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

368 THE FALL OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
storm prevented the recovery. " 45 In support of their assertions, they
offered the testimony of pilots and other sailors who had been part of
the fleet. This admirably moderate defense was persuasive and moving.
Sympathetic and neutral listeners could believe that the generals had
always told the same fundamental story and that it was plausible. They
had concealed the role of the captains out of a conviction that such
details were irrelevant, since the storm alone made rescue impossible.
Many Athenians were so convinced that they offered to stand bail for
the generals, and the assembly as a whole was well on the way to being
persuaded. 46 At that point fate, in the form of darkness, intervened.
It was too late in the day for the counting of votes to be possible. The
decision was made to postpone action until the next assembly. Meanwhile,
the Council of 500 was to draft a proposal to determine the
procedure of the trial. 47
Evening's interruption of the assembly was not the last of fate's
interventions. The Athenians' celebration of the festival Apaturia fell
on a day soon after that assembly, some time in mid-October in 406. 48
The feast was celebrated by the pbratriai, or brotherhoods, ancestral
organizations of great antiquity and reverence. The celebration went
on for three days and brought together families from all over Attica.
Boys born since the previous year were registered, as were young men
coming of age, and the marriages that had taken place in the interval
were noted and celebrated. "Much of the festival, then, was occupied
with these family occasions-birth, manhood, marriage. " 49 Normally,
these feasts were joyous, even riotous, occasions, but the Apaturia of
406 was not. As the families and the clans gathered, the gaps caused
by the recent deaths at Arginusae became painfully apparent. These
were not deaths caused by wounds at the hands of the enemy, many
must have thought, but by the neglect and cowardice of Athenians.
When the Athenian assembly met to resume its consideration of the
fate of the generals, it found in its number many relatives of the dead
wearing the garments and shaved heads of mourners who asked for
45
Xen. 1. 7 .6.
46 Xenophon ( 1. 7. 7) says: "By saying these things they were on the point of persuading
people" Touxin'a )\E')'ovre"' €1'!'eL9ov T(w bfu.Lov. E:7rEL8ov is imperfect, indicating that
the process of persuasion was still under way but had not been completed.
47 Xen. 1. 7. 7. Xenophon's language makes it clear that the darkness was real and not
merely a pretext. We should not, therefore, impute the postponement to machinations
by the enemies of the generals. See Cloche, RH CXXX (1919), 46-47.
48 Xen. 1.7.8. For the date, sec Busolt, GG Ill:z, I60J.
49 H. W. Parke, FestivalsoftheAthenians(lthaca, N.Y., and London, 1977), 88-92.