Keeping Oligarchy at Bay in Athens: The Evidence on the Assassination of Phrynichus (411 BC)

Including commentary on « 33. Les assassins de Phrynichos (410-409) IG, I³, 102 », Inscriptions historiques grecques, traduites et commentées par J.-M. Bertrand, La Roue à livres, Paris, 1992.

Since the beginning of democracy, Peisander’s proposal for a government of Four Hundred (οἱ τετρακόσιοι) became the first oligarchical system at Athens, well-nigh its centenary, as Thucydides ominously notes. The latter describes this shift taking place inside a climate of mounting tensions between political groups inside and outside the city and clandestine assassinations.[1] Is it, then, surprising that the further steps towards aristocracy, culminating in the tyranny of the Thirty, would be marred with similar conspiracy and intrigue? Where would they ultimately lead? Away from the democratic assembly politics of the Periclean age?

The fragmentary stone inscription IG I³ 102 commemorates the assassination of Phrynichus, who, due to his hostility toward Alcibiades and his penchant toward oligarchy, had involved himself in intrigues that had led him to be dismissed from his post before becoming a leader among the Four Hundred in 411 BC.[2] The event is preserved in Thucydides (XCII 2):

Phrynichus, who had just returned from the embassy to Sparta [note: to pursue a peace agreement with the enemy, O.D.S.], was treacherously stabbed by a militiaman[3] in the crowded agora not long after he had left the council chamber. He died on the spot. The assassin escaped, but his Argive accomplice was captured and questioned under torture by the Four Hundred. He did not disclose the name of the man who had ordered the murder, or say anything except that he knew that numerous men used to meet in the house of the chief of the militia and in other houses as well. The Four Hundred took no further action in the matter, but now an emboldened Theramenes got to work, along with Aristocrates and some like-minded members (and nonmembers) of the Four Hundred.

Taking place before moderate oligarchy (or the Five Thousand) was established, as was being promised[4] by the likes of Theramenes,[5] the murder of Phrynichos made way for a change in leadership that would irreversibly impact Athenian politics in the long run, when, after the defeat at Eretria, the Four Hundred were deposed in favour of the Five Thousand, eventually democracy was restored at the Pnyx[6] after the battle at Cyzicus in the summer of 410 BC.[7] Political decisions always have important consequences for everyone involved. Thus when the council decision of 410/9 was made it became indicative of a shift in what is seen as praiseworthy and politically permissible.

From the inscription IG I³ 102 we can read that the Athenian Erasinides made the proposal to gift an expensive crown as well as other gifts to a certain Thrasybulus and that he be made a citizen with equal rights. Benefits were also due to his fellow conspirators. Quote: « ainsi que les autres qui ont été les bienfaiteurs du peuple des Athéniens ---[8] Agoratos, Comon, ---, Simon et Philinos, … qu’ils aient les mêmes droits que les Athéniens à posséder biens-fonds et maisons, qu’ils habitent à Athènes et que les conseils successivement en fonction et les prytanes veillent à ce qu’ils ne subissent aucun tort … » (along with the others who have been the benefactors of the Athenian people --- Agoratus, Comon, ---, Simon and Philinus, ... that they shall be granted the same rights as Athenians to own property and houses, that they shall live in Athens and that the councils successively in office and the prytanes keep guard so that they come to no harm ...) A decree in favour of a certain Apollodorus is also mentioned in the inscription (and that it should be investigated into). Indeed, we learn from Lysias, the logographer (or speechwriter), that Apollodorus of Megara had been awarded an olive-grove (supposedly subsequent to the investigation mentioned in the inscription taking place) that had, he writes, been confiscated by the state (δημευθέντων) from none other than the politician Peisander. Peisander’s deme was Acharnae (the plot is likely to have been there, near Mt Parnes), he had been a trusted democrat, that is, up to his proposal of an oligarchy of Four Hundred, subsequently finding refuge with the Spartans.[9] So, naturally, the property went to a pro-democracy conspirator.

