Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/266

 244 HISTORY OF GREECE. The circumstances accompanying the seizure of Leon deserve particular notice. In putting to death him and the other victims, the Thirty had several objects in view, all tending to the stability of their dominion. First, they thus got rid of citizens generally known and esteemed, whose abhorrence they knew themselves to deserve, and whom they feared as likely to head the public senti- ment against them. Secondly, the property of these victims, all of whom were rich, was seized along with their persons, and was employed to pay the satellites whose agency was indispensable for such violences, especially Kallibius and the Lacedaemonian hoplkes in the acropolis. But, besides murder and spoliation, the Thirty had a farther purpose, if possible, yet more nefarious. In the work of seizing their victims, they not only employed the hands of these paid satellites, but also sent along with them citizens of station and respectability, whom they constrained by threats and intimidation to lend their personal aid in a service so thoroughly odious. By such participation, these citizens became compromised and imbrued in crime, and as it were, consenting par- ties in the public eye to all the projects of the Thirty ; * exposed to the same general hatred as the latter, and interested for their own safety in maintaining the existing dominion. Pursuant to their general plan of implicating unwilling citizens in their mis- deeds, the Thirty sent for five citizens to the tholus, or govern- ment-house, and ordered them, with terrible menaces, to cross over to Salamis and bring back Leon as prisoner. Four out of the five obeyed ; the fifth was the philosopher Sokrates, who refused all concurrence and returned to his own house, while the other four 1 Plato, Apol. Sokrates, c. 20, p. 32. 'EireiSr) 6e b'Xiyapx'ia syevETO, oi rpiaKovra av f^ETarrefii^u/^evoi (is irifiTcrov avrbv elg TTJV $6?iov Trpoaera^av ayayelv EK SaAa/uvof Aeovra rbv SaTidfiiviov, Iv 1 inrodavoi- ola 61) ical U%.7iO If k K ELV I TTOylAOtf TTpOffETaTTOV, /3ovA6/iV.O U( JT^eiorovf uva.Tr'kfi a a i alriuv. Isokrat. cont. Kallimach. Or. xviii, sect. 23, p. 374. evlotf /cat TrpoaerarToi- t^afiaprdveiv. Compare also Lysias, Or. xii, cont. Eratosth. sect. 32. We learn, from Andokides de Myster. sect. 94, that Mcletus was one of the parties who actually arrested Leon, and brought him up for condemns tion. It is not probable that this was the same person who afterwards accused Sokrates. It may possibly have been his father, who bor<5 the sam< name ; but there is nothing to determine the point.