By Andrew Wolpert
In 404 b.c. the Peloponnesian conflict eventually got here to an finish, while the Athenians, starved into submission, have been pressured to simply accept Sparta's phrases of give up. presently afterwards a bunch of thirty conspirators, with Spartan backing ("the Thirty"), overthrew the democracy and confirmed a slender oligarchy. even if the oligarchs have been in energy for less than 13 months, they killed greater than five percentage of the citizenry and terrorized the remaining by way of confiscating the valuables of a few and banishing many others. regardless of this brutality, participants of the democratic resistance flow that regained keep watch over of Athens got here to phrases with the oligarchs and agreed to an amnesty that secure collaborators from prosecution for all however the such a lot critical crimes. The warfare and next reconciliation of Athenian society has been a wealthy box for historians of historic Greece. From a rhetorical and ideological viewpoint, this era is exclusive as a result of the striking lengths to which the Athenians went to take care of peace. In Remembering Defeat, Andrew Wolpert claims that the peace was once "negotiated and built in civic discourse" and never imposed upon the population. instead of explaining why the reconciliation used to be winning, as a manner of laying off gentle on adjustments in Athenian ideology Wolpert makes use of public speeches of the early fourth century to think about how the Athenians faced the troubling thoughts of defeat and civil warfare, and the way they defined to themselves an contract that allowed the conspirators and their collaborators to move unpunished. Encompassing rhetorical research, trauma stories, and up to date scholarship on identification, reminiscence, and legislations, Wolpert's examine sheds new mild on a pivotal interval in Athens' background.
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Additional info for Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens
Example text
Thus, they became implicated in promoting democracy and invalidating oligarchy. Under the oligarchy they had R E S T O R AT I O N O F T H E D E M O C R A C Y f ≥∑ helped the Thirty undermine the laws; now, under the restored democracy, they depended upon the laws for their own safety. On the whole, the reconciliation agreement, together with these subsequent measures, provided the men of the city with the most tangible benefits and demanded from the men of Piraeus the most concessions. But, by making such concessions, the democrats increased their stockpile of ideological weapons to use in their campaign to rid the community of the ill e√ects of the oligarchy.
Once Callibius had arrived with Spartan troops, the Thirty won him over and changed their policy. At this point, Xenophon interrupts his narrative again to explain their motivation: they wanted Callibius to approve of everything that they might do. And now that they had the support of the Spartan commander, they arrested not the poneroi but those who would object to being excluded from the oligarchy or who, if they opposed the oligarchy, would be able to gather many supporters (Hell. 11–14). So in Xenophon’s account, the Thirty requested the Spartan garrison not in response to growing opposition (their actions up to this point were still popular), C I V I L WA R ta b l e 2 f ∞π rule of the thirty but so they could prevent opposition from emerging as they made the oligarchy even more extreme and further restricted participation.
Even though Pausanias had signaled to the factions his willingness to accommodate the democrats, envoys from the Ten came to Sparta demanding that the democrats surrender their strongholds. Still, the Ten had no choice but to agree to the restoration of the democracy, because they were utterly dependent upon Sparta for assistance. Likewise, the men of Piraeus could not demand that the oligarchs receive harsher treatment. If they refused to accept the agreement, Sparta had su≈cient manpower in place to crush them.