Note 69 — Chapter LXII · TWENTY-FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR. — OLIGARCHY OF FOUR HUNDRED AT ATHENS.

Thucyd. viii, 86. τῶν τε πεντακισχιλίων ὅτι πάντες ἐν τῷ μέρει μεθέξουσιν, etc. I dissent from Dr. Arnold’s construction of this passage, which is followed both by Poppo and by Göller. He says, in his note: “The sense must clearly be, ‘that all the citizens should be of the five thousand in their turn,’ however strange the expression may seem, μεθέξουσι τῶν πεντακισχιλίων. But without referring to the absurdity of the meaning, that all the Five Thousand should partake of the government in their turn,—for they all partook of it as being the sovereign assembly,—yet μετέχειν, in this sense, would require τῶν πραγμάτων after it, and would be at least as harsh, standing alone, as in the construction of μεθέξουσι τῶν πεντακισχιλίων.”

Upon this remark, 1. Μετέχειν may be construed with a genitive case not actually expressed, but understood out of the words preceding; as we may see by Thucyd. ii, 16, where I agree with the interpretation suggested by Matthiæ (Gr. Gr. § 325), rather than with Dr. Arnold’s note.

2. In the present instance, we are not reduced to the necessity of gathering a genitive case for μετέχειν by implication out of previous phraseology: for the express genitive case stands there a line or two before—τῆς πόλεως, the idea of which is carried down without being ever dropped: οἱ δ᾽ ἀπήγγελλον, ὡς οὔτε ἐπὶ διαφθορᾷ τῆς πόλεως ἡ μετάστασις γένοιτο, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ, οὔθ᾽ ἵνα τοῖς πολεμίοις παραδοθῇ (i. e., ἡ πόλις) ... τῶν τε πεντακισχιλίων ὅτι πάντες ἐν τῷ μέρει μεθέξουσιν (i. e., τῆς πόλεως).

There is therefore no harshness of expression; nor is there any absurdity of meaning, as we may see by the repetition of the very same in viii, 93, λέγοντες τούς τε πεντακισχιλίους ἀποφανεῖν, καὶ ἐκ τούτων ἐν μέρει, ᾗ ἂν τοῖς πεντακισχιλίοις δοκῇ, τοὺς τετρακοσίους ἔσεσθαι, etc.

Dr. Arnold’s designation of these Five Thousand as “the sovereign assembly,” is not very accurate. They were not an assembly at all: they had never been called together, nor had anything been said about an intention of calling them together: in reality, they were but a fiction and a name; but even the Four Hundred themselves pretended only to talk of them as partners in the conspiracy and revolution, not as an assembly to be convoked—πεντακισχίλιοι—οἱ πράσσοντες (viii, 72).

As to the idea of bringing all the remaining citizens to equal privileges, in rotation, with the Five Thousand, we shall see that it was never broached until considerably after the Four Hundred had been put down.