Death to Tyrants! (20 page)

Two peculiar aspects of Eukrates's law are noticeable more or less immediately. The first such aspect is the date of its promulgation: the ninth prytany in the archonship of Phrynichos (spring/summer 336). It would make sense, for example, if the Athenians promulgated a tyrant-killing law during the run-up to the battle of Chaironeia: at that time, Philip was subverting democracies and installing “tyrants” in various poleis; and Demosthenes repeatedly warned his fellow citizens that some Athenians were Philip's agents and actively working to overthrow their own democracy.
⁶
It also would be understandable if the Athenians promulgated a tyrant-killing law immediately after the battle of Chaironeia. Those were chaotic and desperate times.
And it would have been reasonable for Athenian democrats to fear that pro-Macedonians would take advantage of the uncertainty and, perhaps in coordination with outside forces, orchestrate a coup d'état.
⁷
Eukrates, however, did not propose his law in one of those two periods. Instead, he made his legislative proposal nearly two years (twenty-two months) after the battle of Chaironeia, by which time it must have been clear that Philip's celebrated postvictory leniency was genuine.
⁸

The second peculiar aspect of Eukrates's tyrant-killing law is its focus on the council of the Areopagos.
⁹
If the Athenian democracy is overthrown, the Areopagites are forbidden from ascending the hill of Ares, sitting in session, and deliberating about anything whatsoever. And if an Areopagite did engage in such activities, both he and his offspring (
genos)
would be declared
atimos
(i.e., without political rights or privileges).
¹⁰
One should compare those provisions with the decree of Demophantos, the clear model for Eukrates's law.
¹¹
The earlier decree does not focus on a particular political institution. Instead, it prohibits
all
magistrates from serving during a coup; and
should a magistrate act contrarily, he is declared a
polemios
(enemy), his assassination is encouraged, and his property is to be confiscated.

This chapter has two related objectives, each of which addresses (inter alia) one of the two aforementioned peculiar aspects of Eukrates's tyrant-killing law. The first objective is to identify the tyrannical threat that the Athenians faced in the spring of 336. As we will see, the nature of the threat largely accounts for the fact that Eukrates proposed his law later than one might have expected. This chapter's second objective is to explain how the promulgation of Eukrates's law would neutralize the tyrannical threat that confronted the Athenians. As would be expected, the law's sharp focus on the council of the Areopagos played an important role. But so too did the process by which Eukrates's law was ratified and the placement of the two stelai upon which it was inscribed.

The Tyrannical Threat

In order to identify the tyrannical threat facing the Athenians in 336, it is first necessary to appreciate this fundamental, strategic fact: in the years immediately following the battle of Chaironeia, Athenian security was, to a large extent, in Macedonian hands. It is true that Philip could not easily conquer the city of Athens: it was well fortified and the Athenians still had a large navy. But Philip had the most powerful army in the Greek world and was a master at siege warfare; and it is almost certain that other poleis would not have come to Athens's defense. In any event, Philip was in a position to cause the Athenians great harm. The Athenians were in no real position to cause Philip such harm.

Given their vulnerability, it is not at all surprising to discover that the Athenians went to great lengths to obtain and retain the goodwill of prominent Macedonians or friends of such Macedonians. The currency was public honor. As would be expected, the Athenians honored Philip lavishly. Among his many honors, the Athenians placed an equestrian statue in his likeness in the agora (Paus. 1.9.4).
¹²
But the Athenians' “flattering policy,” as suggested, was much more broadly based. There exist, for example, two inscriptions honoring two different Macedonians that date to the archonship of Phrynichos:
Tod
180 (for Alkimachos);
Tod
181 (for a man in Philip's court whose name is lost). And it is quite possibly in that same year (337/6) that the Athenians notoriously honored a number of Macedonians en bloc (Hyp.,
Ag
.
Philippides
). More examples could be mentioned.
¹³
Now, the overwhelming majority of the Athenians hated the Macedonians, of course; indeed, they publically honored Philip's assassin (Aischin. 3.160; Plut.
Dem
. 22.2). The Athenians engaged in such activity simply because they thought that it would buy them security.
¹⁴

