The main reason that the oligarchs were able to effect a change of constitution in Athens was that so many citizens were with the fleet in Samos. Trireme captains may have preferred an oligarchy, but rank-and-file oarsmen, when citizens, were drawn mostly from the poorest social class, the thetes, and remained staunch democrats. An alternative ecclesia was established on the island.
The oligarchs in Athens put out peace feelers to Sparta, which rejected them. When they started work on building a fortress at the entrance to Piraeus’s main harbor, people immediately feared that they were planning to let in a Peloponnesian fleet to end the war. Opposition grew and a leading oligarch was struck down by foreign assassins in the agora. Crowds demolished the fort and an ad hoc assembly was held on a steep hill at Piraeus. Ironically, a commander named Aristocrates was the first to arrest a senior oligarch.
In the outside world, matters went from bad to worse. An enemy fleet was sighted off Salamis, the important island of Euboea on Athens’s doorstep rebelled, and a small home squadron of thirty-six triremes was trounced by the Spartans, a rare victory for landlubbers. Most of the Four Hundred lost sympathy with their radical leaders and hated the situation in which they found themselves. The fleet at Samos insisted that they be abolished.
In September a general assembly met on the Pnyx and dissolved the Four Hundred only four months after they took power. Just as Theramenes wished, they were replaced by a sovereign body, not of every citizen, but of all adult males who could afford to buy their own armor. In effect, this new governing ecclesia was equivalent to the phantom assembly of Five Thousand, which was now at last brought into being.
The new system was a great success, enabling Athens to restore not only effective government but also her fortunes in the war. A year later and without one drop of blood being shed, the full democracy was reinstated and its first known document begins with the customary formula—“enacted by the boulē and the demos.” Everything returned to the status quo ante (including the reinstatement of payment for public service). Thucydides wrote that
during the first period of this new dispensation, the Athenians appear to have enjoyed the best government that they ever did, at least in my time. There was a reasonable and moderate blending of the few and the many, and this was what enabled the city to recover from her manifold disasters.
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The traitor was back. One of the most controversial decisions that the alternative ecclesia on Samos took was to depose all the generals elected in Athens and replace them with their own choices.
These included Alcibiades, who they believed would help Athens win the war. The new assembly of the Five Thousand confirmed the vote. This was not to say that all was forgotten and forgiven. Alcibiades had many enemies who feared he aimed at installing a tyranny, but for the time being they had no choice but to keep quiet.
Age and the vicissitudes of his career had improved Alcibiades, who was now in his late thirties. He had grown into a tougher and more mature leader and had put behind him his weakness for easy triumphs and clever tricks. He knew too that this was his last throw of the dice; if it failed, his political career and probably his life would be over.
As adviser to Tissaphernes he had recommended an evenhanded approach to the two belligerents. This had the advantage from the Persian point of view of wearing them both down. While not altogether trusting Alcibiades (who would?), the satrap agreed. He reduced the subsidy on which the Peloponnesian fleet depended and made sure that a promised reinforcement, the Phoenician fleet, never arrived. But he did not agree to a rapprochement with Athens.
Meanwhile Alcibiades had opened negotiations with the fleet at Samos, promising to bring Tissaphernes over to their side. He had first been in touch with the oligarchs, but soon switched his attention to the democrats. An influential, intelligent, and independent-minded sailors’ leader, Thrasybulus, argued for his recall.
The satrap learned of this confidential initiative and began to distance himself from his adviser. It was about this time that a revised entente between Sparta and Persia was agreed.
Thrasybulus persuaded the assembled troops and crews on Samos to recall Alcibiades and grant him immunity from prosecution. He collected the former renegade from the mainland and brought him to Samos. It soon became clear that Alcibiades had lost his credit with Tissaphernes, but his energetic leadership and skill at raising funds to pay the men canceled that disappointment.
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The Athenians now hit a winning streak.
Tired of Tissaphernes and his half-fulfilled promises, the Peloponnesians sailed northwards to the Hellespont and opened a new theater of war. Here lay the satrapy of the more straightforward Pharnabazus, with whom they were soon on good terms and who took over as Sparta’s Persian best friend. Fearful for their grain supply, the Athenians had no choice but to follow suit, led by Thrasybulus and another admiral.
The tumultuous year of 411 concluded in the autumn with two striking Athenian victories in the Hellespont. Then, as we have seen, came the crowning mercy of Cyzicus in the following spring. The three Athenian commanders were Thrasybulus, Theramenes, and Alcibiades, the last of whom deserved much of the credit for the victory. The only disappointments were the loss of Nisaea, the port of Megara, and Sparta’s capture that winter of Pylos, the rock fortress on the Messenian coast that Athens had taken as long ago as the year 425.
To everyone’s surprise the Athenians now found themselves in a very strong position.
They saw to their relief that they were still a great power and a new self-belief spread through the fleet. They exaggerated. The recovery was hugely to their credit, but Athens was no longer the city of Pericles. Its reserves both of precious metals and of human capital were nearly exhausted, and so was its resilience. It could not go on indefinitely producing new fleet after new fleet. It would have been wise to accept offers of peace from a disheartened Sparta and taken a few years to recuperate. But the old Attic arrogance was as fierce as it had ever been. The demos wanted total victory, and it wanted it now.
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When the distinguished Spartan Endius headed his delegation to Athens and offered peace to the ecclesia, he must have anticipated a warmer welcome from a war-weary people than he received in the event. The restored democracy had lost little of its traditional aggression. The most prominent popular leader of his day, Cleophon, stressed the magnitude of the city’s recent successes. “I will use a dagger to cut the throat of anyone who proposes making peace,” he is reported to have threatened.
His critics lampooned him as a depraved drunk of low birth, but his father had been an elected strategos, so he must surely have come from an affluent and respectable family. The demos agreed with Cleophon, and Endius was sent on his way. With Alcibiades at the helm all would yet be well.
It is evidence of Cleophon’s confidence in the future that he resumed construction of the Erechtheum, the elaborate little temple complex with female caryatids on the Acropolis, which had been abandoned during the Sicilian Expedition in order to save money. Although this was a comparatively small project he was following in the footsteps of the great Pericles. A new temple on the sacred hill was bound to boost public morale. Also, in honor of Cyzicus, a parapet was built for the tiny temple of Athena Nike.
And for a time all did go well. The Athenians never retrieved Chios and Euboea, but the island of Thasos off the Thracian coast was lost and regained. Variably neutral during the war although a league member, Rhodes finally went its own independent way. With these exceptions, the empire held together, more or less.