. Conon22. Callias23. Xenophon x39424. Callistratus x ? ?xt35525. Iphicrates26. Chabrias27. Timotheus x x35428. Aristophon ?29. Androtion x?354 x30. Apollodorus xx350,348(son of Pasion)31. Eubulus32. Chares33. Charidemus (?)33534. Aeschines x x33035. Hegesippus36. Demosthenes xx360,324 (x) x324 (x)(orator)37. Lycurgus ?38. Hyperides (x) (x)32239. Aristogeiton xx40. Demades x41. Phocion (x) (?) (x) (xt)31813-20 5 6-10 3-4 6-10 2-7 4-10Totals 39-66

In a few instances only I have bracketed an entry '(x)'. This meansnot that there is any doubt about the event as such, but that it tookplace when circumstances were so abnormal that one can questionwhether the event illustrated the workings of Athenian democracy.I have confined these brackets to penalties inflicted in the immediateaftermath of the overthrow of the Four Hundred (nos. 14 and 15,cf. note 16 above), to those occurring under the influence ofMacedonian threats (nos. 33, 36, 38, 40), where it might be arguedthat the demoswas not wholly a free agent and hence only technicallyresponsible for the penalty, and to the case of Phocion (41) where



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 143the assembly that condemned him is said to have been irregularlyswollen by non-citizens, and the penalties occur at the end of hiscareer when the continuity of fourth-century democracy had alreadybeen broken. (Penalties inflicted by the Four Hundred or the Thirtyare not included in the Table.)The figures at the foot of each column give the total numbers ofpenalties; where there is a range, the lower figure represents the totalwhen the question-marked and bracketed cases are excluded, whilethe higher includes them. From this it will be seen that our 41politicians between them incur 39 penalties on a conservative estimateand 66 on a more credulous one. (The figures are 33 and 56 if oneexcludes voluntary exile as a penalty self-inflicted). The true figuresare likely to be in between the lower and higher totals, because althoughsome of the question-marked cases are likely to be spurious, we haveto allow for condemnations which have not survived in the sources:it is probable a priori that one or two of these politicians were finedwithout this being recorded in our sources, and that (as I have suggestedabove, and see note 18) the total of confiscations should be higher;it is also likely that I have failed to note one or two penalties whichare in the sources. If so, the penalties probably average out at morethan one per politician.More strikingly perhaps, the table also shows that of our 41 poli-ticians only 19, less than half, avoid some kind of political catastropheat the hands of (or, in the case of voluntary exile, because of fearof) their fellow citizens; and that figure is the conservative one; ifthe question-marked and bracketed cases are accepted as genuine andrelevant, the number of politicians who survive the system unscathedsinks to eleven, barely over a quarter of the sample. (Again, the truefigure is likely to be in between the two.)

Interpretation and CommentA rate of political fall-out of more than 50% seems remarkable andat first sight it seems to give strong support to a Plutarchan andconservative view of Athenian democracy as unreasonably turbulent.But need it be interpreted this way? Let us consider what a democraticapologist might say against such a Plutarchan view.First then our apologist (whom for convenience I shall call Philo-demus) might suggest that the statistics in the Table are unrepresen-tative and give undue prominence to political casualties, because ofanti-democratic bias in the ancient sources. But which sources?Appendix 2 contains the more important passages only (not a completelist) on which the Table is based, and even this limited list comesfrom a wide variety of authors: contemporary historians and orators,



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144 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?later historians and lexicographers, biographers and the occasionalcomic poet or philosopher. Not one of these, as far as I am aware,was writing a work which was intended to be, or was principally, acollection of the misdeeds of the Athenian demos. Admittedly theremay have been such books: a tantalizing passage in Plutarch,Aristides 26, where Plutarch is arguing, against Craterus, thatAristides was never fined and exiled, reads as follows:Virtually all the others who narrate the sins of the people against the generals(90aoLArATZh/LEAThVraT(J) repTEP0TVsarTpaT'ryobS&Et'aau)ollect and say much ofthe exile of Themistoclesandthe imprisonment f Miltiadesand thefiningof Periclesand the death in court of Paches,who killed himself on the rostrumwhen he wasconvicted,andmanyothersuchincidents,but whiletheysettheostracismof Aristidesalongsidethe rest, they make no mention of such a condemnation sc. a fine].

Butno systematic reatiseof thiskind hassurvived,andit is unlikelythatanywhichhasnot hasunfairlypoisonedthe wholehistoriographictradition.(Plutarchdoes not in any case suggest that the compilersfalsified the evidence or invented instances.)I remain confident thatour evidence for a high political casualtyrate comes from a broadenoughrangeof sources not to be fundamentallymisleading.A secondrejoinderwhichPhilodemusmightmake s this. 'Youhavebeen implyingall along,' he might say, 'althoughyou have been toomealy-mouthedto state it, that all or most of these condemned menwere innocent victims: on the contrary, hey were a parcelof rogues,who met their deserts.Whatrighthaveyouto assumetheirinnocence?Some of them condemnedthemselvesby going into exile ratherthanface a trial. Doesn't that indicate a guilty man just as probablyasit indicates a man who doesn't believe that he will get a fair trial?It is avirtue of apoliticalsystem,not avice,when criminalor treacher-ous politiciansarerigorouslyrooted out.'Certainlywe should admit that some of these men deserved theircondemnation.But how many?Here we can surely pose a dilemmafor Philodemus.23f all or most of these men werejustlycondemned,is not that itself a criticism of Athenian democracyas it worked?Because if the demoschose its leaders,it obtainedthe leaders whichit deserved,and if an unusuallyhigh proportionof these leaders werecriminallyuntrustworthy,that in itself reflectsupon the judgementof the demos.If on the other hand rather fewer of these men werejustly punished, Plutarch's characterization of the demos as aXaAE-rT`rarovSrporv looks like being close to the mark.Is there any evidence which allows us to choose between these twopossibilities? From a strict point of view, it is impossible for us toprove the guilt or innocence of these men, after all the centuries whichhave passed and without the evidence which the lawcourts and the