The tyrannical threat confronting the Athenians in 336 was that individuals might take advantage of Athens's dependency on Macedonian goodwill in order to insinuate themselves into positions of extralegal authority. Again, a friendly relationship with the hegemonic power was an essential precondition for Athenian security. It is obvious, however, that hard-line anti-Macedonians—those prominent in the pre-Chaironeia period—could not secure such a relationship: they had led Athens to war against Philip, rejecting his repeated attempts to make peace. It was their political opponents, men accused by leading democrats in previous years of being traitors, who will have performed that function. Consequently, Athenian democrats were caught in a catch-22: the success of such (potentially subversive) men was necessary for the security of the democracy; yet, if those men were too successful in gaining Macedon's goodwill, they could undermine the democracy since democrats would be beholden to them. Such men could become de facto above the law; and in democratic Athens, a man above the law was considered a tyrant.
¹⁵

Two speeches delivered after the battle of Chaironeia and (perhaps) more or less contemporarily with the promulgation of the law of Eukrates support the explanation of the tyrannical threat just stated. The first speech is [Demosthenes's]
On the Treaty with Alexander
(delivered in the assembly). The second speech is Hypereides's
Against Philippides
(delivered in a
dikasterion
).
¹⁶

In
On the Treaty with Alexander
, [Demosthenes] argued that the Athenians should declare war on Alexander (30). The justification for that conclusion was that Alexander had transgressed the formal terms (
synthēkai
) of the Korinthian League's charter: he intervened in the political affairs in Messene, Pellene, and Sikyon; he intercepted Athens's grain fleet in the Black Sea; he sailed a ship into the Piraeus. Much of the speech, however, focuses on the purportedly subversive, enabling activity conducted inside Athens by men who the speaker claims are Macedonian sympathizers. Significantly, the orator refers to such men as
οἱ τυραννίζοντες
(7)—“those in the tyrant's faction.” (It will be recalled that Knoepfler restored that participle in the Eretrian tyrant-killing law [line 6, old fragment].) Also, the speaker claims that those men have “the armies of tyrants as their bodyguard” (25). The actions of those men constituted Athens's tyrannical threat.

According to [Demosthenes], the pro-Macedonians worked to
gradually
subvert the Athenian democracy—the operative concept thus being subversion by evolution rather than subversion by revolution. He notes two complementary methods of attack. The first method was to urge the Athenians to uphold their treaty obligations with Macedon (5, 12, 21) despite the fact that, as noted above, Alexander repeatedly transgressed its terms, often to the detriment of the Athenians. Such subversive individuals (cynically) made arguments grounded in concerns over justice: the Athenians, they asserted, would violate the terms of their sacred oath should they wage war against Macedon and thus would rightly be punished. [Demosthenes], however, believed that their objective was sinister: to normalize Athenian acquiescence such that, over time and gradually (
κατὰ μικρόν
: 27), they would become accustomed to such a state of affairs and totally subservient to Macedon.

Whereas the first method of attack focused on Athens's foreign policy, the second complementary method focused on her domestic matters, in particular the rule of law. Apparently, pro-Macedonians compelled the Athenians to rescind certain laws, to release men condemned in the courts, and to countenance other illegal acts (12). [Demosthenes] did not explain how they did that. But if the allegations were true, those actions represented a serious attack on the Athenian democracy: some people (both those who did the compelling and those subsequently freed) would be essentially above the law—thus the
dēmos
not fully in control of the polis's domestic affairs (i.e., not
kurios
).
¹⁷
It is important to realize, however, that the speaker is not only concerned that the rule of law (and thus the power of the
dēmos
) is being undermined. He is concerned that his fellow citizens do not realize that that is happening. They are, he asserts, too lazy to understand the cumulative effects. And that ill-informed quiescence, according to the speaker, is precisely
what the Macedonian sympathizers hope to capitalize on. As he puts it, they hope that the democrats will not “be sensible of the change from democracy to tyranny or of the overthrow of a free constitution” (14).

