Upon this there was a great deliberation between the Spartans and their allies: when very many declared that this most turbulent city should be razed to the ground and this most hostile people abolished along with its very name,
1 magna hinc inter Spartanos et socios deliberatio fuit: cum plurimi inquietissimam ciuitatem sternendam solo populumque infestissimum cum ipso nomine abolendum pronuntiarent,
the Spartans said that they would not allow one of the two eyes of Greece to be torn out; and they even promised peace, on condition that the fortifications running from the harbour of the Piraeus to the city were demolished, that the Athenians voluntarily surrendered their remaining ships, and that they then accepted thirty chosen rulers over them.
2 Spartani negauerunt se permissuros uti e duobus Graeciae oculis unus erueretur; insuper etiam pacem promiserunt, si Piraei portus ducentia in urbem munimina uerterentur nauesque reliquas ultro traderent, deinde rectores sibi triginta lectos susciperent.
When they had submitted and given in to this condition, the Lacedaemonians appointed Lysander to draw up laws of obedience in the city.
3 huic condicioni addictis et succumbentibus Lacedaemonii Lysandrum ad conponendas in urbe parendi leges constituerunt.
This year was notable for the capture of Athens, the death of Darius king of the Persians, and the exile of Dionysius tyrant of Sicily.
4 insignis hic annus et expugnatione Athenarum et morte Darii Persarum regis et exilio Dionysii Siciliae tyranni fuit.
So the thirty rulers appointed for the Athenians emerged as thirty tyrants. First they surrounded themselves with three thousand attendants, and soon they also set seven hundred soldiers of the victorious army about their persons.
5 Igitur triginta rectores Atheniensibus ordinati triginta tyranni exoriuntur: qui primo se tribus milibus satellitum stipant, mox etiam septingentos milites uictoris exercitus lateribus suis circumponunt.
They inaugurated the slaughter that was to fall on all, far and wide, by killing Alcibiades, who, as he fled, was shut in a bedchamber on his journey and burned alive.
6 caedem omnium passim futuram occiso Alcibiade auspicantur, qui fugiens, in itinere clausus cubiculo, uiuus incensus est.
With him killed, as though the avenger had been removed, they drained the wretched remnants of the city in security with murders and plunder. Theramenes, too, one of their own number, whom they perceived to be displeased with these things, they put to death as an example and a terror to the rest.
7 quo interfecto quasi sublato ultore securi miseras urbis reliquias caedibus rapinisque exhauriunt. Theramenen quoque, unum e numero suo, cui haec displicere senserunt, in exemplum timoremque reliquorum trucidant.
So everyone fled the city in all directions; but since by an interdict of the Lacedaemonians hospitality was denied to the exiles throughout all Greece, they all betook themselves to Argos and Thebes. There they were so cherished by the kindness of hospitality that they not only eased their grief for their lost homeland, but even began to ponder hope of recovering it.
8 itaque omnes passim ex urbe diffugiunt, sed interdicto Lacedaemoniorum cum per totam Graeciam exulibus negaretur hospitium, omnes se Argos ac Thebas contulerunt: ubi ita hospitalitatis obsequio foti sunt, ut non solum dolorem amissae patriae lenirent, uerum etiam spem recuperandae meditarentur.
Among the exiles was Thrasybulus, an energetic man, distinguished among his own people for the nobility of his birth; he was the author of the bold venture on behalf of their homeland. So the exiles gathered and captured Phyle, a fortress on the borders of Attica, and, aided by the resources of many cities, they gathered strength. To them Lysias too, the Syracusan orator, sent five hundred soldiers with their pay, as though to the aid of the city that was the common homeland of eloquence.
9 erat inter exules Thrasybulus, uir strenuus et generis nobilitate inter suos clarus: qui auctor audendi pro patria fuit. itaque castellum Fylen Atticorum finium collecti exules capiunt multarumque ciuitatum opibus adiuti uires capessunt: quibus Lysias quoque Syracusanus orator quasi in auxilium urbis, quae esset patria communis eloquentiae, quingentos milites cum stipendiis suis misit.
That battle was savage; but since the one side was fighting for the liberty of its homeland and the other for dominion over a land not its own, the battle itself also passed judgement on their spirits and their causes. For the defeated tyrants fled back into the city, and all those Athenians whom they had earlier chosen as attendants for themselves they now, suspecting them of treachery, removed from guarding the city.
10 atrox id proelium fuit, sed his pro patria libertate, illis pro aliena dominatione certantibus animorum atque causarum ipsa quoque tulit pugna iudicium: nam uicti tyranni in urbem refugerunt omnesque, quos ex Atheniensibus prius sibi satellites legerant, tunc suspectos proditionis, urbis custodia remouerunt.
They even dared to try to corrupt Thrasybulus himself; when that hope proved vain, they summoned auxiliaries from Lacedaemon and rushed again into war. There the two most savage of all the tyrants by far were slaughtered.
