Death to Tyrants! (9 page)

Mobilization Against the Thirty

In light of the analysis presented above, one might suspect that the oath of Demophantos helped facilitate the large-scale mobilization against the Thirty
Tyrants. The Athenians, after all, had sworn the oath of Demophantos for precisely this reason, and after the democracy was again overthrown in 404, Athenian democrats did in fact mobilize in defense of the democracy. That mobilization should not be taken for granted; it did not “just happen.” The Thirty, like the Four Hundred before them (but on a much larger scale), used fear and disinformation to divide the population and prevent effective coordination; public dissent would have been very risky.
⁵⁸
Thus the men of Phyle and their subsequent supporters would have required some clear reason to believe that, should they act to defend the democracy, others would follow them. The oath of Demophantos provided that reason.

Several lines of reasoning support the conclusion that the oath was in fact largely responsible for the successful mobilization against the Thirty. First, it is clear that Athenian democrats attributed the fall of the Thirty to an act of tyrannicide analogous to that performed by Harmodios and Aristogeiton. Lysias (12.35) provides an early indication that the Thirty were actually called “tyrants,” and Xenophon also equates their rule with tyranny (
Hell
. 2.3.16, 2.4.1). Moreover, Plutarch (
Arat
. 16.3) calls the campaign led by Thrasyboulos an act of “tyrant killing” (
τυραννοκτονία
). And Philostratos (
VA
7.4) reports that songs were sung at the Panathenaia celebrating both Harmodios and Aristogeiton, and the heroes of Phyle, who are explicitly said to have overthrown the “Thirty Tyrants” (
τριάκοντα τυράννους
).
⁵⁹

A renewed public interest in Harmodios and Aristogeiton at the end of the fifth century likewise suggests that the leaders of the opposition against the Thirty were associated by democrats with the original tyrannicides. Vase
painting provides the best evidence for this. Although three or four Athenian vases with representations of Harmodios and Aristogeiton survive from the period circa 470 to 450, no such decoration appears on extant vases or fragments for the next half century.
⁶⁰
Intriguingly, however, the tyrannicides reappear on five vases that date to circa 400, shortly after the overthrow of the Thirty. Three of the five are Panathenaic prize amphoras, which likely date to the festival of 402.
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Following the tradition of Panathenaic prize amphoras, each of the vases carries a picture of Athena depicted in the act of advancing upon an enemy: her left leg leads her right leg, in her left hand she holds a spear in the throwing position, and in her right hand she holds a shield. On the shield is painted an image of the statue group of Harmodios and Aristogeiton by Kritios and Nesiotes (see
Figure 1.2
). One interpretation of the image is that democratic Athens (symbolized by Athena) is protected (symbolized by the goddess's shield) by tyrant killers.
⁶²
Given that the
dēmos
commissioned the amphoras and that the Panathenaia in question was likely the first to occur after the overthrow of the Thirty and restoration of the democracy—not to mention the fact that two other vase fragments carrying an image of the tyrannicides also date to circa 400—it seems certain that the figures of Harmodios and Aristogeiton were intended to allude to the recent overthrow of the Thirty, and to characterize their fall as an act of tyrannicide.

Another sign of renewed democratic interest in the original tyrannicides is the fact that, after the overthrow of the Thirty, the Athenians may well have granted new honors for the descendants of Harmodios and Aristogeiton. The only such honor securely attested in a fifth-century source is
sitēsis
(
IG
I
³
131, circa 440). The orator Isaios, however, in a speech delivered in 389 (5.47), mentions among their honors not only
sitēsis
, but also
proedria
and
ateleia
. We cannot be certain that the Athenians first granted the honors of
proedria
and
ateleia
years after the grant of
sitēsis
, and even if they did so, it does not
necessarily follow that the additional honors were granted after the overthrow of the Thirty. Nevertheless, this remains a very reasonable reconstruction of events, both chronologically (because the honors are first attested soon after the fall of the Thirty) and contextually (because they would fit well with the heightened interest in the tyrannicides at the time). Assuming it is true, it would suggest an increased appreciation of the value of tyrant killing in preserving democracy, and further support the conclusion that Athenian democrats considered the Thirty to have fallen in an act of tyrannicide.

Figure 1.2.
Panathenaic prize amphora, circa 402. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum.

In order to facilitate their efforts to mobilize in defense of the democracy, Athenians swore an oath to kill tyrants and reward tyrant killers—in other words, to become tyrannicides, a point made explicit by their pledge to treat a fallen assassin “just like Harmodios and Aristogeiton.”
⁶³
After swearing the oath, many Athenians did in fact successfully mobilize against the Thirty and killed many of their supporters, in a movement characterized by democrats as a collective act of tyrannicide. The logical consequence is clear: Athenian democrats attributed the fall of the Thirty, at least in part, to the fact that all Athenians had sworn the oath of Demophantos.

A second indication that the oath of Demophantos was largely responsible for the success of the democratic response is that the Athenians, very soon after the mobilization against the Thirty, swore another mass public oath, the function of which was virtually identical to that of the oath of Demophantos. In this oath, known as the amnesty oath, they pledged “not to remember past wrongs” (
μὴ μνησικακεῖν
).
⁶⁴
As I attempt to demonstrate, this oath too affected the revolutionary thresholds of the participants and thus the ability of democrats to mobilize en masse, but whereas the oath of Demophantos lowered thresholds in order to facilitate stasis, the amnesty oath raised thresholds in order to make stasis much less likely.