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 145assembly had before them. But two general considerations make itat least likely that many of them did not deserve their fate: (1) anyreader of ancient prosecution speeches will agree that the standardsof evidence required fall far short of what would be acceptable in amodern court. We meet with tissues of allegations supported by argu-ments from probability ('K TOt) EL'KTO') and character assassination;matters irrelevant to the charge, such as the past life and career ofthe defendant and even of his relatives, can be adduced; there isfrequently an absence of good eye-witness evidence. When suchmethods of prosecution appear to have been standard, there can beno confidence that the politicians in our sample were fairly convicted.(The False Embassy case of 343, where (as is very rare) we possessboth the prosecution speech (Demosth. 19) and the defence speech(Aeschines 2) on both sides is particularly interesting in this regard.Aeschines was indeed acquitted, but, according to Idomeneus,24 bythe narrow margin of 30 votes out of at least 501, and yet Demos-thenes' 'evidence' that Aeschines had been bribed by Philip into betray-ing Athenian interests to him would be unlikely to be taken seriouslyby a modern procurator fiscal or public prosecutor, let alone convincea modern court.) (2) Many of the instances of exiles and fines in thesample occur when generals have lost a battle or failed to preventthe revolt of a city; but in most of these cases, when there is enoughevidence of the circumstances in the sources to allow a judgement,the modern historian tends to diagnose nothing more than bad luckor inexperience or, at the worst, innocent incompetence. Is it necessaryor plausible to say with the Athenian juries that there had beenbribery (~wpoSoKLta)or treason (rrpoSoa0a) or some other criminal activityas work? Yet they must have asserted this in every case, for incompetencein itself was not a crime. For example, take the generals who camehome from Sicily in 424. The Athenians had sent out 20 ships toSicily in 427 to assist the Ionians in Sicily against the Dorians andto interfere with corn exports from Sicily to the Peloponnese; notsurprisingly the 20 ships had only mixed fortunes, so the Atheniansdecided in 426/5 to send another 40 ships; they sent general Pythodoruson in advance, and Eurymedon and Sophocles (not the poet) wereto follow with the main fleet. But this fleet was first diverted to Pylosand then held up at Corcyra and it did not leave for Sicily until theend of the summer 425, too late to take part in that campaigning season.In 424, representatives of the Sicilian states met and decided that itwas in their interests to settle their own differences rather than tohave them exploited by external, Athenian, interference; so they agreedto make peace with each other on terms of preserving the status quoand told the Athenians that they could join in if they liked. The



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146 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?Athenians had no option but to join in, and it is difficult to see whatthey could have done with their limited forces to disrupt a resoluteSicilian desire for peace: after all, when the Athenians intervened inSicily in 415-13, they had in the end a force of nearly 200 ships, threetimes as great as their forces in the 420s, and they experienced utterdisaster. So the generals of the 420s seem innocent of incompetenceeven, let alone treachery; they just hadn't enough ships; but whenthe generals got home, the Athenians in their disappointment exiledtwo of them and fined the third, in the belief that they had been bribedto leave Sicily.25 Another example of this kind which repays studyis that of the historian Thucydides (Thuc. 4.102-8). Thucydides lostAmphipolis because he was too slow for the Spartan Brasidas:Amphipolis fell without resistance on the very day that Brasidas arrivedoutside its walls; Thucydides arrived at Eion (only three miles away)in the evening, only a few hours after the fall of Amphipolis; hecould reasonably have expected Amphipolis to hold out for those fewhours, especially since there was another Athenian general, Eucles,inside the town; but his reasonable expectation was wrong. Whetherthis constitutes incompetence can be and has been debated26; but itwas surely fantastic in the circumstances to suggest that Thucydides,a rich man of noble Athenian family with no reason to be a traitor,was bribed into letting the Spartans capture Amphipolis; yet ifThucydides was exiled for the loss of Amphipolis, as he was, the jurymust have condemned him for rrpoSo0'a or 3wpoSoKla or some suchcriminal act. Such examples, where there is plenty of detail in thesources, give grounds for confidence that in many other instances ofour sample, where we have less detail, generals and politicians werecondemned for criminal conduct when their real 'crime' was simplythat their campaigns and policies had failed.An unfortunate corollary of Athenian readiness to treat failure as asign of criminal behaviour was that the more successful (and valuable)the general was normally, the less liable was the demosto understandor pardon it when he did eventually fail, because if he was normallysuccessful, failure appeared to prove not incapacity but criminal con-duct. Plutarch notices this as a crucial factor in Alcibiades' disgraceand flight in 407 (Alcib. 35.2-3): 'If ever anybody was overthrownby his own reputation, Alcibiades seems to have been. Since hisreputation was great, treating him as full of daring and intelligence,because of his successes, it made any failure on his part the subjectof the suspicion that he was not exerting himself seriously, becausepeople did not believe that he might be unable to do something; forthey thought that nothing could escape him once he had exerted himselfseriously.'



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 147At this stage, Philodemus might launch a counter-attack: 'So far',he might say, 'you have mentioned nothing but the thorns of anAthenian politician's life. What about the roses? Had their path been

all thorns, who would have aspired to political leadership at all?' Thisis true: there were roses. There was for example, ULT7UqLSv rrpvwiavEW,free meals in the Prytaneum, presumably a substantial economicbenefit as well as an honour; there was &-EAE~La,reedom from taxationand liturgies, of which the same could be said; there was rpoESpta,a front seat at the festivals; there were honorific ar-gpavoL, old wreathsor wreaths of olive or ivy, and there were occasionally in the 4th centurybronze statues. Less definably, political prominence brought ampleopportunities for self-enrichment in the form of 'presents' from self-interested well-wishers, or in the form of unofficial pay for the writing ofspeeches." In short, political prominence might bring real wealth andglory, neither to be despised; while for more altruistic and patrioticAthenians the deeper satisfaction of serving Athens would count formuch.28And although we may think that the rewards were not commen-surate with the penalties - crippling fines, exile, confiscation ofproperty, a possible death sentence - many talented Atheniansobviously did think that the game was worth the risks (among them,of course, Demosthenes himself, even if he did say what Plutarch makeshim say, in a moment of despair as he set out on his exile from hisbeloved city).Furthermore, Philodemus might challenge us to state the alternativesto Athenian democracy. Granted even that the demoswas everythingPlutarch thought, should it not be judged, not against ideal democracy,but against other polities of classical Greece? Which of them is tobe judged superior to Athenian democracy? It is tempting to guessthat it may have been pleasanter to live in 5th century Chios, to thecautious sobriety and prosperity of which Thucydides paid tribute(8.24.4), or in 4th century Rhodes or Byzantium. But we know littleenough about the internal affairs of these places. One thing howeveris well attested: the prevalence of stasis, of bitter faction and civilstrife in so many classical states - Corcyra in 427 (Thuc. 3.70-82),Megara in 424 (Thuc. 4.61-74), Corinth in 392 (Xen., Hell. 4.4.1-13)and in a multitude of other places on many occasions" (Thucydidesassures us in 3.82.1 of the near ubiquity of stasis in the Greek citiesduring the Peloponnesian War). Now from this stasis Athens, likeSparta, was for nearly all the classical period blessedly free. And ifa ferocious constitutional life, with penalties dealt out through legalinstitutions, was the price of not having the still more violent animositiesof bloodshed and civil war, we should be glad that Athens paid thatprice.



