Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/400

 378 HISTORY OF GREECE. until they acquired power to violate it with effect. They soon got themselves placed in the chief commands of state, and found means to turn the military force to their own purposes. A re- view and examination of arms, of the hoplites in the city, hav- ing been ordered, the Megarian lochi were so marshalled and tutored as to enable the leaders to single out such victims as they thought expedient. They seized many of their most obnox- ious enemies, some of them suspected as accomplices in the recent conspiracy with Athens: the men thus seized were subjected to the forms of a public trial, before that which was called a public assembly ; wherein each voter, acting under mil- itary terror, was constrained to give his suffrage openly. All were condemned to death and executed, to the number of one hundred. 1 The constitution of Megara was then shaped into an oligarchy of 'the closest possible kind, a few of the most violent men taking complete possession of the government. But they must probably have conducted it with vigor and prudence for their own purposes, since Thucydides remarks that it was rare to see a revolution accomplished by so small a party, and yet so durable. How long it lasted, he does not mention. A few months after these incidents, the Megarians regained possession of their Long Walls, by capture from the Athenians, 2 to whom indeed they could have been of no material service, and levelled the whole line of them to the ground : but the Athenians still retained Nisoea. We may remark, as explaining in part the durability of this new government, that the truce concluded at the beginning of the ensuing year must have greatly lightened the difficulties of any government, whether oligarchical or democratical, in Megara. The scheme for surprising Megara had been both laid and executed with skill, and only miscarried through an accident to which such schemes are always liable, as well as by the unex- pected celerity of Brasidas. It bad, moreover, succeeded so far 1 Thucyd. iv, 74. ol de eirei^r) iv ralf apxalf iyevovro, KO.I e&raaiv oxXui diaar^aavref roiif Ao^ewf, i^eTie^avro TUV re ix&puv nai ol iaTa fiY/irpdjai ra Trpbf roix; 'AiS^vatouf, uvdpaf uf knarov K.a.1 TOVTUV nepi uvay KuaavTEf rbv dfiftov iftTJ^ov Qavepav 61- iveyicelv, <5f Kareyvucr&>>oav, eKreivav, nal if oA.t,ya%ia.v TO, fiuT^iara tareaTijaav TTJV nofav. /cat xfalaTov 6rj xpovov avrrj i>n" ^Aa^faruv ywop vvuivev. * Thucyd. iv, 109.