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By Root 1842 0

democracy were about to become darker still. Although the Thirty had initially free rein to murder and rob and intimidate, a democratic Resistance started to form. Democrats who had melted away from the city began to regroup outside the city walls, in quite some number. The Thirty heard tell of the scale of partisan involvement and started to flee, most ending up 15 miles to the north-west of Athens in Eleusis. The oligarchs had prepared this bolt-hole, theoretically, but in practice the town did not welcome them. So they and their henchmen took Eleusis by force. The Thirty then went on to trick the male Eleusinian citizens into nailing their colours to the mast, declaring whether or not they were democrats. The Eleusinians were forced to walk out through a gateway – a kind of census, ostensibly to plan an effective garrison for the town. Waiting outside the gates were cavalry and the Thirty’s lackeys. The oligarch Eleusinians walked free, the democrat Eleusinians were seized, bound and transported to Athens. Xenophon finished the gruesome story in his Hellenica; the retelling is stagey in its cold-heartedness.

Critias, he says, had already ‘begun to show this lust for putting people to death’.11

On the rocky, sun-drenched slopes beneath the Acropolis it was not Persian whips nor a heroic code of honour that drove the captured men to their deaths – it was an open, democratic vote. In a crammed Odeion, Critias raised his voice loud:

My friends, we are organising this government in your interests as well as in our own. It is right that, just as you share in the privileges, so you should share in the dangers. And so, in order that you may have the same hopes and same fears as we have, you must now pass the death sentence on these men of Eleusis who have been captured.12

Given that the space – which once hosted the aspirational music of Damon et al., whose concerts were thought to provide a medical balm for the democratic mind – was now blatantly a place weighted in the oligarchs’ favour, papered with Spartan racketeers and with Spartan-sponsored soldiers standing at the entrance gates, it was clear which way the vote was going to fall.

Elsewhere, from previously oligarchic strongholds in Thebes and Megara, which, surprisingly, gave a number of democrats shelter, steady streams of men climbed up to where the pine starts to sweeten the air, to the security of a place called Phyle. Phyle lies 3 miles north-east of Athens and offers excellent natural protection. A high promontory, it affords stunning views in the summer across the plains of Attica. In winter the clouds and mists wrap Phyle in its own veil of security. Amongst the renegade group camped up here was the man who had already made one journey north looking for a better place: Socrates’ Delphic envoy and treasured friend Chaerephon. On one of those bright, clear days of winter, the Thirty tried to flush the democrats out from their democratic den, but then the sky whitened and snow started to fall. We hear of the impact:

The fighters could no longer see one another, let alone their enemy.13

So the pro-Spartans returned home, frustrated, empty-handed.

Still in Athens, the Thirty wanted Socrates’ hands bloodied along with their own. The philosopher was instructed to go to Salamis, that long, low island which kick-started the story of Athenian liberty from Persia, and was ordered to arrest a once-democratic general called Leon so he could be murdered in cold blood. Socrates refused.

SOCRATES: The Thirty summoned me and four others to the Tholos and ordered us to bring Leon from Salamis to be put to death. They often ordered many others to do such things, since they wanted to implicate as many as possible in their causes. At that time I made it clear once again, not by talk but by action, that I didn’t care at all about death – if I’m not being too blunt to say it – but it mattered everything that I do nothing unjust or impious, which matters very much to me. For though it had plenty of power, that government didn’t frighten me into doing anything that’s wrong.14