Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/254

 232 HISTORY OF GREECE tend against the fiat of their conquerors. If some high-spirited men formed an exception to the pervading depression, and still kept up their courage against better days, there was at the same time a party of totally opposite character, to wh(m the prostrate condition of Athens was a source of revenge for the past, exul- tation for the present, and ambitious projects for the future. These were partly the remnant of that faction which had set up, ^even years before, the oligarchy of Four Hundred, and still jtiore, the exiles, including several members of the Four Hundred,' who now flocked in from all quarters. Many of them had been long serving at Dekeleia, and had formed a part of the force blockading Athens. These exiles now revisited the acropolis as conquerors, and saw with delight the full accomplishment of that foreign occupation at which many of them had aimed seven years before, when they constructed the fortress of Ecteioneia, as a means of insuring their own power. Though the conditions im- posed extinguished at once the imperial character, the maritime power, the honor, and the independence of Athens, these men were as eager as Lysander to carry them all into execution ; because the continuance of the Athenian democracy was now entirely at his mercy, and because his establishment of oligarchies in the other subdued cities plainly intimated what he would do in this great focus of Grecian democratical impulse. Among these exiles were comprised Aristodemus and Aristo- teles, both seemingly persons of importance, the former having at one time been one of the Hellenotamise, the first financial office of the imperial democracy, and the latter an active member of the Four Hundred ; 9 also Charikles, who had been so distinguished for his violence in the investigation respecting the Hennas, and another man, of whom we now for the first time obtain historical 1 Lysias, Or. xiii, cont. Agorat. s. 80. 8 Xenoph. Hellen. ii, 2, 18 ; ii, 3, 46 ; Plutarch, Vit. x, Orator. Vit. Lycurg iuit. M. E. Meier, in his Commentary on Lykurgus, cc nstraes this passage of Plutarch differently, so that the person therein specified as exile would be, not Aristodemus, but the grandfather of Lykurgus. But I do not think this construction justified : see Meier, Comm. de Lykurg. Vit&, p. iv, (Hall 1847). Respecting Charikles, see Isokrates, Orat. xvi, De BigLv 9 52.