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

THE TRIAL OF THE GENERALS 373
created a situation in which passion required that someone be punished;
the only question was who.
Under those circumstances, Theramenes could well believe that he
and his fellow captains had been placed in jeopardy by the second
series of letters from the generals. He must have seen himself and his
associates as unjustly accused and their action in making counteraccusations
as self-defense. 66 Once anger and recrimination reached a
certain pitch, compromise and mutual restraint were no longer possible,
and fear and anger took control. We must not fail to notice that
in the speech of Euryptolemus, although it finally took a conciliatory
tone and blamed the failure on the storm alone, the following passage
appeared: "It is just, therefore, that those who were assigned to go
against the enemy give an account of their failure to carry out their
assignment against the enemy, while those who were assigned to the
rescue mission should be tried for not carrying out what the generals
had ordered, because they did not pick up the survivors."" The captains
could not be sure that if the generals were acquitted, the anger
of the citizenry would not turn against them. A long string of trials,
moreover, in which each of the generals fought to defend his own
innocence, was bound to raise, over and over again, the role of the
captains, and as the generals tried to save their own lives they might
well place the blame on the captains. Feelings ofunassuaged grief and
anger would be kept alive for weeks, and the result was both unpredictable
and frightening. Finally, as we have seen, Theramenes, Thrasybulus,
and their associates probably honestly found fault with the
generals' performance after the battle, held them at least partially responsible
for the failure to rescue the living and recover the dead, and
resented the delegation to them of so unpleasant, difficult, and dangerous
a task so late in the day. Such, perhaps, were the thoughts and
feelings that made Theramenes and his colleagues press for the trial
of the generals en masse and their condemnation, which must certainly
follow.
Athens had no written constitution, and it is not perfectly clear
whether the trial and condemnation of the generals were illegal.'" The
Athenians, however, soon regretted their action. Callixeinus and four
66
That is precisely the line he took in defending himself against Critias' charges under
the reign of the Thirty Tyrants after the war (Xen. 2.3·35).
67Xen. I. 7. 3 I.
68
MacDowell, The Law in Classical Athens, 189.