Lysias has his own description of events in a speech “Against Agoratus” (71):

It was Thrasybulus of Calydon and Apollodorus of Megara, gentlemen, who combined in a plot aginst Phrynichus: they lighted on him as he was out walking, and Thrasybulus struck Phrynichus, knocking him down with the blow; but Apollodorus did not touch him. Meanwhile an outcry arose, and they ran off and disappeared. But Agoratus here was neither invited to join them nor was present at the deed, nor does he know anything of the matter.

In the context of the speech, Lysias' strategy is to prove, rather spuriously, that, because Agoratus did not kill Phrynichus, he did therefore not become (or deserve to become) an Athenian citizen, despite him having been inscribed on the Acropolis stele. Moreover, he argues, since no harm came to him during the reign of the Thirty that proves either that he hadn’t killed Phrynichus or, if he had, that he must have done something very bad to redeem himself in the eyes of the Thirty, many of whom had been members of the Four Hundred.

Indeed, here we find a context in which the reign of the Thirty (οἱ τριάκοντα), headed by Theramenes and Critias, was to become an especially divisive issue after the reestablishment of democracy, though not always as overtly as this. Employed in many speeches are expressions like timorein (τιμωρεῖν), sometimes used to invoke communal “revenge” against individuals by a judicial assembly, often in connection with charges of treason, religious offences and katapolitical bribery or bribery harmful to the interests of the polis. Yet notions such as communal revenge must have been moderated by the formative experience of oligarchy and civil war (στάσις) and by the fear engendered by it, a fear which remains throughout the 4th century BC among older generations.[10]

Just so, some decades later, Lycurgus was involved in reconnecting with the past[11] with his speech Against Leocrates, in which he directly appeals to the collective memory of the court (δικαστήρια) concerning the murder of Phrynichus (112-115):

You remember when Phrynichus was murdered at night beside the fountain in the osier beds by Apollodorus and Thrasybulus, who were later caught and put in the prison by the friends of Phrynichus. The people noted what had happened and, releasing the prisoners, held an inquiry after torture. On investigation they found that Phrynichus had been trying to betray the city and that his murderers had been unjustly imprisoned. They decreed publicly, on the motion of Critias, that the dead man should be tried for treason, and that if it were found that this was a traitor who had been buried in the country, his bones should be dug up and removed from Attica, so that the land should not have lying in it even the bones of one who had betrayed his country and his city. They decreed also that if any persons defended the dead man and he were found guilty, they should be liable to the same punishment as he. …[Y]our ancestors dug up the traitor’s bones and cast them out of Attica; they killed his defenders, Aristarchus and Alexicles, and even refused them burial in the country.

Lycurgus' intention is to showcase Athenian reprisals in the past (what “your ancestors” did), appealing to Athenian legal tradition, in order to demonstrate that someone who has committed treason against the democracy deserves death, later citing a law protecting anyone who kills an enemy (πολέμιον) of democracy (in a narrow sense: as someone rising up against it or managing to overthrow it)[12], a law appropriately created after the assassination and the full restoration of democracy in 410 BC and likely reinstated after the Thirty. Leocrates stands accused of desterting the army during the battle at Chaironeia in 338 BC, thus Lycurgus wants to imply that Leocrates' desertion amounts to abandoning the fight to defend Athen’s democracy against Macedonia. One might note that even though Phillip II won the battle, taking away Athens' autonomy, he allowed deciding on internal matters via its democratic institutions, including the lottery-based judicial system which tried this very court case, to continue.

Lycurgus reminds the courts of, and thus reinvigorates, a solution to preserving their democracy that Athenians accepted in 410 BC, creating an ex post justification for the clandestine assassination of Phrynichus and the other reprisals against collaborators or tyrants that were to follow, since now the law prescribed it as a citizen's duty to go after them and "slay [them] by word and by deed, by my vote and by my hand" (for source see note 12). However, Lycurgus does not call for revenge in finding Leocrates guilty of treason, but engages in an attempt at getting the community to vindicate the war effort by chastising everyone not willing to die for it, having them put to death a man who allegedly deserted a struggle essentially about democratic freedom.

