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

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FIVE THOUSAND 201
ists and the unification of the state under the moderates. The former
had lost their support and their confidence, and the latter were on
their way to full control. A Spartan attack could be expected to hasten
both developments. News of a Spartan blockade or siege would almost
surely provoke an attack by the Athenian forces on Samos, but we
need not be greatly surprised that the Spartans chose to try. A fleet
of the size and quality of the one at Samos could easily have destroyed
the much smaller force under Agesandridas. The victorious Athenian
fleet under Thrasybulus and Alcibiades could then happily unite with
an Athens led by Theramenes and Aristocrates. With no further threat
at home, the reunited military and naval forces of Athens could sail
out to meet the Peloponnesian fleet with good hopes of victory and
the recovery of lost territories. Events would soon show that such
hopes were entirely realistic. The Spartans, moreover, were still on
bad terms with Tissaphernes and were badly paid and supplied, and
they had not yet made an agreement with Pharnabazus. They had
good reason, therefore, to doubt the wisdom of provoking an attack
on the relatively small naval force that was available for an assault on
the Piraeus. Any prudent general, not only a sluggish and unenterprising
Spartan, might be reluctant to make such an attack.
In fact, the Spartans did not attack, but the actions taken by the
Athenians in expecting an attack show clearly how they would have
met the challenge. They at once manned rwenty ships, presumably
all available, to defend the harbor as best they could. Then they held
an assembly, the first of several, on the Pnyx, and the location was
significant. The assembly that overthrew the democracy had carefully
been moved away from the Pnyx, the usual place of assembly under
the democracy, to Col onus; the meeting intended to produce harmony
between the extreme oligarchs and the other Athenians was held in
the theater of Dionysus. The return to the Pnyx must have been the
result of a deliberate choice meant to indicate a return to a situation
before the establishment of oligarchy. The very first meeting deposed
the Four Hundred, but it did not restore the full democracy. Instead,
"it turned affairs over to the Five Thousand," defined as those who
could furnish themselves with arms, and it forbade payment for holding
any public office. This was the moderate program, and we should
not be surprised that it, and not the full democracy, was introduced,
for almost all of those attending the assembly were of hoplite status
or higher. At the same time, we should not lose sight of the symbolic
meaning of the choice of the Pnyx: to those deliberating in the assembly