Hypereides wrote his speech
Against Philippides
in response to the Athenians' grant of an honorary crown to an unknown number of prominent Macedonians. For reasons now unknown, the grant of those crowns was technically illegal (4–5).
¹⁸
Nevertheless, the
proedroi
put the motion to a vote in the
ekklesia
. Hypereides suggests that they did so out of a sense of compulsion (5). He does not elaborate on that suggestion, but it is almost certainly the case that the Athenians considered such gestures essential for maintaining good relations with Macedon. The most important point here, however, is that Philippides later proposed that the
dēmos
crown the
proedroi
for—of all things—“being just toward the
dēmos
of Athens and following the law”

(6). In response to that subversive and insincere pretext, Hypereides accused Philippides of making an illegal motion and delivered his speech
Against Philippides
in order to persuade a jury to convict him.

Philippides's proposal to honor the
proedroi
clearly threatened to make a mockery of the rule of law. Why did he do it? Hypereides had an answer: “he has chosen to be the slave to tyrants and give orders to the
dēmos
” (10). That is, as author of the proposal, he could become more influential with prominent Macedonians and thus, because Athenian security depended on the goodwill of Philip, more powerful in Athens and potentially (per this chapter's hypothesis) above the law. This interpretation is strengthened by Hypereides's fear that the
dēmos
might let Philippides get away with it and thus mock the rule of the law because he is “useful” (
χρήσιμος
: 10); that is, he could (likely continue to) secure Macedonian goodwill. One might suppose, then, that Philippides was testing the extent to which the
dēmos
would bend the rule of law. If he got away with it once, the reasoning goes, he could do so again. Soon such
paranomia
(illegality) would become acceptable to his and his associates' benefit; they could become tyrants.
¹⁹

Based upon the evidence presented above, the tyrannical threat of 337/6 is fairly intelligible: individuals might take advantage of Athens's dependency on Macedonian goodwill in order to insinuate themselves into positions of
extralegal authority.
²⁰
It was a subtle threat and moved gradually. It would have, however, a profound cumulative effect: people might be afraid or otherwise reluctant to lodge an
eisangelia
or a
graphē paranomōn
against a man with close ties to prominent Macedonians, for example; and if someone did lodge an
eisangelia
or a
graphē paranomōn
, people might be unwilling to convict. Over time, the notion of the rule of law would be eroded; there would be a handful of people above the law. Athens would still look like a democratically governed polis. But it would really be an oligarchic Macedonian client state.
²¹

Eukrates's Solution

The comments presented in this section explain how the promulgation of the law of Eukrates addressed the tyrannical threat identified in the previous section. Generally speaking—and as one might reasonably expect after reading the analysis of the decree of Demophantos and the Eretrian tyrant-killing law—the law deterred anti-democrats from defecting from the democratic status quo by facilitating mass action in support of the democracy. It is the particular means by which Eukrates's law achieved that general end that must be elucidated.

NOMOTHESIA
: GENERATION OF COMMON KNOWLEDGE

Since the end of the fifth century, the Athenians distinguished sharply between a decree (
psēphisma
) and a law (
nomos
). Decrees were promulgated by a simple majority in the assembly and addressed particular, nonrecurring matters. It was pursuant to a decree, for example, that the Athenians honored an individual or mobilized for battle. Laws, on the other hand, articulated general norms to which all Athenians were beholden. Thus murder or theft (inter alia) were prohibited by law, not by decree. And unlike decrees, laws were not promulgated by the assembly. They were promulgated by the
nomothetai
in a rather lengthy and very public procedure called
nomothesia
.
²²