Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/53

 SYSTEMATIC ASSASSINATIONS. 3 ate and the public assembly to go on meeting and debating a* usual ; but his partisans, neither the names nor the numbers of whom were publicly known, received from him instructions both when to speak and what language to hold. The great topic upon which they descanted, was the costliness of democratical institu- tions in the present distressed state of the finances, the heavy tax imposed upon the state by paying the senators, the dikasts, the ekklesiasts, or citizens who attended the public assembly, etc. The state could now afford to pay only those soldiers who fought in its defence, nor ought any one else to touch the public money. It was essential, they insisted, to exclude from the political fran- chise all except a select body of Five Thousand, composed of those who were best able to do service to the city by person and by purse. The extensive disfranchisement involved in this last proposi- tion was quite sufficiently shocking to the ears of an Athenian assembly. But in reality the proposition was itself a juggle, never intended to become reality, and representing something far short of what Antiphon and his partisans intended. Their design was to appropriate the powers of government to them- selves simply, without control or partnership, leaving this body of Five Thousand not merely unconvened, but non-existent, as a mere empty name to impose upon the citizens generally. Of this real intention, however, not a word was as yet spoken. The pro- jected body of Five Thousand was the theme preached upon by all the party orators ; yet without submitting any substantive motion for the change, which could not be yet done without illegality. Even thus indirectly advocated, the project of cutting down the franchise to Five Thousand, and of suppressing all the paid civil functions, was a change sufficiently violent to call forth abundant opponents. For such opponents Antiphon was fully prepared. Of the men who thus stood forward in opposition, either all, or at least all the most prominent, were successively taken off by private assassination. The first of them who thus perished was Androkles, distinguished as a demagogue, or popular speaker, and marked out to vengeance not only by that circum- stance, but by the farther fact that he had been among the most vehement accusers of Alkibiades before his exile. For at this