97.
When the news came the Athenians in their extremity still contrived to man twenty ships, and1 immediately summoned an assembly (the first of many) in the place called the Pnyx, where they had always been in the habit of meeting; at which assembly they deposed the Four Hundred, and voted that the government should be in the hands of the Five Thousand; this number was to include all who could furnish themselves with arms.
[2]
No one was to receive pay for holding any office, on pain of falling under a curse. In the numerous other assemblies which were afterwards held they appointed Nomothetae, and by a series of decrees established a constitution. This government during its early days was the best which the Athenians ever enjoyed within my memory. Oligarchy and Democracy were duly attempered. And thus after the miserable state into which she had fallen, the city was again able to raise her head.
[3]
The people also passed a vote recalling Alcibiades and others from exile, and sending to him and to the army in Samos exhorted them to act vigorously.
1 They immediately depose the Four Hundred, and establish a new government (the best which Thucydides had known) of Five Thousand, being the citizens who supplied themselves with arms. Pay for offices abolished. Alcibiades recalled.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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