Note 544 — Chapter LXI · FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ATHENIAN ARMAMENT IN SICILY, DOWN TO THE OLIGARCHICAL CONSPIRACY OF THE FOUR HUNDRED AT ATHENS.

Thucyd. viii, 1. Ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἔγνωσαν, χαλεποὶ μὲν ἦσαν τοῖς ξυμπροθυμηθεῖσι τῶν ῥητόρων τὸν ἔκπλουν, ὥσπερ οὐκ αὐτοὶ ψηφισάμενοι, etc.

From these latter words, it would seem that Thucydidês considered the Athenians, after having adopted the expedition by their votes, to have debarred themselves from the right of complaining of those speakers who had stood forward prominently to advise the step. I do not at all concur in his opinion. The adviser of any important measure always makes himself morally responsible for its justice, usefulness, and practicability; and he very properly incurs disgrace, more or less according to the case, if it turns out to present results totally contrary to those which he had predicted. We know that the Athenian law often imposed upon the mover of a proposition not merely moral, but even legal, responsibility; a regulation of doubtful propriety under other circumstances, but which I believe to have been useful at Athens.

It must be admitted, however, to have been hard upon the advisers of this expedition, that—from the total destruction of the armament, neither generals nor soldiers returning—they were not enabled to show how much of the ruin had arisen from faults in the execution, not in the plan conceived. The speaker in the Oration of Lysias—περὶ δημεύσεως τοῦ Νικίου ἀδελφοῦ (Or. xviii, sect. 2)—attempts to transfer the blame from Nikias upon the advisers of the expedition, a manifest injustice.

Demosthenês (in the Oration De Coronâ, c. 73) gives an emphatic and noble statement of the responsibility which he cheerfully accepts for himself as a political speaker and adviser; responsibility for seeing the beginnings and understanding the premonitory signs of coming events, and giving his countrymen warning beforehand: ἰδεῖν τὰ πράγματα ἀρχόμενα καὶ προαισθέσθαι καὶ προειπεῖν τοῖς ἄλλοις. This is the just view of the subject; and, applying the measure proposed by Demosthenês, the Athenians had ample ground to be displeased with their orators.