LEADERS OF THE FOUR HUNDRED IN WORKS OF CICERO AND HIS ROMAN CONTEMPORARIES*

The article analyses references to Pisander, Antiphon, Phrynichus and Theramenes in the writings of Cicero and Nepos. From a historian ’ s point of view, the accuracy of the Romans ’ statements varies greatly and has to be evaluated in each instance separately. The Romans ’ opinions concerning the Greek politicians should be judged cautiously, because the Roman writers were not interested in giving an overall assessment of the Athenian oligarchs ’ political careers.

The oligarchy of the Four Hundred established in Athens in 411 lasted only a short time and it seems to have slowly sunk into oblivion during the 4 th century even in Athens itself. 1 Luckily for modern historians, Thucydides found the rise and fall of the Four Hundred fascinating, and went to great lengths to describe it.When he arrived at the formal establishment of the oligarchy in his narration, Thucydides stopped to present character sketches of the four leading figures of the oligarchy: Pisander, Antiphon, Phrynichus, and Theramenes.Much has been written about the lives of these men.Their posthumous reputations have received considerably less attention, although they have not been totally neglected by modern scholarship. 2However, no one has conducted a comprehensive study of how these men were regarded during the demise of the Roman Republic: the era studied in great depth by the dedicatee of this volume; the era marked with no less chaos and bloodshed and no lower concentration of unique personalities than the last third of fifth century BCE in Greece.This suggests two interrelated questions: first, how much did the Romans know about the 5 th -century Greece?Or, in other words, are the Roman sources reliable authorities for modern historians of ancient Greece?Second, what might the Romans have thought about the Greek oligarchs?* Pisander ' s name does not appear in the extant corpus of Cicero ' s works.The only Roman historian to mention him is Cornelius Nepos.In his life of Alcibiades, a part of his monumental treatise De viris illustribus, Nepos tells us that Pisander was contacted by Alcibiades when Alcibiades was trying to obtain leave to return to Athens in the winter of 412/11.3Nepos ' narrative is easy to reconcile with the relevant passage of Thucydides,4 except for two rather important points.First, Nepos ' phrase praetore, qui apud Samum exercitum habebat, is somewhat misleading.Nepos usually uses the word praetor to denote one of ten Athenian generals.Pisander did not hold the position and consequently did not have the command of the Athenian fleet on Samos. 5hould we wish to salvage Nepos ' accuracy, we would have to make several assumptions.Perhaps Pisander had great unofficial influence with the sailors, possibly even greater than the generals. 6If this is what Nepos thought, the phrase qui apud Samum exercitum habebat could characterise the situation.However, we would then have to hypothesise that Nepos used the word praetor in the informal sense; but there is no evidence of such usage. 7It is thus preferable to conclude that Nepos chose not to go into detail here and oversimplified the situation.
Second and even more puzzling, Nepos claims that Pisander deserted Alcibiades.Having read the Thucydidean description of the negotiations between the Athenian oligarchs and Alcibiades (speaking for the Persian satrap Tissaphernes), one can hardly escape the conclusion that it was Alcibiades who deserted the oligarchs, not vice versa. 8It would seem that Nepos concentrated on Thucydides ' statement οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι ... ἀπελθόντες κομίζονται ἐς τὴν Σάμον 9 and did not indicate that it was Alcibiades ' volteface that made them abandon the negotiations.In the paragraph we are discussing, Nepos concentrates on Alcibiades ' abilities, rather than on his trickery.As a result, the image of Pisander that emerges is rather tarnished.Nepos ' opinion of Pisander clearly was not high, although more specific details are not available.

