Note 297 — Chapter XLIX · FROM THE BEGINNING OE THE SECOND YEAR DOWN TO THE END OF THE THIRD YEAR OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

Thucyd. ii, 65: Plato, Gorgias, p. 515, c. 71: Plutarch, Periklês, c. 35; Diodor. xii, c. 38-45. About Simmias, as the vehement enemy of Periklês, see Plutarch, Reipub. Ger. Præcept. p. 805.

Plutarch and Diodorus both state that Periklês was not only fined, but also removed from his office of stratêgus. Thucydidês mentions the fine, but not the removal: and his silence leads me to doubt the reality of the latter event altogether. For with such a man as Periklês, a vote of removal would have been a penalty more marked and cutting than the fine; moreover, removal from office, though capable of being pronounced by vote of the public assembly, would hardly be inflicted as penalty by the dikastery.

I imagine the events to have passed as follows: The stratêgi, with most other officers of the commonwealth, were changed or reëlected at the beginning of Hekatombæon, the first month of the Attic year; that is, somewhere about midsummer. Now the Peloponnesian army, invading Attica about the end of March or beginning of April, and remaining forty days, would leave the country about the first week in May. Periklês returned from his expedition against Peloponnesus shortly after they left Attica; that is, about the middle of May (Thucyd. ii, 57): there still remained, therefore, a month or six weeks before his office of stratêgus naturally expired, and required renewal. It was during this interval (which Thucydidês expresses by the words ἔτι δ᾽ ἐστρατήγει, ii, 59) that he convoked the assembly and delivered the harangue recently mentioned.

But when the time for a new election of stratêgi arrived, the enemies of Periklês opposed his reëlection, and brought a charge against him, in that trial of accountability to which every magistrate at Athens was exposed, after his period of office. They alleged against him some official misconduct in reference to the public money, and the dikastery visited him with a fine. His reëlection was thus prevented, and with a man who had been so often reëlected, this might be loosely called “taking away the office of general:” so that the language of Plutarch and Diodorus, as well as the silence of Thucydidês, would, on this supposition, be justified.