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148 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?Finally, Philodemus might demand to know what I mean when Iask whether the Athenian demos was so mischievous a beaste. Whoare the demos?Were the politicians themselves not included in it? Was

it not the politicians who took the lead in accusing each other in thelaw-courts, or, by ElcaayyEAla, in boule and Assembly? It must beadmitted that they did; they cannot be exempted from blame, if blameis to be administered, even if some of their activities stemmed fromfear, and from a desire to strike before they themselves were stricken.The politicians, in as much as they voted with the majority, weremembers of the demos. (Perhaps I should emphasize, to avoid mis-understanding, that I am using demos to mean the voting majorityof Athenian citizens on any occasion. It is true that ancient democraticapologists seem to have liked to consider that the demos comprisedall the citizens of a city (cf. Thuc. 6.39), and the regular introductoryformula of Athenian decrees, E'8OE T7 PfovA-Kat' T7 ?7jELp 'Resolutionof the Council and Demos' may have implied to a democrat thatthe citizens as a whole, meeting in the assembly, had approved theresolution in question; and according to the laws of a democracy (thenas now) what had been constitutionally decided by the majority wasregarded as legally binding upon the rest. However, in practical terms- and in moral ones - the decisions were decisions by the majorityof those present and voting (who might be only a minority of theadult male citizen population). Democracy was thus the rule of themajority (or of those who were conceived to be the majority) and thedemoswhich voted the decisions was the majority, not the whole people.On the other hand no assumptions are being made in this article aboutthe geographical and social composition of that majority; criticism putforward here of the demos's treatment of its politicians should not beautomatically translated into criticism of the lower classes, or the 'navalmob', or the urban inhabitants of Athens or Piraeus as opposed tothose who lived in the country.30 If the casualty rate was unfairly andunreasonably high, that is a criticism of how the Athenians - or rathera majority of them - tended to act en masse; it tells us about crowdvoting, not about any particular class of Athenian, because we hardlyever know the social and geographical composition of those voterswho happened to form the majority in any one vote on any oneoccasion.)So far, the remonstrances of Philodemus have had to be met witha number of concessions. But when all the concessions have been made,concessions which tone down the Plutarchan position from which westarted, I still believe that, without becoming utopian, we can andshould make substantial criticisms of the way in which Atheniandemocracy treated its politicians. A political casualty rate of over 50%



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 149is not to be brushed off lightly. The last part of this paper will bedevoted to pressing some of the criticisms.In his perceptive article The Athenian Demogogues,3' Sir MosesFinley wrote that if he had to choose one word which best characterizedthe condition of being a political leader in Athens, that word wouldbe 'tension'.32The Athenian leader had no respite, not simply becauseof the ever-present threat of politically inspired lawsuits but becausea leader had no official status and his standing depended on his per-formance week in week out in an Assembly the composition and viewsof which shifted from meeting to meeting; he might have personalcontacts and political friendships but there was no cushioning effectprovided by an organized political party which could be relied on tosupport a leader for a few weeks if he was off form. He could notplan in the long term with any confidence, unlike a modern primeminister, because there was no political machinery to allow him totranslate a majority in the boule or Assembly this prytany into onenext prytany. Even if a political leader happened, say, to be one ofthe ten generals, all that this would ensure him was priority of accessto boule and Assembly if a majority of the other nine generals agreed;33it did not give him any more power to secure votes; rather it laidhim open to attack for any military failures. Any sign of weaknesscould lead his opponents to attack him in the courts.34Some of this tension was probably, as Finley claims, inherent inthe system itself. Where there is direct democracy, there must be aprimary assembly of citizens, with full powers; where there is suchan Assembly, the membership from meeting to meeting will shift; thatwould make the whipping apparatusof a modern political party inoper-able: two more things making it inoperable were that most politicaloffices in ancient democracies were awarded by lot and that boule andAssembly, not magistrates, took the major political decisions: put thesetogether and we see that a party hierarchy (unlike modern ones) hadnothing worthwhile to offer, in return for loyalty: it could not usethe offer of positions of influence to bribe party members into support-ing it regularly, because no such positions were in its gift; nor couldit attract loyalty by publishing an attractive political manifesto, sinceit had no power to carry the manifesto through the Assembly, andif a majority of citizens wanted to pass certain measures, they coulddo so in the Assembly without joining a party. Formal and stablepolitical parties were therefore unworkable. In such circumstancespolitics were bound to be fluid and the tension great.However those specific tensions which arose from political trialsand ostracisms do not seem to me to have been necessary to the system.35The Athenians did not need to exile a man or confiscate his property



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150 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?or ostracize him in order to show that they disapproved of his policies;they did not even need to dismiss him from any office he might hold.All that they needed to do was to vote against him consistently inboule or Assembly and politically he was nothing, a man of straw.If so, to criticize the political casualty rate is to criticize not an essentialpart of the system, something which had to be accepted if directdemocracy, with its real advantages, was to work at all. It is tocriticize a pernicious and chronic excrescence.Those are strong words, and the cynic might ask whether the extratension may not have been a good thing, something which keptpoliticians up to the mark, even if the innocent suffered in the process.Members of universities in Britain in the 1980s, who may see littleto admire or trust in many of our own politicians, may feel that itis impossible to treat a politician with too much wariness and vigilance.But just because our own interests may drive us to this conclusion,it is all the more important to remain open to the conviction that toharry politicians with constant hazards is (like harrying academics withconstant hazards) a counter-productive policy. Admittedly general-ization is difficult when some people work better under the challengeof tension, others better under more relaxed conditions. But settinggeneral psychology aside, one can point to two specific kinds of politicalbehaviour, both detrimental to Athens and liable to appear in anypolitical society, which would be excessively stimulated by Athenianconditions: let me call them the Nicias tendency and the Theramenestendency.Nicias was naturally a cautious man, no doubt; and his caution gavehim consistent but modest success in the field in the 420s,36 andendeared him to the demos as a safe reliable man; he was one of thosein the sample of 41 who avoided any disgrace. Then came Syracuse,where Nicias was ruined by slowness and caution; he neither pressedon with the siege vigorously enough in 414,37 nor could he bringhimself to take and implement a decision to call off the expeditionin 413 until the Athenians were trapped in the Great Harbour anda secure escape impossible.38 It is true that no blame should beattached to Nicias personally; it is not for those of us who havenot had kidney diseases to say confidently that he ought to have beencapable of x or y; and in 413, he was in Sicily against his will, hisresignation having been refused by the Athenian Assembly (Thuc.7.15-16). But we can surely believe Thucydides when in 7.48 he reportsthat a major factor in Nicias's determination to hang on too long inSyracuse was his fear of Athenian rejection if he brought back thearmy unsuccessful:



