Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/83

 OLIGARCHY AND DEMOCRACY. 6i leader of this minority, a man of keen ambition, cle rev but unsteady and treacherous, not less ready to desert his party than to betray his country, though less prepared for extreme atrocities than many of his oligarchical comrades, began to look out for a ^ood pretence to disconnect himself from a precarious enterprise Taking advantage of the delusion which the Four Hundred had themselves held out about the fictitious Five Thousand, he insisted that, since the dangers that beset the newly-formed authority v:re so much more formidable than had been anticipated, it was necessary to popularize the party by enrolling and producing these Five Thousand as a real instead of a fictitious body. 1 Such an opposition, formidable from the very outset, became still bolder and more developed when the envoys returned from Samos, with an account of their reception by the armament, as well as of the answer, delivered in the name of the armament, whereby Alkibi- ades directed the Four Hundred to dissolve themselves forthwith, but at the same time approved of the constitution of the Five Thou- sand, coupled with the restoration of the old senate. To enroll the Five Thousand at once, would be meeting the army half way ; and there were hopes that, at that price, a compromise and recon- ciliation might be effected, of which Alkibiades had himself spoken as practicable.' 3 In addition to the formal answer, the envoys Compare Plutarch, Lysander, c. 23. Ilaack and Poppo think that bpoiuv cannot be masculine, because u r ti rCiv oftoiuv t?.affom' / uTOf would not then be correct, but ought to be v^d TUV 6fj.oiuv Aaacroi'//ej'Of. I should dispute, under all circumstances, the correctness of this criticism : for there are quite enough parallel cases to defend the use of a-t) here, (sec Thucyd. i, 17 ; iii, 82 ; iv, 115 ; vi, 28, etc.) But we need not enter into the debate ; for the genitive TL>V 6p.oluv depends rather upon -u uxofiaivavTa which precedes, than upon ilacaovftevoc which follows ; and the preposition u-d is what we should naturally expect. To mark this, I have put a comma after uiropaivovTa as well as after (uoiuv. To show that an opinion is not correct, indeed, does not afford certain evidence that Thucydides may not have advanced it : for he might be mis- taken. But it ought to count as good presumptive evidence, unless the words peremptorily biiivl us to the contrary, which in this case they do not 1 Thucyd. viii, 86, 2. Of this sentence, from fyoftoi-pn'oi down to Kadta- ruvat, I only profess to understand the last clause. It is useless to discuss the many conjectural amendments of a corrupt text, none of them satisfactory. many years afterwards before the people of Athens, l)c Rcditu sno, secta
 * Thucyd. viii, 86-89. It is alleged by Andokides (in an oration delivered