Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/220

202 202. HISTORY OF GREECE they broka their covenant, mounted their horses, and deserted to the enemy, without any regard to their sureties, who were exposed by law to the same trial and the same penalties as would have overtaken the offenders themselves. This sudden flight, toge'iier with the news that a Brcotian force was assembled on the borders of Attica, exasperated still farther the frantic terror of the pub- lic mind. The senate at once took quiet measures for seizing and imprisoning all the remaining forty whose names had been de- nounced ; while by concert with the strategi, all the citizens were put under arms ; those who dwelt in the city, mustering in the market-place ; those in and near the long walls, in the Theseium ; those in Feiraeus, in the square called the Market-place of Hip- podamus. Even the horsemen of the city were convoked by sound of trumpet in the sacred precinct of the Anakeion. The senate itself remained all night in the acropolis, except the pry- tanes, or fifty senators of the presiding tribe, who passed the night in the public building called the Tholus. Every man in Athens felt the terrible sense of an internal conspiracy on the point of breaking out, perhaps along with an invasion of the foreigner, prevented only by the timely disclosure of Diokleides, who was hailed as the saviour of the city, and carried in proces- sion to dinner at the prytaneium. 1 Miserable as the condition of the city was generally, yet more miserable was that of the prisoners confined ; and worse, in every way, was still to be looked for, since the Athenians would know neither peace nor patience until they could reach, by some means or other, the names of the undisclosed conspirators. The female relatives and children of Andokides, and his companions, were by permission along with them in the prison, 2 aggravating by their tears and wailings the affliction of the scene, when Charmi- des, one of the parties confined, addressed himself to Andokides, as his cousin and friend, imploring him to make a voluntary dis- justicc in a Christian city, without a taint of democracy, and with profes sicnal lawyers and judges to guide the whole procedure secretly, as com- pared with a pagan city, ultra-democratical, where judicial procedure an well as decision was all oral, public, and multitudinous 1 Andokid. de Myst. sects. 41-46. 2 Andokid dc Myst scot. 48: compare Lysias, Orat. xiii, cont. Agorat sect. 42.