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 151But in addressing the council he positively refused to withdraw the army; he knew,he said, that the Athenian people would not forgive their departure if they left withoutan order from home. The men upon whose votes their fate would depend would

not, like themselves, have seen with their own eyes the state of affairs; they wouldonly have heard the criticisms of others, and would be convinced by any accusationswhich a clever speaker might bring forward. Indeed many or most of the very soldierswho were now crying out that their case was desperate would raise the opposite crywhen they reached home, and would say that the generals were traitors, and hadbeen bribed to depart;and therefore he, knowing the tempers of the Athenians, wouldfor his own part rather take his chance and fall, if he must, alone by the hands ofthe enemy, than die unjustly on a dishonourable charge at the hands of the Athenians.39(Jowett's translation)And so he stayed, and his great army was destroyed, and the diceloaded against Athenian victory in the rest of the war. And parallelsless disastrous in their outcome are not wanting: Demosthenes thegeneral afraid to return to Athens after his defeat in Aetolia in 426(Thuc. 3.98); Conon afraid to return to Athens after Aegospotami(Diod. 13.106.6).40 So much for the Nicias tendency.As for Theramenes, I mean him to stand for the policy of quick-returns, of safety at all costs, but a safety secured not by Nicias' caution,but by quick-wittedness, which allows you to jump upon and eliminateyour opponent before he can jump upon and eliminate you. Thesequalities were no doubt less than the whole Theramenes: howeverambiguous and controversial his character, his friends can make outa case for him as a man with some principles, a serious interest ina mixed constitution and a sincere dislike of the extremer forms ofoligarchy.41 But not for nothing was he called the Slipper (6 K90opvoS,Xen. Hell. 2.3.31, 47),42 and his agility could be used ruthlessly tomake scapegoats of others: the man who prosecuted his erstwhile col-league Antiphon in 411 and had him condemned to death, the manwho in a tight situation so adroitly turned the tables on the generalsof Arginusae, so that they were presently condemned to death,43mayserve as an example of a tendency which was surely exacerbated bythe insecurity of Athenian political life. (Another example of thistendency may be Demosthenes' decision to prosecute Aeschines overthe Peace of Philocrates, as a way of severing his own connection withan unpopular peace.)Finally it is worth considering how many men of ability were deterredby the dangers from entering Athenian political life at all. It may seemparadoxical to talk of Athenian democracy as hindering participationwhen the Athenian constitution is justly celebrated as having en-couraged and elicited more popular participation than any other beforeor since. But I am not talking about that participation which involvedattending the Assembly regularly, sitting on juries, being a member



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152 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?of the boule in two years of one's life and thus, possibly, chairmanof the Assembly on two days of one's life.44 I mean participation asan aspiring political leader, an adviser, a drafter of decrees, a frequentspeaker in the Assembly or courts - in short a Tjrwp, 7TOALTEVodCLEvox.Of course in all societies there have been men of potential politicalability who have chosen not to enter politics. The same phenomenonat Athens need not call for a special explanation. Admittedly, too,it is hard to produce an impressive list of individuals who constituteda great loss to democratic politics: Plato (cf. Seventh Letter 324-5)?(Or was he too intellectually aristocratic to be useful in the politicsof any democracy?). Isocrates? (Would he have been capable of keepingspeeches in the Assembly both vigorous and to the point?). Antiphon,perhaps, of whose wisdom and ability Thucydides had a high opinion,but who chose not to speak in public (Thuc. 8.68)? Few democratswill find such a list seductive, but it is natural that a substantial listof 'deterred politicians' can hardly be constructed when our sourcesfor Greek history are primarily sources for political history. ProfessorW. R. Connor, in an interesting discussion,45 has been able to detecta preoccupation with the ideal of withdrawal from politics in someof the literature of the late fifth century. The question remains open.At any rate it can be said that Athenian politics was not wanting inhazards of a potentially deterring kind.

EnvoiSo to our last. Did the demos reat its politicians unfairly and unwisely?Reservations have been made and must be made: not all condemnationswere unjust; the political life had its compensations; Athenian demo-cracy was preferable to Corcyraean stasis. But in the end, if we areforced to stand with Plutarch or against him on this issue, we shouldhave no hesitation. Even if he said it for the wrong reason, Plutarchsaid the right thing: the demoswas indeed a most mischievous beaste.May Zeus preserve us from the like!

APPENDIX I

Ostracism46:did it conferdishonour?In the Table (above, pp. 141-2) ostracism was ranked as a politicalpenalty alongside such punishments for stated offences as fines, exiles,confiscations, and death sentences. Yet it could be argued that ostracism



