ensure our supremacy as
governors over those we essayed to govern. But when I saw what an army
of malcontents this government had raised up within the city walls,
besides another daily increasing host of exiles without, I could not
but regard the banishment of people like Thrasybulus and Anytus and
Alcibiades (16) as impolitic. Had our object been to strengthen the
rival power, we could hardly have set about it better than by providing
the populace with the competent leaders whom they needed, and the
would-be leaders themselves with an army of willing adherents.

(10) Reading with Cobet {paranenomikenai}.

(11) I.e. serfs--Penestae being the local name in Thessaly for the
villein class. Like the {Eilotes} in Laconia, they were originally
a conquered tribe, afterwards increased by prisoners of war, and
formed a link between the freemen and born slaves.

(12) Cf. "Mem." IV. iv. 3; Plat. "Apol." 8. 32.

(13) Cf. Lysias, "Or." 18. 6.

(14) Probably the son of Lysidonides. See Thirlwall, "Hist. of
Greece," vol. iv. p. 179 (ed. 1847); also Lysias, "Or." 12. contra
Eratosth. According to Lysias, Theramenes, when a member of the
first Oligarchy, betrayed his own closest friends, Antiphon and
Archeptolemus. See Prof. Jebb, "Attic Orators," I. x. p. 266.

(15) The resident aliens, or {metoikoi}, "metics," so technically
called.

(16) Isocr. "De Bigis," 355; and Prof. Jebb's "Attic Orators," ii.
230. In the defence of his father's career, which the younger
Alcibiades, the defendant in this case (B.C. 397 probably) has
occasion to make, he reminds the court, that under the Thirty,
others were banished from Athens, but his father was driven out of
the civilised world of Hellas itself, and finally murdered. See
Plutarch, "Alcibiades," ad fin.

"I ask then is the man who tenders such advice in the full light of
day justly to be regarded as a traitor, and not as a benefactor? Surely
Critias, the peacemaker, the man who hinders the creation of many
enemies, whose counsels tend to the acquistion of yet more friends, (17)
cannot be accused of strengthening the hands of the enemy. Much more
truly may the imputation be retorted on those who wrongfully appropriate
their neighbours' goods and put to death those who have done no wrong.
These are they who cause our adversaries to grow and multiply, and
who in very truth are traitors, not to their friends only, but to
them