The Thirty

And not even this will he allow to be done carelessly, but only after careful examination by the Senate, to determine who of them actually stood siege at Phyle when the Lacedaemonians and the Thirty made their attack, not those who deserted their post—as at Chaeroneia—in the face of the advancing enemy.

And some of them actually joined the Thirty, who killed more than fifteen hundred of the citizens without trial, before they had even heard the charges on which they were to be put to death, and who would not even allow the relatives to be present at the burial of the dead.

let all this be treated as were the acts committed in the days of the Thirty, or before the year of Eucleides, or whenever else a similar statute of limitations has been passed.

Did you put to death Socrates the sophist, fellow citizens, because he was shown to have been the teacher of Critias, one of the Thirty who put down the democracy, and after that, shall Demosthenes succeed in snatching companions of his own out of your hands, Demosthenes, who takes such vengeance on private citizens and friends of the people for their freedom of speech?

Finally they brought the city to such a pass that she was glad to make peace, giving up everything, tearing down her walls, receiving a garrison and a Lacedaemonian governor, and surrendering the democracy to the Thirty, who put fifteen hundred citizens to death without a trial.

for Atrometus our father, whom you slander, though you do not know him and never saw what a man he was in his prime—you, Demosthenes, a descendant through your mother of the nomad Scythians—our father went into exile in the time of the Thirty, and later helped to restore the democracy;

banished by the Thirty, he served as a soldier in Asia, and in danger he showed himself a man;

Tenth was the tyranny of the Thirty and of the Ten.

The Thirty, then, were established in this way, in the archonship of Pythodorus.

Theramenes having been made away with, they stripped the arms from all except the three thousand, and in other matters they advanced far toward cruelty and wickedness.

Our city was enslaved in earlier times by the tyrants and later by the Thirty, when the walls were demolished by the Spartans.

After the rule of the Thirty, your fathers, who had suffered from citizens what no other Greek had ever thought fit to inflict and had barely managed to return to their country, barred all the paths to crime, having learnt by experience the principles and methods followed by men who wished to overthrow democracy.

As for the Thirty, they held a review, the Three Thousand assembling in the market-place and those who were not on the roll in various places here and there;

Then, as a first step, they arrested and brought to trial for their lives those persons who, by common knowledge, had made a living in the time of the democracy by acting as informers and had been offensive to the aristocrats;

Then the Thirty, thinking that Theramenes was an obstacle to their doing whatever they pleased, plotted against him, and kept accusing him to individual senators, one to one man and another to another, of injuring the government.

and when he was one of the Thirty and was drafting laws with Charicles, he bore it in mind.

When the Thirty were putting to death many citizens of the highest respectability and were encouraging many in crime, Socrates had remarked:

This remark was reported to Critias and Charicles, who sent for Socrates, showed him the law and forbade him to hold conversation with the young.

Meletus arrested Leon under the Thirty, as you all know;

and I will harbour no grievance against any citizen, save only the Thirty, the Ten, and the Eleven:

Really, gentlemen, as I sat watching him make his speech for the prosecution, I quite thought that I had been arrested and put on trial by the Thirty.

However, I have heard some people saying before now that the result of our last peace with Sparta was the installment of the Thirty, the death of many citizens by the hemlock-cup, and the exile of others.

And to that administration of the state by the few and the leading men of the Massiliots, there is a neighbour in that conspiracy and faction of the Thirty which once existed among the Athenians.

who, when cast into prison by order of the Thirty tyrants, had drained the poison like a thirsty man, threw out the rest from the cup so that it rang, and at the sound thus made, smiling, said:

Or do you not know about Critias, one of the Thirty, that he said the fairest form in males was the female, and again in females the contrary?

You and your party took no account of the history of the Thirty or of the city’s triumph over her assailants from without and those within her walls who joined in the attack upon her.

But when the Thirty came to power, then it was that he sailed back to Athens.

And yet the wickedness of the Thirty impelled many to act in this way for they not only did not punish the evil-doers but they even commanded some persons to do wrong.

I think, however, that even if there had been neither arbitration nor witnesses to the actual facts and you were under the necessity of considering the case in the light of the probabilities, not even in this event would you have difficulty in arriving at a just verdict.

for it is their excellence and not the depravity of the Thirty which we should strive to emulate, especially since it behoves Athenians to be the best among mankind.

while the Thirty neglected the public buildings, plundered the temples, and sold for destruction for the sum of three talents the dockyards upon which the city had spent not less than a thousand talents?

Or that at the time when the people were in control of affairs, we placed our garrisons in the citadels of other states, whereas when the Thirty took over the government, the enemy occupied the Acropolis of Athens?

And have not we, all of us, because of the madness of the Thirty, become greater enthusiasts for democracy than those who occupied Phyle?

and you do this albeit knowing full well that it is not alone in making the city prosperous that good leaders are superior to the base, but that our democracy itself under the leadership of the former remained unshaken and unchanged for many years, whereas under the guidance of these men it has already, within a short period of time, been twice overthrown, and that, furthermore, our people who wer …

Pythodorus said the reading of the treatises was nearly finished when he came in himself with Parmenides and Aristoteles (the one who was afterwards one of the thirty), so they heard only a little that remained of the written works.