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 153belongs in a separate political category: it did not follow a trial, or implya named offence; it did not harm either a man's citizenship or hisproperty; all it did was to remove his person physically from Attica47for a decade, with his rights uncompromised on return. Perhaps itshould be regarded not as a political punishment of any sort, but asanalogous rather to the modern process of excluding a political leaderfrom office - or even from Parliament - for, say, five years, by notre-electing him or her in a General Election?48The last analogy is at best a limited one, since in modern democraciespoliticians are not removed from their country when voted out of office;but it raises the substantial question whether ostracism was felt tobe a political disaster, a misfortune comparable to legal condemnation.If I seem to labour discussion of this below, it is because it has receivedalmost no space in modern treatments of ostracism, which have pre-ferred to concentrate on the problems of the origins and purposeof ostracism, and because I suspect that many of us work with thepresupposition that ostracism was 'an honourable banishment', aphraseperhaps more common in the lecture-room than in print, but in printin very reputable places nonetheless.49'Honourable banishment' is, on inspection, a curious oxymoron. Howcould any sort of banishment bring honour in any practical politicalsense? Probably those scholars who have used this or similar phraseshave done so as a convenient shorthand, meaning only that ostracismwas relatively honourable compared with other forms of banishment.But shorthand can mislead, and certainly the resonance of the phraseunderlay my own initial qualms about treating ostracism as a politicalpenalty on all fours with the rest. Furthermore, the possibility thatostracism did confer a sort of honour is raised by some passages ofPlutarch.Plutarch discusses the nature of ostracism, in very similar terms,in 4 passages (Themistocles22.3, Aristides7, Nicias 11,Alcibiades 13.3-5,henceforth A, B, C, D). In A and B he insists that ostracism wasnot a punishment for wickedness (Ko'AauLsA, ?poXlpl'as KdoAaLs B) buta concession to popular envy, -rapa?vO'a p9o'vov (cf. also rapa?uvLodV?'EvotrTO919dvovD), which channelled the jealousy of the people towards thegreat by allowing it to inflict the limited damage of a ten-year removal.In B, C, and D Plutarch discusses the ostracism of Hyperbolus, seeingthe institution as itself treated with contumely (Ka9vfLptaLuvovB, C) andtrampled upon (-po-ErAaKLUcazvovB) by its application to a man notworthy of the institution (rrpNglv9pwoTovvc6LOvC). In C and D Plutarchquotes in support three lines from Plato Comicusso (potentially valuablecontemporary evidence), and in C he applies the proverb 'Whenthere is civil dissension, even the utter villain obtains honour' ('Ev S8



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 155(presumably because it was of antiquarian interest only when they werewriting).Of the two orators in the corpus of the Ten who do mention it,one is the author of Andocides 4, Against Alcibiades.He treats ostracismas a punishment (tLEpwpl'a, 4) and a disaster (avtLapopJ, ), he uses thefact that two of Alcibiades' relatives had been ostracized as anargumentfor ostracizing Alcibiades as a man still more lawless than they(rrapavotx~'raroL though they were, 34), and he says that Cimon hadbeen ostracized for rrapavoti'a (his relationship with his sister, 33). Butthe value of this as evidence is severely undermined by the spurious53features of Andocides 4 which professes to be a speech delivered inadvance of an ostracism in spite of the fact that speeches were notpermitted at ostracisms (a fact which the author, absurdly, more orless admits, 3), and which attacks the legislator who introduced ostra-cism (ibid.), in a manner uncharacteristic of genuinely deliveredspeeches, which generally show great defence to Athenian laws andinstitutions. If the speech is a literary exercise, we have no guaranteethat it belongs early enough to be reliable as evidence of attitudesto ostracism.No such doubt attaches to the other oratorical passage, Lysias14.39-40. The speaker is attacking the younger Alcibiades by blacken-ing the character of his famous father:

So, if any of you pities those who died in the sea-battle, or feels shame on behalfof those who were enslaved by the enemy, or indignant because the walls have beendemolished, or hates the Spartans, or is angry with the Thirty, he should considerthe defendant's father responsible, and reflect that your ancestors twice ostracizedboth Alcibiades his great-grandfather and Megacles his father's maternal grandfather,and that the older ones among you condemned his father to death, so that you shouldconsider him to be the hereditary enemy (7raptLK1V XE9plv) of the city and shouldcondemn him, treating neither pity nor pardon nor any favour as more importantthan the laws laid down and the oaths which you have sworn.Here the speaker uses ostracism side by side with a death penaltyas something which should make the jury think ill of these men, andeven of their descendants. This is our best, but also our only, directevidence that ostracism brought discredit on the ostracized. Thereare however two further indirect pieces of evidence which seem tome extremely strong:(1) Ancient commentators - that is Aristotle (Politics 1284a, 1302b15-21), the author of the Aristotelian Ath. Pol. 22.3-4, 6, Androtion(F. Gr. Hist. 324F6), Philochorus (F. Gr. Hist. 328F30), Diodorus

11.55.1-3 (andso perhaps Ephorus), and Plutarch (Themistocles22.3,Aristides 7.2)- all believed that ostracism was a device to preventan overweening stateman from endangering the constitution and per-



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156 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?haps setting himself up as tyrant.54Now Thucydides encourages usto believe that this was the fifth-century view also, for at 8.73.3 hefinds it necessary to comment that Hyperbolus was ostracized o' SL&aSvvOdk4EwEaL LwdLaaOTOSpo'flov, 'not on account of fear of his powerand reputation', as if men were normally ostracized because their powerwas feared. But to seek to make oneself a tyrant was not an admirablething, in the eyes of respectable men, democrats or oligarchs alike.It seems to follow that ostracism would inflict a stigma.(2) Finally there is the evidence of the ostraca themselves. Admittedly,the vast majority of the ones discovered carry no more than the nameand patronymic or deme of the man whom the voter wished to ostracize.But when descriptive epithets are added, they are not complimentary,including such terms as 7rpo087lq (traitor), JAdELT'p(accursed),556 Mi~8os (the Mede), and perhaps in one instance a plea for r'LLS(vengeance).58 Admittedly again any picture of the evidence of theostraca has to remain provisional while the vast bulk of the 9,000 orso ostraca from the Kerameikos await final publication.57But as thingsstand, the evidence of extant ostraca and of the Lysias passage, togetherwith the implications of Thucydides, should convince us that ostracismhad dishonourable connotations and that it is fitly regardedas apoliticalpenalty along with sentences imposed by the courts or the assembly.