Ultimately, we know Lycurgus was narrowly unsuccessful in this court case (losing by one vote). Yet even the successful reprisals by the Athenians via the courts (e.g. against Antiphon, after the fall of the Four Hundred, or against Socrates, after the fall of the Thirty) must be contrasted precisely with what had gone before: During the Four Hundred martial law was in place, offenders were directly handed over to the chief magistrates (στρατηγόι), bypassing the courts.[13] The lesson-to-be-learned for democracy of the period from 411 to 403 lies in the change in political culture that occured at a desperate time for Athens (the menacing Spartans in Deceleia, near home base, Alcibiades on the island of Samos which declared itself a kind of 'government in exile', and the fleet all the way up in the north-eastern Aegean) back to one in which fear was able to dissipate and an atmosphere less threatening of the democracy to arise. Despite an intense period of assassinations and intrigue the Athenians were able to restore and improve their political system, in order to return to communal justice and assembly democracy (which some, including Michael Gagarin, Edward Harris and Mogens Hansen, have argued was even more democratic than before). A people that was starting to become corrupt, according to Machiavelli's notion in the Discorsi, could turn around their prospects and flourish again. The resistance to subjection was to continue on in Athens beyond the classical period.

It is through the example of Phrynichus that the corrupting role of violence meted out by the wishes of a few, from either above or below, is made palpable. Culturally, there is no doubt that the shift from institutionalised justice to martial law or retaliatory assassination comes about with each shadowy plot, each political deed that tries to evade responsibility or culpability and, as such, creates a conspiracy against a democratic order, since such an order can only survive in the hands of democrats.[14]

Oliver D. Shields

Bibliography and Endnotes

Sources

Andocides, On the Mysteries, with an English translation by K. J. Maidment, LCL 308, London, 1941.

Aristotle, “Aristotle’s The Constitution of Athens”, in: Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy, translation, introduction, and commentary by J. M. Moore, UCP, LA, 2010 [first edition 1975], pp. 139-312.

Lycurgus, Against Leocrates, with an English translation by J. O. Burtt, LCL 395, London, 1954.

Lysias, Selected Speeches, edited by C. Carey, CUP, Cambridge, 1989.

Lysias, 7. Before the Areopagus: The Matter of the Olive-Stump, with an English translation by W. R. M. Lamb, LCL 244, London, 1930.

Lysias, 12. Against Eratosthenes, with an English translation by W. R. M. Lamb, LCL 244, London, 1930.

Lysias, 13. Against Agoratus, with an English translation by W. R. M. Lamb, LCL 244, London, 1930.

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, translated by W. Blanco, New York, 1998.

Thucydide, La guerre du Péloponnèse, texte traduit par J. de Romilly, Les Belles Lettres 100 ans, Paris, 2019.

Literature

BOSHER Kathryn G., Greek Theater in Ancient Sicily, Cambridge, 2021.

KELLY D.H., Xenophon’s Hellenica: A Commentary, vol. 1, Amsterdam, 2019.

LAMBERT Stephen D., Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees in the Age of Demosthenes: Historical Essays, Leiden, 2018.

TIERSCH Claudia, (Hg.), Die Athenische Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert: Zwischen Modernisierung und Tradition, Stuttgart, 2016.

Internet sites

Searchable Greek Inscriptions: http://epigraphy.packhum.org/ (last update: July 13, 2020).

Der Neue Pauly: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/der-neue-pauly (consulted on the 14.11.2021).

Bailly 2020 Hugo Chávez (Eulexis-web): https://outils.biblissima.fr/fr/eulexis-web/?lemma=w]n&dict=Bailly (consulted on the 14.11.2021).

Lexicon

DIGGLE J. et al., The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, vol. 1 & 2, Cambridge, 2021.