11 Thrasybulum quoque ipsum temptare corruptione ausi sunt: quod ubi frustra speratum est, arcessitis a Lacedaemona auxiliis rursus in bellum ruunt. ubi duo saeuissimi omnium longe tyrannorum trucidantur.
When Thrasybulus perceived that the rest, defeated and put to flight, were for the most part Athenians, he went after them with shouts, held them back by his speech and bound them with his entreaties, setting before their eyes whom they wished to flee from and to whom they wished to flee back: he had undertaken war against thirty masters, not against his wretched fellow citizens; rather, all who remembered that they were Athenians ought to follow the avengers of Athenian liberty.
12 ceteros uictos et in fugam uersos Thrasybulus ubi uel maxime Athenienses esse intellegit, clamore consequitur, oratione retinet, precibus ligat, proponens ante oculos eorum, quos fugere uel ad quos refugere uellent; sibi aduersum triginta dominos, non aduersum ciues miseros bellum esse susceptum. quin potius omnes, qui se meminerint esse Athenienses, sequi oportere Atheniensium libertatis ultores.
This exhortation had such force with them that they soon returned to the city and compelled the tyrants to quit the citadel and withdraw to Eleusis. After they had received back into the fellowship of the city their fellow citizens, until then exiles, they roused to war, out of jealousy, the tyrants, to whom the liberty of others seemed like their own servitude.
13 itaque haec adhortatio tantum apud illos ualuit, ut mox reuersi in ciuitatem tyrannos arce decedere atque Eleusinam emigrare conpulerint. qui postquam in societatem urbis ciues suos, eatenus exules, receperunt, tyrannos in bellum aemulatione suscitant, quibus libertas aliorum quasi ipsorum seruitus uidebatur.
Then, when battle had been declared, and they had first come together as if for a parley, the tyrants were caught in an ambush and slaughtered like victims offered for peace. So, called back into one body, after insatiable tears of great joy, the citizens laid down these first foundations of their recovered liberty, binding themselves by a solemn oath that the discords and animosities of the past should be consigned to perpetual oblivion and undying silence.
14 tunc indicta pugna cum prius quasi ad conloquium conuenirent, circumuenti insidiis ueluti pacis uictimae trucidantur: ita reuocati in unum, post inexplebiles magnorum lacrimas gaudiorum haec prima fundamina recuperatae libertatis instaurant proposita iuris iurandi contestatione, uti discordiae animositatesque praeteritae in obliuionem perpetuam atque immortale silentium deducantur.
This kind of compact, as shaping a new institution of life and a new felicity for their state, they called an amnesty, that is, an abolition of evils. A most wise provision of the Athenians, especially after such great lessons of misery — if only human affairs could in some way hold firm, with the consent of men abiding, just as they are ordained;
15 quod pactionis genus quasi nouam uitae institutionem nouamque felicitatem status sui informantes amnestiam uocauerunt, id est abolitionem malorum. Sapientissima Atheniensium, praesertim post tanta miseriarum documenta, prouisio: si quo pacto res humanae manente consensu hominum ita ut ordinantur valerent;
but this same resolution was corrupted almost amid the very words of the resolution, so much so that scarcely two years later Socrates, that most famous of philosophers, driven by evils, wrung his life from himself by poison among them; and then, scarcely forty years having passed — to say nothing of other things — these same Athenians, wholly deprived of their liberty, were enslaved under Philip, king of the Macedonians.1
16 sed adeo hoc idem placitum inter ipsa paene placiti uerba corruptum est, ut uix intercedente biennio Socrates ille clarissimus philosophorum adactus malis ueneno sibi apud eos uitam extorserit, deinde uix quadraginta annis interuenientibus, ut alia sileam, idem Athenienses adempta sibi penitus libertate sub Philippo Macedonum rege seruierint.
1Philip’s victory at Chaeronea, which ended Athenian independence, came in 338 BC, some sixty-five years after the amnesty of 403.
Nevertheless the Athenians, wisest of all, taught well enough by their own evils that by concord the smallest things grow and by discord the greatest slip away, and that all things done abroad, whether good or even evil, are rooted in and sent forth from internal beginnings, wiped away hatreds at home and suppressed wars abroad, and left to their posterity an example from their ruin and a counsel from their restoration — if only, because of the most infirm mutability of the human mind, what is resolved in adversity were kept in prosperity.
17 uerumtamen sapientissimi omnium Athenienses etiam suis malis satis docti concordia minimas res crescere, discordia maximas labi, cunctaque uel bona uel etiam mala quae foris geruntur internis esse radicata et emissa principiis, domi abstersere odia et foris bella presserunt reliqueruntque posteris suis de ruina sui exemplum, de reparatione consilium: si tamen ob infirmissimam humanae mentis mutabilitatem, quod in adflictis rebus consulitur, in prosperis seruaretur.