[214] Thucydides VIII. 89. [215] Thucydides VIII. 90-97. After the deposition of the Four Hundred, which occurred late in August 411 B.C., the Athenians had to decide what their government should be. Two courses lay open to them: they might rescind all the enactments which they had made four months earlier, and so return at once to an unmixed democracy: or they might allow those enactments, except such as were obviously mischievous, to remain in force. The second of the two alternatives was that which they adopted. They reaffirmed in substance the regulations which had been recommended by the small committee elected under the resolution of Pythodorus, and enacted: (1) That the government should be entrusted to the body of not less than Five Thousand, which they had already ordered to be created. (2) That every citizen, who furnished the equipment of a heavy armed soldier, either for himself or for any one else, should of right be a member of this body. (3) That no citizen should receive pay for any political function, on pain of being solemnly accursed or excommunicated[216]. The constitution thus established was partly democratic and partly oligarchical: it contained a preponderant element of democracy because it gave supreme power to a numerous body, who, though they were called the Five Thousand, were in reality about nine thousand[217]: but it also contained some small oligarchical ingredients, since it excluded the poorest citizens from the ecclesia, and by withholding payment for the discharge of political functions made it likely that few citizens would be able to serve on the council of five hundred and in the popular law-courts except those who had money and leisure. Concerning the motives which induced the Athenians to adopt this mixed form of government we have no information, and can only observe that the new constitution would certainly commend itself to the body of hoplites who had delivered the Athenians from their oppressors, since it gave supreme power to the class to which they belonged; and that, from what we know of the political opinions of Socrates[218], we may be sure that it met with his hearty approval and was supported by his powerful advocacy. In regard to the merits of the new government we have an emphatic testimony from Thucydides, who says that of all the governments that ruled Athens within the space of his lifetime this was the best[219]. But the mixed form of government was not suited to the needs and the condition of the Athenians: for within a few years--certainly before 406 B.C. when they condemned the commanders at Arginusæ, and possibly as early as 410 B.C.--they abandoned it and reverted to their well-tried system of unmixed democracy. [216] Thucydides VIII. 97. 1. The meaning of the words is admirably explained by Grote in a note to chapter LXII. of his _History of Greece_. [217] Arnold's Thucydides, note to VIII. 97. 1.