APPENDIX IIEvidencefor the Table on pp. 141-2

The principal sources for the penalties in the Table are recorded below.The numbers refer to those of the politicians in the Table. Fullerreferences may be found in Kirchner, op. cit.1. Hdt. 6.136, cf. Hansen Eisangelia 69.2. Ostracism, Hdt. 8.79, [Ar.,] Ath. Pol. 22.7, Plut., Arist. 7; areal fine may lie behind the not very plausible anecdote in Plut.,Arist. 4; exile after fine attested, doubtfully, only by Plutarch, Arist. 26(= Craterus F. Gr. Hist. 342 F 12).3. Ostracism, Thuc. 1.135, Plut., Them. 22; voluntary exile, Thuc.1.136, Plut., Them. 23-4, confirmed by sentence of exile Thuc. 1.138.6,Plato Gorgias 516D, schol. Aristoph. Knights 84, Nepos, Them. 8.2;confiscationPlut., Them. 25.3 (from Theopompus (F. Gr. Hist. 115 F86)and Theophrastus) with the notes ofF. J. Frost Plutarch's Themistocles:A Historical Commentary (Princeton, 1980), Aelian, V.H. 10.17(=Critias, Diels-Kranz F. d. Vorsokr. 88 B45), cf. Thuc. 1.137.3.Hansen, op. cit. 70, infers death sentence from Thuc. 1.138.6.



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 1574. Plut., Cimon 17.2, Per. 9.4.5. Ostracism,Plut., Per. 14.2, 16.3, Anon. Vita Thuc.7; ?fine c. 443,Anon., Vita Thuc. 7, also schol. Aristoph. Wasps 947 if sequence

correct; fine or more serious penalty c. 425, Aristoph. Acharn. 703(esp. foAaE'uaL, 704) with schol., cf. Wasps 947 with schol.:? exile andconfiscation schol. Aristoph. Wasps 947 (= Idomeneus F. Gr. Hist.338 Fl) probably mistaken owing to confusion with Themistocles.6. Thuc. 2.65.3, Plato, Gorgias516A, Plut., Per. 32.2, 35.4, Diodorus12.45. cf. Hansen, op. cit. 71.8. Thuc. 5.26.5; Marcellinus, Vita Thuc. 23-6, 46. Hansen, op. cit.74, infers death sentence.9. Aristoph., Acharnians 6 with schol., cf. schol. Knights 226 andn. 22 below.12. Thuc. 8.73.3, with Andrewes' notes on dating, Plut., Nicias 11,Alcib. 13, Arist. 7, Theopompus F. Gr. Hist. 115 F96.13. Events of 415, Thuc. 6.61, Plut., Alcib. 22, Meiggs and Lewis,Greek Historical Inscriptions79, cf. Thuc. 8.81, 97, Plut., Alcib. 26-7;Hansen, op. cit. 76. Events of 407, Xen., Hell. 1.4.10-20, 5.16-17, Plut.,Alcib. 32-3, 36, Nepos, Alcib. 7, Justin 5.5.14. Thuc. 8.68.2, Lysias 12.67, [Plut.,] 10 orators833a, e-834b, andcf. n. 16 below. Hansen, op. cit. 113.15. Voluntaryexile, Thuc. 8.98; confiscation,Lysias 7.4; sentence ofdeath or exile extremely likely to have accompanied confiscation afterPeisander's flight to the enemy, cf. Lycurgus, Leocrates121 with A. G.Woodhead AJPh 75 (1954), 145.17. Lysias 30.10-13, 13.12, Xen., Hell. 1.7.35. Hansen, op. cit. 96.18. Xen., Hell. 2.3.15, 36; Ar., Rhet. 1.15.1375b 32.19. Voluntary exile in 415, Andoc. 1.71, 2.10; confirmed by vote ofassemblyc. 410 (occasion of Andoc. 2), Lysias 6.29; voluntary exile in392/1 Philochorus F. Gr. Hist. 328 F149, followed by sentences ofeither exile (loc. cit.) or death, Demosth. 19.276ff. at trial in absence,cf. [Plut.,] 10 Orators 835A; ? confiscationc. 415, Andoc. 1.144, 147with Davies, Athenian Propertied Families 31. Hansen, op. cit. 87.20. Aeschines 3.195 with schol. (fine of 1 drachma only!), [Ar.,]Ath. Pol. 40.2, with P. J. Rhodes's note, [Plut.,] 10 Orators 835 F.23. Xen., Anab. 5.3.7, 3.1.5; Paus. 5.6.4; Diog. Laert. 2.51.24. Voluntary exile, Hyperides, Euxenippus 1-2; Demosth. 50.48speaks as if exile had been confirmedby vote and refers to death sentenceas passed twice; for C.'s return and execution, see Lycurgus, Leocrates93. Hansen op. cit. 94.27. Isoc. 15.129, Dinarchus 1.14, Nepos, Tim. 3.5. Hansen op. cit.101.

28. Fine attested only in schol. to Aeschines 1.64, to which



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158 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?Hyperides, Euxenippus 28 is to be preferred if both refer to sametrial. The scholium to Aeschines is probably corrupt here if rrapavdwCovis intended (as normally) to apply to a conviction under ypap997rrapavdotwv, ince that charge would not have been appropriate to theoffence of embezzlement, and Aeschines 3.139, written after Aristo-phon's death, implies that he had never been convicted under ypaw(p?rrapavdwtwv,ace Hansen, op. cit. first below n. 11., p. 31.29. Exile, Plut., Moralia 605C;fine on failing to obtain fifth share ofvotes in prosecution Demosth. 24.7; further fine may lurk in theconfusingly reported legal decisions and payments in Demosth. 24.9ff.,11ff., 82ff., 115ff., 117.30. Demosth. 45.6, 59.4-8.33. Arrian, Anabasis 1.10.4-6 with A. B. Bosworth's notes ad loc.(Oxford, 1980), [Dem.,] Epistle 3.31, Justin 11.4.11 as against Din-archus 1.32. The assembly presumably voted to acquiesce in Chari-demus's extradition but did so under Macedonian pressure.34. Plut., Dem. 24, [Plut.,] 10 Orators 840C.36. Fine for not following up prosecution Aesch. 2.93 (cf. 3.51) withschol. (not denied by Demosth.); fine in Harpalus affair and resultingexile, Plut., Demosth.26, [Plut.,] 10 Orators846C; voluntaryexile underMacedonian pressure followed closely by Assembly passing sentenceof death, Plut., Demosth. 28 or exile, Nepos, Phocion 2.2, [Plut.,]10 Orators 846 E-F.37. Fine weakly attested only in Aelian, V.H. 13.24, but cf. [Plut.,]Moralia 842 A for different version of incident, and 842 F for statementthat Lycurgus was acquitted in all cases brought against him.38. Plut., Demosth. 28, Phoc. 26, [Plut.,] 10 Orators 849A-B, Sudas.v. Antipater b.39. Fine of 5 talents, [Demosth.] 25.67 and hypoth768.2, Dinarchus2.12-13; fine of 1,000 drachmae [Demosth.] 25 hypoth 768.2. Hansen,Apagoge (Odense, 1976), p. 141.