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[1] Thucydides LXIII 3-XCVIII.

[2] Schmitz, W., s. v. “Phrynichos [2]”, DNP (consulted on the 13.11.2021).

[3] Member of the border guards (οἱ περίπολοι), made up of Athenian ephebes from age 18 to 20 that thus changed every two years. Chief of the milita: περιπόλαρχος.

[4] Though, according to Thucydides, the 5,000 number had been part of the government reform efforts from the start (brought by Peisander and Antiphon), Aristotle and Lysias give the number of 9,000; this maybe have been the initial proposal. The constitution described by Aristotle, moreover, grants citizenship rights to the whole class that could afford a hoplite armor. See Aristotle, pp. 258-265. It is notably this en vogue form of moderate oligarchy, sometimes called the Boiotian model, that is praised by both Aristotle and Thucydides, and Antiphon, who was tried and executed after the return of the democracy in 410 BC.

[5] Comparing it to the JFK assassination (22.11.1963), it occurs to me that I’m giving Theramenes a hypothetical motive, here (to which that of LBJ can be compared and contrasted). Namely in that Theramenes became thereafter the elected leader of the Five Thousand, established with his support. Though nothing more is said in Thucydides about the relationship between Phrynichus and Theramenes or the motives of the latter, Theramenes is alleged of being a back-stabber to others, including former friends such as Antiphon (mentioned in footnote 4 and below) and Archeptolemus, according to Lysias, “Against Eratosthenes”, 67.

[6] When the Four Hundred were established, the assembly (ἐκκλησιαστήριον) took place in a sanctuary of Poseidon on the outskirts of Athens, at Colonus. The council (βουλευτήριον) was dissolved through bribery. It should be noted that assembly meetings, far from being reserved to one area, were often held in the theatre, e.g. that of Dionysus in Athens (where they were held permanently after 332) with its capacity of holding 14,000 citizens. Theatres were buildings of the demos, used for its politics and religion as well as entertainment purposes, see BOSHER.

[7] A fact omitted by Xenophon in the early books of the Hellenica. See commentary on i.1.33-4 in: KELLY.

[8] Quite a few missing words, here, cannot be reconstructed. Perhaps these names were chiseled out at a later date?

[9] Commentary on Lysias, “7 On the olive-stump”, 4, in: Selected Speeches, edited by C. Carey, CUP, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 121-2. The way in which Sparta connects to this event and the people involved is certainly interesting to consider in more depth. Eisel Mazard has reminded me that without understanding the Spartan strategy, the question of whether it succeeds or fails at this turning-point, basically no political interpretation of this event can be made.

[10] RUBINSTEIN Lene, “Communal Revenge and Appeals to Dicastic Emotions”, in: TIERSCH, pp. 55-72.

[11] A reference to what is called the Lycurgan reforms that often invoked the 5^th century past: see “Connecting with the Past in Lykourgan Athens: An Epigraphical Perspective”, in: LAMBERT, pp. 115-131.

[12] Lycurgus (125) overplays what the law really says, whereas it is from Andocides, who quotes the law in full (96-98) that we know the extent of what is being sanctioned: an enemy is “whosoever shall overthrow (καταλύσῃ) the democracy at Athens, whosoever shall hold any public office after it is overthrown, and whosoever shall rise up in revolt (ἐπαναστῇ) to become tyrant or shall help to install a tyrant” (O.D.S. modified translation, cp. Lexicon, p. 532); an inscribed variant of this law exists using the same wording as Andocides: IG II³, 1 320.

[13] Aristotle, “Aristotle’s The Constitution of Athens”, XXIX 4.

[14] The example of the Four Hundred, much like the support for the 1933 NSDAP candidate Adolf Hitler, is sometimes (often unconvincingly) portrayed as a glitch in the democratic system brought about by a conspiracy of dunces, by which I mean that the populous, unbeknownst to its self-destructiveness, becomes the conspiracy that overthrows democracy.