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In Latin literature at the time of Cicero, there is only one unquestionable reference to Antiphon the Rhamnusian.Cicero mentions him in his brilliant history of oratory, in the dialogue Brutus, in a passage that summarises the dawn of Greek oratory and which has generated a good deal of controversy in Thucydidean scholarship. 10It is one of many bits of ancient evidence that led Luciano Canfora to the ingenious suggestion that Thucydides was present in Athens in 411.Canfora consequently proposed a drastic reassessment of the so-called second preface of Thucydides,11 claiming that it does not contain reliable evidence for Thucydides ' twenty-year exile, but was written by Xenophon, along with a substantial part of Book Five. 12Canfora ' s theory had great influence in Italy, but was mostly ignored or rejected in the rest of the world. 13The main reason why it is difficult to agree with Canfora is that it seems unlikely that a posthumous editor (say, Xenophon), who must have approached the text of Thucydides with "religious care",14 would not have made his authorship of parts of the text clear in order not to impinge on legacy of the revered master.
And there is another argument against Canfora, more pertinent to the topic of this article: I am not persuaded that the whole of the crucial sentence quo neminem ... Th ucydides comes from Aristotle, and I believe it is betrayed by the sudden intrusion of indicative scripsit into the chain of infinitives. 15Once robbed of their Aristotelian origin, the crucial words se audiente become Cicero ' s false inference from Thucydides ' praise of Antiphon ' s self-defence, which on cursory reading does suggest Thucydides ' presence. 16o make the statement about Antiphon ' s defence part of the Aristotelian text Cicero is paraphrasing, we would need to delete the word Thucydides, which seems no less inju-dicious than Campe ' s deletion of se audiente rightly condemned by Canfora. 17Thus it appears that Cicero was mistaken in this particular instance and cannot serve as a reliable guide to Thucydides ' whereabouts in 411.
The fact that this is the only undisputed mention of Antiphon the Rhamnusian in Cicero ' s voluminous writings suggests that the Roman orator did not read Antiphon ' s speeches and knew him only from Thucydides and Aristotle,18 although it is equally possible that he had tried to read them, but found them too archaic and dull.
An Antiphon is repeatedly mentioned in Cicero ' s De divinatione as an imaginative dream-interpreter. 19It is not clear whether the author of the handbook on oneiromancy was identical with the Athenian oligarch,20 and Cicero ' s opinion on this matter is impossible to determine.Thus, we are left with a single reference and we cannot tell what Cicero thought about Antiphon, except that he considered him an orator skilful for his age.

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The oligarch Phrynichus is not mentioned in any Latin text. 21The Romans seem to have followed the lead of the author of the Aristotelian Athenian Constitution, who probably bypassed Phrynichus in a sentence clearly inspired by Thucydides, offering only the names of the other three leaders of the oligarchy.22

