The Fall of the Athenian Empire-(A New History of the Peloponnesian War) Donald Kagan - (1987)

THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT I I 5
and finally overthrew the oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants and restored
democracy to Athens. No Athenian has a better claim to the title of
convinced and loyal democrat than Thrasybulus, and none less deserves
the accusation of being "eager to destroy the democracy," yet
he is included among the men against whom Thucydides makes that
charge. If Thucydides is mistaken or misinformed in this instance, he
may be equally wrong in other cases, so we must not simply accept
his opinions without question but examine each case on its own merits.
Certainly, Thrasybulus was one of those at Samos who received Alcibiades'
words warmly and favored bringing him back." For him, at
least, Alcibiades' proposal represented something different from a longawaited
opportunity to overthrow Athenian democracy, and there is
reason to think that he was not alone.
So we may well believe that the movement to bring back Alcibiades
and to alter the form of government in Athens was suggested by the
Athenian renegade for his own reasons and accepted by the Athenian
leaders at Samos for theirs, but the reasons of that group were clearly
not all the same. Within this group at Samos, even at this early stage
(perhaps in November of 4I2)," we can discern two very different
factions. One was that of Thrasybulus. "He always held to the same
opinion," says Thucydides, "that they should recall Alcibiades. ""This
means that at some time, at least, he was willing to accept limitations
on the Athenian democracy, for Alcibiades' first messages to the Athenian
notables at Samos was to that effect." In fact, if we accept
Thucydides' report of Alcibiades' demands as both accurate and precise,
we might believe that Thrasybulus was even prepared to overthrow
the democracy and replace it with an oligarchy. In light of his
later actions, it is hard to believe that of the great democratic hero,
and it is possible that Thucydides' informant was wrong in this particular
instance. More likely, Alcibiades did use such words, but
Thrasybulus and men like him balked at it and forced him to change
his language. When a delegation from Samos crossed over to meet with
him, at any rate, he no longer used the offensive word oligarchy but
promised to return and perform his wonders "if the Athenians were
J38.76-7; 81.1.
HBusolt, GG Ill:2, 1467.
H8.81.1.
J 6 8.47·2. Here and throughout my discussion of Athenian politics in this volume I
am indebted to W. J. McCoy, "Theramenes, Thrasybulus and the Athenian Moderates,"
Ph. D. diss., Yale University, 1970.