Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/381

363 FKEPARAT1ONS AGAINST ATHENS. 363 While Athens was thus struggling to make head against her misfortunes, all the rest of Greece was full of excitement and aggressive scheming against her. So vast an event as the destruction of this great armament had never happened since the expedition of Xerxes against Greece. It not only roused the most distant cities of the Grecian world, but also the Persian satraps and the court of Susa. It stimulated the enemies of Athens to redoubled activity; it emboldened her subject-allies to revolt ; it pushed the neutral states, who all feared what she would have done if successful against Syracuse, now to declare war against her, and put the finishing stroke to her power as well as to her ambition. All of them, enemies, subjects, and neutrals, alike believed that the doom of Athens was sealed, and 1}p6fiov?i,oi. It is, indeed, conceivable that persons Su denominated might bo invested with such a control ; but we cannot infer it, or affirm it, simply from the name. Nor will the passages in Aristotle's Politics, wherein the word lipopcvhoi occurs, authorize any inference with respect to this Board in the special case of Athens (Aristotcl. Politic, iv, 11, 9; iv, 12, 8; vi. 5, 10-1.3). Tho Board only seems to have lasted for a short time at Athens, being named for a temporary purpose, at a moment of peculiar pressure and dis- couragement. During such a state of feeling, there was little necessity for throwing additional obstacles in the way of new propositions to be made to the people. It was rather of importance to encourage the suggestion of new measures, from men of sense and experience. A Board destined merely for control and hindrance, would have been mischievous instead of useful under the reigning melancholy at Athens. The Board was doubtless merged in the Oligarchy of Four Hundred, like all the other magistracies of the state, and was not reconstituted after their deposition. I cannot think it admissible to draw inferences as to the functions of this Board of Probuli now constituted, from the proceedings of the Probulus in Aristophanis Lysistrata, as is done by Wachsmuth (Hellenische Alterthum- skunde, i, 2, p. 198), and by Wattenbach (De Quadringentorum Athenis Factione, pp. 17-21, Berlin 1042). Schomann (Ant. Jur. Pub. Graecor. v, xii, p. 181) says of these TIpopovAoi " Videtur autcm eorum potestas fere annua fuisse." I do not distinctly understand what !ie means by these words ; whether he means that the Board continued permanent, but that the members were annually changed If this be his meaning, I dissent from it. I think that the Beard lasted until the time of the Four Hundred, which would be about a rear and a hs.!f after its first institution