The Athenian Constitution   

do, Archinus, observing their numbers, and being anxious to retain
them as citizens, cut off the remaining days during which the list
should have remained open; and in this way many persons were
compelled
to remain, though they did so very unwillingly until they recovered
confidence. This is one point in which Archinus appears to have
acted in a most statesmanlike manner, and another was his subsequent
prosecution of Thrasybulus on the charge of illegality, for a motion
by which he proposed to confer the franchise on all who had
taken part
in the return from Piraeus, although some of them were notoriously
slaves. And yet a third such action was when one of the returned
exiles began to violate the amnesty, whereupon Archinus haled him to
the Council and persuaded them to execute him without trial, telling
them that now they would have to show whether they wished to
preserve the democracy and abide by the oaths they had taken; for if
they let this man escape they would encourage others to imitate him,
while if they executed him they would make an example for
all to learn
by. And this was exactly what happened; for after this man had been
put to death no one ever again broke the amnesty. On the
contrary, the
Athenians seem, both in public and in private, to have behaved in
the most unprecedentedly admirable and public-spirited way with
reference to the preceding troubles. Not only did they blot out all
memory of former offences, but they even repaid to the
Lacedaemonians out of the public purse the money which the Thirty
had borrowed for the war, although the treaty required each
party, the
party of the city and the party of Piraeus, to pay its own debts
separately. This they did because they thought it was a necessary
first step in the direction of restoring harmony; but in
other states,
so far from the democratic parties making advances from their own
possessions, they are rather in the habit of making a general
redistribution of the land. A final reconciliation was made with the
secessionists at Eleusis two years after the secession, in the
archonship of Xenaenetus.
Part 41

This, however, took place at a later date; at the time of which we
are speaking the people, having secured the control of the state,
established the constitution which exists at the present day.
Pythodorus was Archon at the time, but the democracy seems to have
assumed the supreme power with perfect justice, since it had
effected its own return by its own exertions. This was the eleventh
change which had taken place in the constitution of Athens. The
first modification of the primaeval condition of things was when Ion
and his companions brought the people together into a community, for
then the people was first divided into the four tribes, and the
tribe-kings were created. Next, and first after this, having now
some semblance of a constitution, was that which took place in the
reign of Theseus, consisting in a slight deviation from absolute
monarchy. After this came the constitution formed under Draco, when
the first code of laws was drawn up. The third was that
which followed
the civil war, in the time of Solon; from this the democracy took
its rise. The fourth was the tyranny of Pisistratus; the fifth the
constitution of Cleisthenes, after the overthrow of the tyrants, of
a more democratic character than that of Solon. The sixth was that
which followed on the Persian wars, when the Council of Areopagus
had the direction of the state. The seventh, succeeding this, was
the constitution which Aristides sketched out, and which Ephialtes
brought to completion by overthrowing the Areopagite Council; under