ramenes and Tharysbulus, and
others of like stamp. If blame could attach to any one at all with
regard to the duty in question, those to whom their orders had been
given were the sole persons they could hold responsible. "But," they
went on to say, "we will not, because these very persons have denounced
us, invent a lie, and say that Theramenes and Thrasybulus are to blame,
when the truth of the matter is that the magnitude of the storm alone
prevented the burial of the dead and the rescue of the living." In
proof of their contention, they produced the pilots and numerous other
witnesses from among those present at the engagement. By these arguments
they were in a fair way to persuade the people of their innocence.
Indeed many private citizens rose wishing to become bail for the
accused, but it was resolved to defer decision till another meeting
of the assembly. It was indeed already so late that it would have been
impossible to see to count the show of hands. It was further resolved
that the senate meanwhile should prepare a measure, to be introduced at
the next assembly, as to the mode in which the accused should take their
trial.

(3) This is the Senate or Council of Five Hundred. One of its chief
duties was to prepare measures for discussion in the assembly. It
had also a certain amount of judicial power, hearing complaints
and inflicting fines up to fifty drachmas. It sat daily, a
"prytany" of fifty members of each of the ten tribes in rotation
holding office for a month in turn.

(4) This is the great Public Assembly (the Ecclesia), consisting of
all genuine Athenian citizens of more than twenty years of age.

Then came the festival of the Aparturia, (5) with its family gatherings
of fathers and kinsfolk. Accordingly the party of Theramenes procured
numbers of people clad in black apparel, and close-shaven, (6) who were
to go in and present themselves before the public assembly in the middle
of the festival, as relatives, presumably, of the men who had perished;
and they persuaded Callixenus to accuse the generals in the senate. The
next step was to convoke the assembly, when the senate laid before it
the proposal just passed by their body, at the instance of Callixenus,
which ran as follows: "Seeing that both the parties to this case, to
wit, the prosecutors of the generals on the one hand, and the accused
themselves in their defence on the other, have been heard in the late
meeting o