Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/316

 294 HISTORY OF GREECE. formal decrees for their expulsion, or for prohibiting their com ing.' The sons, even of such among the Thirty as did not return, were allowed to remain at Athens, and enjoy their rights of citizens, unmolested ; 2 a moderation rare in Grecian political warfare. The first public vote of the Athenians, after the conclusion of peace with Sparta and the return of the exiles, was to restore the former democracy purely and simply, to choose by lot the nine archons and the senate of Five Hundred, and to elect the gen- erals, all as before. It appears that this restoration of the pre- ceding constitution was partially opposed by a citizen named Phormisius, who, having served with Thrasybulus in Peiraeus, now moved that the political franchise should for the future be restricted to the possessors of land in Attica. His proposition was understood to be supported by the Lacedaemonians, and was recommended as calculated to make Athens march in better har- mony with them. It was presented as a compromise between oligarchy and democracy, excluding both the poorer freemen and those whose property lay either in movables or in land out of Attica ; so that the aggregate number of the disfranchised would have been five thousand persons. Since Athens now had lost her fleet and maritime empire, and since the importance of Peirasus was much curtailed not merely by these losses, but by demolition of its separate walls and of the long walls, Phormisius and others conceived the opportunity favorable for striking out the maritime and trading multitude from the roll of citizens. Many of these men must have been in easy and even opulent circumstances, but the bulk of them were poor ; and Phormisius had of course at his command the usual arguments, by which it is attempted to prove that poor men have no business with politi- cal judgment or action. But the proposition was rejected ; the orator Lysias being among its opponents, and composing a speech against it which was either spoken, or intended to be spoken, by some eminent citizen in the assembly. 3 Unfortunately, we have only a fragment of the speech remain- 1 Lysias, Or. xii, cont. Eratosth. s. 36. Dionys. Hal. Jud. de Lysia, c. 32, p. 526 ; Lysias, Orat. xxxiv, Bekk.
 * Dcmosth. adv. Boeotum de Dote Matern. c. 6, p. 1018.