To what particular anti-constitutional oaths allusion is here made, we cannot tell. All those of the oligarchical conspirators, both at Samos and at Athens, are doubtless intended to be abrogated: and this oath, like that of the armament at Samos (Thucyd. viii, 75), is intended to be sworn by every one, including those who had before been members of the oligarchical conspiracy. Perhaps it may also be intended to abrogate the covenant sworn by the members of the political clubs or ξυνωμοσίαι among themselves, in so far as it pledged them to anti-constitutional acts (Thucyd. viii, 54-81). [113] Andokidês de Mysteriis, sects. 95-99, (c. 16, p. 48, R.) Ταῦτα δὲ ὀμοσάντων ~Ἀθηναῖοι πάντες~ καθ᾽ ἱερῶν τελείων, τὸν νόμιμον ὅρκον, πρὸ Διονυσίων, etc. Such was the remarkable decree which the Athenians not only passed in senate and public assembly, less than a year after the deposition of the Four Hundred, but also caused to be engraved on a column close to the door of the senate-house. It plainly indicates, not merely that the democracy had returned, but an unusual intensity of democratical feeling along with it. The constitution which _all_ the Athenians thus swore to maintain by the most strenuous measures of defence, must have been a constitution in which _all_ Athenians had political rights, not one of Five Thousand privileged persons excluding the rest.[114] This decree became invalid after the expulsion of the Thirty, by the general resolution then passed not to act upon any laws passed before the archonship of Eukleidês, unless specially reënacted. But the column on which it stood engraved still remained, and the words were read upon it, at least down to the time of the orator Lykurgus, eighty years afterwards.[115] [114] Those who think that a new constitution was established, after the deposition of the Four Hundred, are perplexed to fix the period at which the old democracy was restored. K. F. Hermann and others suppose, without any special proof, that it was restored at the time when Alkibiadês returned to Athens in 407 B.C. See K. F. Hermann, Griech. Staats Alterthümer, s. 167, note 13. [115] Lykurgus adv. Leokrat. sect. 131, c. 31, p. 225: compare Demosthen. adv. Leptin. sect. 138, c. 34, p. 506. If we wanted any proof, how perfectly reckless and unmeaning is the mention of the name of _Solon_ by the orators, we should find it in this passage of Andokidês. He calls this psephism of Demophantus _a law of Solon_ (sect. 96): see above in this History, vol. iii, ch. xi, p. 122.