Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/226

 204 HISTORY OF GREECE. That proposition was shortly afterwards carried into effeo bj disposing the two urns for each tribe, and collecting the votev of the citizens individually. The condemnatory vote prevailed, and all the eight generals were thus found guilty ; whether by a large or a small majority we should have been glad to learn, but arc not told. The majority was composed mostly of those who acted under a feeling of genuine resentment against the generals, but in part also of the friends and partisans of Theramenes, 1 not in- considerable in number. The six generals then at Athens, Peri- kles (son of the great statesman of that name by Aspasia), Dio- medon, Erasinides, Thrasyllus, Lysias, and Aristokrates, were then delivered to the Eleven, and perished by the usual draught by oath either tendered or actually taken, to the decision of the prytanes, or presidents. These latter had to declare on which side the show of hands in the assembly preponderated : bat there surely must have been some power of calling in question their decision, if they declared falsely, or if they put the question in a treacherous, perplexing, or obscure manner. The Athenian assembly did not admit of an appeal to a division, like the Spartan assem- bly or like the English House of Commons ; though there were many cases in which the votes at Athens were taken by pebbles in an urn, and not by show of hands. Now it seems to me that Menekles here exercised the privilege of calling in question the decision of the prytanes, and constraining them to take the vote over again. He may have alleged that they did not make it clearly understood which of the two propositions was to be put to the vote first ; that they put the proposition of Kallixenus first, without giving due notice ; or perhaps that they misreported the numbers. By what followed, we see that he had good grounds for his objection. 1 Diodor. xiii, 101. In regard to these two component elements of the majority, I doubt not that the statement of Diodorus is correct. But he represents, quite erroneously, that the generals were condemned by the vote of the assembly, and led off from the assembly to execution. The assembly only decreed that the subsequent urn-voting should take place, the result of which was necessarily uncertain beforehand. Accordingly, the speech which Diodoras represents Diomedon to have made in the assembly, after the Tote of the assembly had been declared, cannot be true history : "Athe- nians, I wish tLat the vote which you have just passed may prove benefi- cial to the city. Do you take care to fulfil those vows to Zens Soter, Apollo, and the Venerable Goddesses, under which we gained our victory since fortune has prevented us from fulfilling them ourselves." It is impos- sible that Diomedon can have made a speech of this nature, since he was not then a condemned man ; at I after the condemratory vote, no assemblj was