40. Dinarchus 2.15, 1.104, Plut., Phocion 26, Diodorus 18.18.Hansen, op. cit. first below n. 11, p. 41.41. Diodorus 18.65.4-67, Nepos, Phocion 3-4, Plut., Phocion 33-36.Voluntary exile followed by sentence of confiscation (Diod., Nepos)and either exile (Diodorus) or death (Nepos), followed by final deathsentence in tumultuous assembly (Diodorus, Nepos) including non-citizens (Plutarch).NOTES

1. I have benefited from the comments of colleagues and students in the universities ofGlasgow, Edinburgh, and St. Andrews, who heard in 1978 and 1980 the lecture from whichthis paper originated. I am particularly grateful to Professor D. M. MacDowell for subsequentencouragement and advice.



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 1592. (London, 1579). On North's and Amyot's translations of Plutarch see D. A. Russell,Plutarch (London, 1973), pp. 150ff.3. TrL9p' ato( XaAE7T&L)aTOLS~ L'PEL9 LS,yPLoLAaVKLaL'paKovrLKaL&1(qLq;4. i-o fl a, the speakers' platform.5. E ... E'iTyXavE 7rpoEtLJS r&Ka-aiv T-v 7TOAL-El'aV aKa, 9do'ol9 Kat 99d'voVS KaLt tafoA

iKaLdycwvas.North's translation does not bring out the full force of the manuscripts' reading dydjvas'contests', where Plutarch is no doubt thinking of political litigation. (North was translatingAmyot's French version of 1559 which has here 'les peines et travaux'.)6. Among other passages cf. Themistocles 18.3, 22.1, Aristides 7.1-2, 26.3, Cimon 15.1-2,Pericles 15, 33.5, 34.3, 37.2, Nicias 6.1-2, 22.2-3, Alcibiades 13.3, 35-6, 38.1-2. N.B. Hereand subsequently I cite subsections in Plutarch's Lives according to the Loeb, not the Teubner,edition.7. Classic sympathetic treatments are those of A. W. Gomme, History, N.S. 36 (1951), 12ff.,esp. 25ff. (=More Essays in Greek History and Literature, pp. 177ff., esp. pp. 189ff.) andA. H. M. Jones, Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1957), Ch. 3. W. G. Forrest, The Emergenceof Greek Democracy (London, 1966), Chs. 1 and 10, and G. E. M. de Ste Croix, The Originsof the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972) are conspicuously inclined to rebut criticisms ofAthenian democracy; cf. also J. T. Roberts, Accountability in Athenian Government(Wisconsin,1982) for a broadly sympathetic treatment of Athenian severity to officials. For a more criticalview v. M. H. Hansen, Eisangelia (Odense, 1975), esp. pp. 11, 58-65.8. A Historical Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford, 1944), i.59ff., henceforth referredto as H.C.T.9. Cf. Forrest, op. cit., pp. 12-16.10. YCS 24 (1975), Studies in the Greek Historians, 51-2.11. In this section I give only minimal references where the events are well attested. Fullerones may be found in I. Kirchner, ProsopographiaAttica (Berlin, 1901). In the case of propertiedindividuals see also J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families (Oxford, 1971). J. H. Hansenhas useful lists of cases (with citation of sources and discussion) of those accused by ypaTcp

7rapavdtowv n The Sovereignty of the People's Court in Athens in the Fourth Century B.C. andthe Public Action Against Unconstitutional Proposals (Odense, 1974), pp. 28-43, and of thoseaccused by ElaayyEAla in Eisangelia, pp. 69-120. Many cases including officials are studied alsoin Roberts, op. cit. supra, n. 7.12. Some trials there were (Lysias 25.25-6), and some of those who served in the armyunder the Four Hundred suffered partial d'Ir-lta (Andoc. 1.75-6, cf. Aristoph., Frogs 686-705).But such evidence as we have suggests limited and legal reprisals only. Cf. also n. 16.13. As renumbered in Bartoletti's Teubner edition (1959).14. He was fined only a drachma, according to schol. Aeschines 3.195.15. Philocrates was condemned to death in absentia, Aeschines 2.6, cf. Hansen, Eisangelia,p. 102; Timarchus was disfranchised, Demosth. 19.257, 284, Hypotheses to Aesch. 1 and2. For the fates of the other four, see Appendix 2.34, 36, 38, 40.16. Arguably Antiphon should be excluded from the six active in democratic politics,since he avoided speaking in public (Thuc. 8.68) and his principal attested political activitywas to scheme for democracy's overthrow, not to work with it. Moreover, he was condemnedunder the Five Thousand, not under full democracy (pace Thuc. 8.68.2, on which see Andrewes'note in H.C. T. The prescript of the document quoted in [Plutarch,] Lives of the Ten Orators833D-E shows, if genuine, that Antiphon was indicted before full democracy was restored;and the movements of Theramenes abroad (Diod. 13.47, 49, Xen., Hell. 1.1.12) would havemade it impossible for him to be an accuser at the trial (as he was, Lysias 12.67), had it beenpostponed until the first weeks of full democracy in summer 410 (cf. Hansen, Eisangelia,pp. 113-15). It is disputed how closely the regime of the Five Thousand resembled full democracy(see G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Historia 5 (1956), 1-23; contra P. J. Rhodes, JHS 92 (1972), 115-27,Andrewes H.C. T., v.323ff.). If Antiphon is excluded from our tally, the casualty rate amongactive politicians among the Ten Orators under the democracy becomes four out of five.17. Even for generals our information is severely limited. Hansen (op. cit., pp. 60ff.) hascalculated that we know of 160 generals covering some 300 of the 770 generalships of the period432-355; of the 160, 33 were impeached by eisangelia (and more may have fallen victim toother processes).



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160 'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'?18. For discussion of the terminology see Hansen, op. cit. first sup. n. 11. pp. 22ff., W. R.Connor, The New Politicians of Fifth Century Athens (Princeton, 1971), pp. 116ff.19. Only his generalship in 441/0 is undisputed. Sophocles' political life is discussed byH. D. Westlake, Hermes 84 (1956), 110ff., L. Woodbury, Phoenix 24 (1970), 209ff., M. H.