By swearing the amnesty oath, the Athenians generated common knowledge of a credible commitment “not to remember past wrongs.” Andokides (
Myst
. 90) makes it clear that all Athenians participated, describing it as “the
oath in which the whole city joined, the oath which you swore one and all after the reconciliation: ‘ … and I will not remember the past wrongs (
οὐ μνησικακήσω
) of any citizen except for the Thirty, the Ten, and the Eleven.' …” We do not know how the Athenians actually swore the oath, but it is certainly conceivable that they did so “by tribe and by deme,” as in the case of the oath of Demophantos, which provided the only real Athenian precedent for such a large-scale oath ritual. But even if the amnesty oath was sworn in a different manner, the important point remains that everybody knew that everybody knew that everybody knew that all Athenians had solemnly pledged “not to remember past wrongs.”

This pledge was tantamount to a pledge not to engage in violent acts of vengeance against members of the oligarchic faction. Traditional interpretations of the phrase
μὴ μνησικακεῖν
stress its relevance to “partisan” activities directly involving the law courts: according to this interpretation, a citizen pledged not to bring anyone (with a few exceptions) to trial for crimes that he may have committed during the reign of the Thirty, and a juror pledged not to convict individuals for such crimes.
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Three points, however, strongly suggest that the phrase “not to remember past wrongs” had a broader relevance, referring to violent acts of vengeance generally speaking, not just to those involving the law courts. First, if the Athenians had intended to refer only to actions involving the courts, they easily could have crafted a more specific law that explicitly forbade the indictment of individuals for actions they may have committed during the time of the Thirty. Second, the author of the Platonic
Seventh Letter
(336e) directly associated the verb
μνησικακεῖν
(“to
remember
past wrongs”) with
σφαγή
(slaughter, butchery). The term
σφαγή
specifically refers to intentional killing and appears to have been associated with political violence.
⁶⁶
In the decree of Patrokleides (Andok.
Myst
. 79), for example,
σφαγή
is paired with tyranny. And Xenophon (
Hell
. 4.4.2) called the bloody massacre in Korinth in 392 a
σφαγή
. Third, according to the author of the
Ath
.
Pol
. (40.2), Archinos, a leading democratic figure in the period immediately following the civil war, convinced the members of the
boulē
to execute an unnamed individual because he “began to remember past wrongs” (
ἤρξατο μνησικακεῖν
). The passage in no way suggests that the unnamed individual did so in the law courts.
⁶⁷

Thus, by swearing the amnesty oath, the Athenians generated common knowledge of (at least apparently) credible commitment not to engage in violent
acts of vengeance against members of the oligarchic faction. In order to understand what that has to do with the potential effectiveness of the oath of Demophantos, it is necessary to determine how an oath containing the pledge “not to remember past wrongs” might have helped prevent stasis and thus helped to defend the recently reestablished democracy. Let us posit that every Athenian has a “stasis threshold” that represents the number of individuals who must participate in stasis activity before he does. An individual with a stasis threshold of 2, for example, will participate only if two other individuals (out of a population of ten) have already done so. This individual wants neither to initiate stasis nor to join in its earliest stages, for he is afraid that an insufficient number of other individuals will follow him and thus he will be punished as a revolutionary. If 20 percent of the population has already joined in the stasis, however, he too will join, in order to protect himself or those with whom he is in sympathy, and because he now believes that others will follow.
⁶⁸
An extreme radical on the other hand, an individual who wants to reignite the civil war and eliminate members of the rival faction, will have a stasis threshold of 0: he believes that, if he commits some conspicuous act of violence, others will follow and thus the polis will be engulfed in stasis.

The most important consequence of the fact that all Athenians swore the amnesty oath is that most individuals would have raised their individual stasis thresholds and thus participated in a stasis later than they otherwise would have. Most individuals, that is, would have waited until more people joined in the stasis before they themselves decided to join. The oath, by generating common knowledge of an apparently credible commitment not to engage in acts of stasis, would lead most individuals to think that, if they were to engage in such acts, others might not follow them, because those others would think that others might not follow them, and if an insufficient number of individuals should take part, those who had done so would be more easily punished as revolutionaries or agitators. Since credibility is never perfect, however, an individual Athenian might not raise his stasis threshold by much, but he would still probably raise it, say, by 1 (e.g., from 2 to 3).

It is easy to see how even a small increase in an individual's stasis threshold could prevent an initial act of stasis from initiating a “stasis bandwagon.” Imagine the following stasis threshold sequence: {0, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7}. The person in the first position in the sequence, with a threshold of 0, is a radical who wants to provoke civil strife; perhaps he hopes to eliminate those citizens who sided with the oligarchs. He thus commits some conspicuous act of violence in the hope that other individuals will follow. And they will, for after
he acts the person in the second position in the sequence, with a stasis threshold of 1, will join in, and his action will draw in the next person, with a threshold of 2, and so on. Very soon the entire population could find itself taking part in the stasis, even if a majority might not wish to do so.
⁶⁹
If, however, after swearing the amnesty oath, all but the most radical individuals raised their stasis thresholds by 1, the threshold sequence would look very different: {0, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8}. In this scenario, the radical represented in the first position in the sequence would still act in the hope that others would follow him. Since there is no citizen with a stasis threshold of 1, however, nobody would follow him and his efforts to initiate a stasis bandwagon would fail.
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