History of Greece (Volume 9)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859 edition. Excerpt: ...at least as sanguinary, rapacious, and full of antipathies, as Kritias. As at Athens, so elsewhere; the dekarchs would begin by putting to death notorious political opponents, under the name of the wicked men they would next proceed to deal in the same manner with men of known probity and courage, likely to take a lead in resisting oppression Their career of blood would continue, --in spite of remonstrances from more moderate persons among their own num. OPPRESSIONS OF THE TEN. 187 ber, like Theramenes, --until they contrived some stratagem for disarmiifg the citizens, which would enable them to gratify both their antipathies and their rapacity by victims still more numerous, --many of such victims being wealthy men, selected for purposes of pure spoliation.1 They would next despatch by force any obtrusive monitor from their own number, like Theramenes; probably with far less ceremony than accompanied the perpetration of this crime at Athens, where we may trace the effect of those judicial forms and habits to which the Athenian public had been habituated, --overruled indeed, yet still not forgotten. There would hardly remain any fresh enormity still to commit, over and above the multiplied executions, except to banish from the city all but their own immediate partisans, and to reward these latter with choice estates confiscated from the victims.2 If called upon to excuse such tyranny, the leader of a dekarchy would have sufficient invention to employ the plea of Kritias, --that all changes of government were unavoidably death-dealing, and that nothing less than such stringent measures would suflice to maintain his city in suitable dependence upon Sparta.3 Of course, it is not my purpose to affirm that in any other city, precisely the same...