Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/65

 MEASURES OF THE FOUR HUNDRED. 43 gogues, to be enabled to subvert the popular securities and get possession of the government. We need no better proof to teach us what was the real function and intrinsic necessity of these demagogues in the Athenian system, taking them as a class, and apart from the manner in which individuals among them may have performed their duty. They formed the vital movement of all that was tutelary and public-spirited in democracy. Ag- gressive in respect to official delinquents, they were defensive in respect to the public and the constitution. If that anti-popular force, which Antiphon found ready-made, had not been efficient, at a much earlier moment, in stifling the democracy, it was because there were demagogues to cry aloud, as well as assemblies to hear and sustain them. If Antiphon's conspiracy was successful, it was because he knew where to aim his blows, so as to strike down the real enemies of the oligarchy and the real defenders of the people. I here employ the term demagogues because it is that commonly used by those who denounce the class of men here under review : the proper neutral phrase, laying aside odious associations, would be to call them popular speakers, or oppo- sition speakers. But, by whatever name they may be called, it is impossible rightly to conceive their position in Athens, without looking at them in contrast and antithesis with those anti-popular forces against which they formed the indispensable barrier, and which come forth into such manifest and melancholy working under the organizing hands of Antiphon and Phrynichus. As soon as the Four Hundred found themselves formally in- stalled in the senate-house, they divided themselves by lot into separate prytanies, probably ten in number, consisting of forty members each, like the former senate of Five Hundred, in order that the distribution of the year to which the people were accus tomed might not be disturbed, and then solemnized their installation by prayer and sacrifice. They put to death some political enemies, though not many : they farther imprisoned and banished others, and made large changes in the administration of affairs, carrying everything with a strictness and rigor unknown under the old constitution. 1 It seems to have been proposed 1 Thucyd. viii, 70. I imagin } that this must be the meaning of the w ordi rd (5e d/Ma ive^tv Kara, Koarof ri/v 7r6Ati.