the coming assembly, and to appease the manes of their abandoned kinsmen by every possible effort to procure retribution on the generals.[285] [285] Lysias puts into one of his orations a similar expression respecting the feeling at Athens towards these generals; ἡγούμενοι χρῆναι τῇ τῶν τεθνεώτων ἀρετῇ παρ᾽ ἐκείνων δίκην λαβεῖν; Lysias cont. Eratosth. s. 37. Xenophon in his narrative describes this burst of feeling at the Apaturia as false and factitious, and the men in mourning as a number of hired impostors, got up by the artifices of Theramenês,[286] to destroy the generals. But the case was one in which no artifice was needed. The universal and self-acting stimulants of intense human sympathy stand here so prominently marked, that it is not simply superfluous but even misleading, to look behind for the gold and machinations of a political instigator. Theramenês might do all that he could to turn the public displeasure against the generals, and to prevent it from turning against himself: it is also certain that he did much to annihilate their defence. He may thus have had some influence in directing the sentiment against them, but he could have had little or none in creating it. Nay, it is not too much to say that no factitious agency of this sort could ever have prevailed on the Athenian public to desecrate such a festival as the Apaturia, by all the insignia of mourning. If they did so, it could only have been through some internal emotion alike spontaneous and violent, such as the late event was well calculated to arouse. [286] Xenoph. Hellen. i. 7, 8. Οἱ οὖν περὶ τὸν Θηραμένην παρεσκεύασαν ἀνθρώπους ~μέλανα ἱμάτια ἔχοντας, καὶ ἐν χρῷ κεκαρμένους πολλοὺς ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ ἑορτῇ~, ἵνα πρὸς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἥκοιεν, ~ὡς δὴ ξυγγενεῖς ὄντες τῶν ἀπολωλότων~. Here I adopt substantially the statement of Diodorus, who gives a juster and more natural description of the proceeding; representing it as a spontaneous action of mournful and vindictive feeling on the part of the kinsmen of the deceased (xiii, 101). Other historians of Greece, Dr. Thirlwall not excepted (Hist. of Greece, ch. xxx, vol. iv, pp. 117-125), follow Xenophon on this point. They treat the intense sentiment against the generals at Athens as “popular prejudices;” “excitement produced by the artifices of Theramenês,” (Dr. Thirlwall, pp. 117-124.) “Theramenês (he says) hired a great number of persons to attend the festival, dressed in black, and with their heads shaven, as mourning for kinsmen whom they had lost in the sea-fight.” Yet Dr. Thirlwall speaks of the narrative of Xenophon in the most unfavorable terms; and certainly in terms no worse than it deserves (see p. 116, the note): “It looks as if Xenophon had _purposely involved the whole affair in obscurity_.” Compare also p. 123, where his criticism is equally severe.