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

THE COUP 157
month. 99 The conspirators could not wait that long. On the fourteenth
day of the Attic month Thargelion, June 9, 411, a few days after the
meeting on Colonus, they seized the reality of power. 100 Waiting for
the Athenians to go to their military posts at the walls and the training
fields, the conspirators stayed back, not far from where their weapons
were stacked. They had orders to prevent anyone not in the plot from
taking up arms and interfering with the proceedings. They were assisted
by armed men from Tenos, Andros, Carystus, and Aegina,
perhaps as many as 400 or soo, who had been gathered for the coup.
With these men preventing resistance, the Four Hundred, armed with
daggers under their cloaks and supported by the 1 20 young bravos
who had terrorized Athens, burst into the council-house. They had
brought along money with which to pay the members of the democratic
council for the remainder of their term and then ordered them out.
The coup was a complete success. The councillors took their money
and left without trouble. The other citizens made no move to interfere.
The Four Hundred appointed the prytanies and presiding officers by
lot, as in the old council, and performed the customary prayers and
sacrifices upon taking office. Every effort was made to preserve a sense
of continuity, normality, and legality, but few could have been deceived.
For the first time since the expulsion of the tyrants, the state
had been captured by a faction by means of threats and force.
99
HC1' V, I7CJ-I8o; Rhodes, Commentary, 405-406.
100 The date is provided by Ath. Pol. p. 1, its modern equivalent by B. D. Meritt,
Proceedings of the American Philolosophical Society CXV (1971), 114, with Rhodes, Commentary,
405-407. Aristotle gives this as the date the old council was dissolved and has
the Four Hundred take power peacefully and legally, with the approval of the people
under the aegis of the Five Thousand, eight days later. Even those who try to save
Aristotle's account or parts of it do not believe in such a delay (e.g., Rhodes, Commentary,
406). Some scholars believe that 14 Thargelion was the date of the assembly at Colonus
and that the seizure of power took place on the same day. I accept Andrewes' arguments
for rejecting that view and believing that the seizure of power took place a few days
after the meeting at Colonus (A. Andrewes, PCPS XXII [1976], 14-25).