Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/207

 DEFENCE OF TIIE GENERALS. 133 were excessively indignant against Theramenes ; who, howtver, defended himself effectively and completely, throwing the blame back upon the generals. He was thus forced, against his own will, and in self-defence, to become the accuser of the generals, carrying with him his numerous friends and partisans at Athens. And thus the generals, by trying to ruin Theramenes, finally brought condemnation upon themselves. 1 Such is the narrative of Diodorus, in which it is implied that the generals never really gave any special orders to Theramenes and Thrasybulus, but falsely asserted afterwards that they had done so, in order to discredit the accusation of TheramenGs against themselves. To a certain extent, this coincides with what was asserted by Theramenes himself, two years afterwards, in his defence before the Thirty, that he was not the first to accuse the generals ; they were the first to accuse him ; affirming that they had ordered him to undertake the duty, and that there was no sufficient reason to hinder him from performing it; they were the persons who distinctly pronounced the performance of the duty to be possible, while he had said, from the beginning, that the violence of the storm was such as even to forbid any move- ment in the water ; much more, to prevent rescue of the drown- ing men. 2 Taking the accounts of Xenophon and Diodorus together, in combination with the subsequent accusation and defence of The- ramenes at the time of the Thirty, and blending them so as to reject as little as possible of either, I think it probable that the order for picking up the exposed men was really given by the generals to Theramenes, Thrasybulus, and other trierarchs ; but 1 Diodor. xiii, 100, 101. discussions at Athens on the conduct of the generals, that which he hero asserts himself to have said, namely, that the violence of the storm ren- dered it impossible for any one to put to sea, his accusation against the generals must have been grounded upon alleging that they might have performed the duty at an earlier moment ; before they came back from the battle; before the storm arose ; before they gave the order to him. But I think it most probable that he misrepresented at the later period what he had said at the earlier, and that he did not, during the actual discussion* admit the sufficiency of the storm as fact ai i justification.
 * Xenoph. Ilellcn. ii, 3, 35. If Theramenes really did say, in the actual