How many of the Four Hundred oligarchs actually came to trial or
were punished, we have no means of knowing; but there is ground
for believing that none were put to death except Antiphon and
Archeptolemus, perhaps also Aristarchus, the betrayer of Œnoê to
the Bœotians. The latter is said to have been formally tried and
condemned:[125] though by what accident he afterwards came into the
power of the Athenians, after having once effected his escape, we are
not informed. The property of Peisander, he himself having escaped,
was confiscated, and granted either wholly or in part as a recompense
to Apollodorus, one of the assassins of Phrynichus:[126] probably the
property of the other conspicuous fugitive oligarchs was confiscated
also. Polystratus, another of the Four Hundred, who had only become
a member of that body a few days before its fall, was tried during
absence, which absence his defenders afterwards accounted for, by
saying that he had been wounded in the naval battle of Eretria, and
heavily fined. It seems that each of the Four Hundred was called on
to go through an audit and a trial of accountability, according to
the practice general at Athens with magistrates going out of office.
Such of them as did not appear to this trial were condemned to fine,
to exile, or to have their names recorded as traitors: but most of
those who did appear seem to have been acquitted; partly, we are
told, by bribes to the logistæ, or auditing officers, though some
were condemned either to fine or to partial political disability,
along with those hoplites who had been the most marked partisans of
the Four Hundred.[127]
[125] Xenoph. Hellenic. i, 7, 28. This is the natural meaning
of the passage; though it _may_ also mean that a day for trial
was named, but that Aristarchus did not appear. Aristarchus may
possibly have been made prisoner in one of the engagements which
took place between the garrison of Dekeleia and the Athenians.
The Athenian exiles in a body established themselves at Dekeleia,
and carried on constant war with the citizens at Athens: see
Lysias, De Bonis Niciæ Fratris, Or. xviii, ch. 4, p. 604: Pro
Polystrato, Orat. xx, c. 7, p. 688; Andokidês de Mysteriis, c.
17, p. 50.
[126] Lysias, De Oleâ Sacrâ, Or. vii, ch. ii, p. 263, Reisk.
[127] “Quadringentis ipsa dominatio fraudi non fuit; imo qui cum
Theramene et Aristocrate steterant, in magno honore habiti sunt:
omnibus autem rationes reddendæ fuerunt; qui solum vertissent,
proditores judicati sunt, nomina in publico proposita.”
(Wattenbach, De Quadringentorum Athenis Factione, p. 65.)
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