Jameson, Historia 20 (1971), 541ff., H. C. Avery, Historia 22 (1973), 510ff.20. Confiscation of property was normal for those sentenced to exile, according to Schol.Aristoph. Wasps 947; for its accompaniment to (at least some) death sentences see A. R. W.Harrison, The Law of Athens (Oxford, 1971), ii.178, n. 3.21. Among the 41, I have noticed it explicitly attested as a separate penalty only in 3 cases:Antiphon, [Plut.,] Ten Orators 834A; Aristogiton [Dem.] 25.42; Demades, Plut., Phocion 26.For the complexities of atimia see D. M. MacDowell, The Law in Classical Athens (London,1978), pp. 73-5, with further references.22. The scholiast ad loc. first glosses the incident as a fine of five talents, but his fullerexplanation, that Cleon was forced to disgorge a bribe, leaves it unclear whether any formalpenalty was in question. Some scholars have even argued that Aristophanes is alluding to ascene in a recently produced comedy, rather than to a real life political reverse suffered by Cleon(see most recently D. M. MacDowell, G & R 30 (1983), 145, n. 13).23. Well put by Hansen, Eisangelia, p. 65, on the number of generals found guilty inElaayyEAlaL.24. F. G. Hist. 338 F10 = Plut., Demosth. 15.3, cf. [Plut.,] Ten Orators840C. Pace Plutarch,the circumspection of both orators in 330 in referring to the case in 343 does not indicatethat the latter never came to trial: Aeschines preferred not to remind the jury that he had stoodtrial once for treasonable conduct; Demosthenes preferred not to remind them that he had failedto win that case against Aeschines.25. Thuc. 3.86, 88, 90, 99, 103, 115, 4.1, 3-5, 8, 13ff., 24-5, 46-8, 58-65, cf. H. D. Westlake,Historia 9 (1960), 385ff. (= Essays on the Greek Historians and GreekHistory (Manchester, 1969)pp. 101ff.). J. T. Roberts (op. cit. sup., n. 7), pp. 115-17, 127-8 argues that the generals mayhave been culpably responsible for their own delay in reaching Sicily, but even if this wereso (which is unclear), it would not have justified their conviction on the chargewhich Thucydidesgives.26. Cf. Gomme, H.C.T., iii.584-8, still the fairest analysis. For more sceptical treatmentsof Thucydides' objectivity on the Amphipolis episode see H. D. Westlake, Hermes 90(1962), 276ff. = Essays (op. cit. sup., n. 25), pp. 123ff., J. T. Roberts, op. cit., pp. 128ff.27. Cf. J. K. Davies, op. cit. sup., n. 11, pp. 133-5, 518-19, on the contrasting incomesof Demosthenes and Hyperides derived from these channels.28. Cf. the ideals of Pericles' Faneral Speech in Thuc. 2.35ff., esp. 40.2, and also 2.60.5-7.29. See on the whole subject A. W. Lintott, Violence, Civil Strife and Revolution in theClassical City (London, 1982).30. W. G. Forrest, op. cit. sup., n. 7, pp. 21-36 convincingly demonstrates the implausibilityof simple equations of the demos with any particular social or regional section of the citizenpopulation of Attica.31. Past and Present 21 (1962), 3-24 = Studies in Ancient Society (London, 1974), pp. 1-25.32. Op. cit. 15.33. On generals' rights of access to boule and Assembly see P. J. Rhodes, The AthenianBoule (Oxford, 1972), pp. 43-6.34. It is worth remembering that the cases resulting in the convictions in the Table werethe tip of the iceberg where our 41 politicians are concerned. Their arraignments were notconfined to cases in which they were condemned. An extreme case is that of Aristophon (n. 28),represented only by a debatable fine in the Table, but, according to Aeschines 3.195, prosecuted75 timesby ypaqg) rapavdo'lwvon average about once a year, since he lived to be 100, see Appendix2.28; though pace Aeschiries, it is to be suspected that Aristophon was boasting, and that someof the cases never came to court). Cf. also Lycurgus, prosecuted many times, though neverconvicted ([Plut.,] Ten Orators 842F). Cephalus, never prosecuted under ypal rr7apavdowv(Aeschines, loc. cit.) was clearly exceptional cf. Hansen, op. cit. first sup., n. 11, pp. 25-6.

35. Pace Finley, op. cit. 15.36. At Minoa in 427 (Thuc. 3.51); Tanagra 426 (3.91); in the Corinthiad and at Methonein 425 (4.42-5); Cythera 424 (4.53-6); Mende 423 (4.129-30).



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'SO MISCHIEVOUS A BEASTE'? 16137. Cf. esp. his failure to complete the wall of investment in time to stop Gylippus fromgetting in and checkmating it with the third cross-wall (Thuc. 7.1-6, cf. also 42).38. More specifically he acquiesced in it in time (Thuc. 7.50.3), though after prolongedresistance to it (7.48-9), but insisted on further (calamitous) delay after the eclipse of the moon

(7.50).39. Plutarch also, while regarding Nicias as cautious by nature (Nicias 2.3-4), saw his cautionas exacerbated by fear of the demos,ibid. 6.1-2, cf. also 4 (with quotations from comedy), 14.2-4,16.8, 21.4, 22.3, Comparisonof Nicias and Crassus5.2, Aristoph., Birds 640, Thuc. 5.16.1.40. Cf. Justin 5.6.10. Isocrates (5.62), less plausibly, attributes his failure to return to shame.41. Provided that one is prepared to take seriously Theramenes' professions at Xen., Hell.2.3.48, cf. 2.3.15-22, 35-49, [Ar.,] Ath. Pol. 28.5, 34.3 (with Rhodes's notes ad loc.); see AndrewesH.C. T., v.298-300 for the interesting suggestion that Thucydides' less favourable judgementat 8.89.2-3 did not represent his final opinion.42. Cf. for his agility Aristoph., Frogs 534-41, 967-70; see Lysias 12.62-78 for a more sinisterinterpretation of his cleverness.43. Xen., Hell. 1.7.4, 8, 2.3.32, 35, Diod. 13.101. Andrewes in Phoenix 28 (1974) arguespersuasively that he acted in part in self-defence in 406.44. The argument (for which see Rhodes ad loc.) that the language of Ath. Pol. 44.1, takenwith 44.3, shows that a man could

Knox, Demos and Politicians

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