Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/204

 (2 HISTORY CF GREECE and of Samos, no other Grecian city offered any resistance to Lysander after the battle of JEgospotami ; which in fact not only took away from Athens her whole naval force, but transfer- red it all over to him, and rendered him admiral of a larger Grecian fleet than had ever been seen together since the battle of Salamis. I have recounted in my sixty-fifth chapter, the sixteen months of bitter suffering undergone by Athens immediately after her surrender. The loss of her fleet and power was aggravated by an extremity of internal oppression. Her oligarchical party and her exiles, returning after having served with the enemy against her, extorted from the public assembly, under the dictation of Ly- sander who attended it in person, the appointment of an omnipotent council of thirty for the ostensible purpose of framing a new consti- tution. These thirty rulers, among whom Kritias was the most violent, and Theramenes (seemingly) the most moderate, or at least the soonest satiated, perpetrated cruelty and spoliation on the largest scale, being protected against all resistance by a Lace- daemonian harmost and garrison established hi the acropolis. Be- sides numbers of citizens put to death, so many others were driven into exile with the loss of their property, that Thebes and the neighboring cities became crowded with them. After about eight months of unopposed tyranny, the Thirty found themselves for the first time attacked by Thrasybulus at the head of a small party of these exiles coming out of Boaotia, His bravery and good con- duct, combined with the enormities of the Thirty, which became continually more nefarious, and to which even numerous oligarchi- cal citizens, as well as Theramenes himself, successively became victims, enabled him soon to strengthen himself, to seize the Peiraeus, and to carry on a civil war which ultimately put down the tyrants. These latter were obliged to invoke the aid of a new Lacedae- monian force. And had that force still continued at the disposal of Lysander, all resistance on the part of Athens would have been unavailing. But fortunately for the Athenians, the last few months had wrought material change in the dispositions both of the allies of Sparta and of many among her leading men. The allies, es- pecially Thebes and Corinth, not only relented in their hatred and fear of Athens, now that she had lost her power, but even synv