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We are in a much better position concerning Theramenes.To begin with, he is mentioned three times in Nepos ' life of Alcibiades.The first two occurrences of his name are connected with the return of Alcibiades to Athens.Nepos, along with Diodorus, gives credit for Alcibiades ' recall to Theramenes,23 while Plutarch ascribes it to Critias, and he even cites the latter ' s poem to corroborate his statement. 24Naturally, this engendered a long scholarly controversy: it is possible that Alcibiades was offered indemnity in the autumn of 411 on the motion of Critias and later, in 408 or 407, was formally called back and elected general on the motion of Theramenes; 25 or that in 411, Theramenes backed or even prompted the motion of Critias. 26Both these solutions assume that the Roman historian is right, although somewhat simplifying.Nepos then outlines the successes of Alcibiades, Thrasybulus, and Theramenes in the Hellespont without attributing their individual accomplishments. 27The third and final mention of Theramenes in Nepos ' Alcibiades concerns Alcibiades ' return home; Theramenes, according to Nepos, was totally eclipsed by Alcibiades, and there is no reason to doubt Nepos ' account. 28epos thus seems to have been better informed about Theramenes than about Pisander.Nepos acknowledges the political and military abilities of the Athenian, but Theramenes did not merit his own biography in Nepos ' collection of foreign generals, unlike Thrasybulus and Alcibiades.It cannot be excluded that in Nepos ' De viris illustribus there was a book on foreign orators in which Theramenes might be included, 29 but the lack of any reference to a book on Roman orators in the biography of Cato the Elder makes the existence of this pair of books highly unlikely.
Cicero does not describe Theramenes ' political or military career, but in his Tusculan Disputations he devotes a long passage to recounting Theramenes ' courage in the face of death: Theramenes threw the dregs of his hemlock extract out of his cup and then ironically offered a toast to Critias, the leading member of the Thirty Tyrants who pushed through Theramenes ' execution. 30ur best source for this event is Xenophon, 31 who does not explicitly mention the toast, using the verb ἀποκοτταβίζω, which is not exactly the same as propino.Is it possible that Cicero did not fully understand the meaning of Theramenes ' deed?
There were two variants of the game of κότταβος.In both of them, the player was supposed to name the object of his love and toss the dregs remaining in his wine cup at a target: either a metal disc on top of a candelabrum, or small, empty vinegar-saucers floating in a bowl.In the first instance, the player strove to ring the disc by making it fall on another, smaller disc halfway down the candelabrum; in the second instance, his goal was to sink as many of the saucers in the bowl as he could.If the player achieved his goal, it was considered a good omen for his love. 32he most recent commentator on the Ciceronian passage states that "if [...] Theramenes threw the wine and was not expecting to hit the mark on account of the difficulty of the attempt, he would have been surprised and so laughed at his discovery that fortune had given him a sign; he told the man nearby (likely the one who gave him the poison) that he would requite Critias for the love he bore him (rather than simply toast to his health ironically, as most editors)." 33 Two notes are necessary.First, there was no target in the prison Theramenes could have hit; Xenophon ' s ἀποκοτταβίζω must mean "throw as if playing κότταβος," so that Xenophon ' s Theramenes was not playing κότταβος, but toasting ironically.We do not know what the subject of resonaret was according to Cicero, but in all probability it was some object usually located in the prison, not the metal disc used in the κότταβος.Second, Cicero explicitly speaks about "toasting" (propino), so he did understand Theramenes ' words as an ironic toast.Consequently, whatever Cicero might have known about the κότταβος, he understood what was going on in Theramenes ' prison quite well.
But was Xenophon the source of Cicero ' s information about the incident?Scholars have been sceptical, and it has been claimed that Cicero ' s source was a popular treatise on philosophy. 34If so, we cannot say whether or not he misinterpreted his source, although on the basis of the evidence presented earlier, it does not seem likely.
Shortly after mentioning Theramenes ' courage, Cicero places him on a par with Socrates, calling them both praestantis viros virtutis et sapientiae gloria, which is one of the most explicit instances of praise for Socrates in the whole of Cicero ' s extant oeuvre. 35o be compared with the pater or parens philosophiae is definitely a great honour, 36 but we should not forget that in this passage, Cicero is praising their courage in the face of death, not making an overall judgement about their lives.
Cicero names Theramenes in other writings as well.It appears that the Romans of Cicero ' s time remembered Theramenes mostly as an accomplished orator. 37Cicero mentions him in such a context three times: in the second book of his De Oratore, Theramenes appears along with Critias and Lysias as a representative of the generation who came after Pericles, Alcibiades and Thucydides, and who retinebant illum Pericli sucum, sed erant paulo uberiore filo. 38Now we do not have reliable evidence for the date of birth of any of these men, 39 but it is clear that Pericles was at least a generation older than Alcibiades, and it is highly probable that Thucydides, Critias, Alcibiades, Theramenes, and Lysias were all born between 460 and 440. 40So Cicero ' s generational scheme is quite muddled.
In the third book of the same treatise, Theramenes is mentioned along with Themistocles and Pericles as orators who propter ... faciendi dicendique sapientiam florerent, 41 and one can hardly question the veracity of this statement.
Finally, in Brutus, Cicero labelled Theramenes along with Critias and Alcibiades as near contemporaries of Cleon, whose oratory can best be judged from the work of Thucydides, and then went on to criticise their style. 42Here the chronology is easier to accept than in De Oratore.
Before we examine the foundations of Cicero ' s aesthetic judgment, it is to be noted that he was not the only Roman who appreciated Theramenes ' style: according to Plutarch, Caesar in his Anticato praised Cicero ' s oratory and compared it with that of Pericles and Theramenes. 43he fame of Theramenes the orator is somewhat surprising in the face of another of Cicero ' s statements in the second book of De Oratore: multa Lysiae scripta sunt, nonnulla Critiae, de Theramene audimus.44 How can one praise Theramenes ' oratory without actually having read anything he wrote?Scholars have long ago rightly dismissed the tra-37 Contemporary Greek rhetoricians do not seem to have been interested in Theramenes.Dionysius of Halicarnassus mentions him only as a putative teacher of Isocrates (Dion.Hal. Isc. 1, 2, with cautious ὡς δέ τινες ἱστοροῦσι) and never discusses his style. Inthe 1 st century AD, Velleius Paterculus did not mention Theramenes in his overview of orators, but that hardly carries any weight, for he mentions no Greek apart from Isocrates (I, 16, 4).38 Cic.De orat.II, 93.39 The ancient tradition put Lysias ' date of birth in 459/8 (Dion.Hal. Ly. 1, 4; [Plut.]Mor.835c), but 445 seems more likely, see, e. g., Dover (1968: 28-43) or Todd (2007: 6-12); for a defence of an earlier date, see Schindel (1967) and more persuasively Verlinsky (2014: esp.158-177). 40If we would wish to make Thucydides the contemporary of Pericles, we would have had to take seriously the possibility that the historian of the Peloponnesian war is identical with the general active in the Samian war (Thuc.I, 117, 2), which is not very likely, see Samons (2016: 133).On the shaky foundation of the dramatic date of Plato ' s Charmides, Critias ' date of birth was assumed to be in c. 460 by Davies (1971: 327) and Nails (2002: 108-109 dition which made Theramenes author of rhetorical treatises, 45 and there is no reason to suppose Cicero read any of these.Nor can we deduce anything from an isolated remark of the 11 th -century Byzantine scholar John Doxapatres, who claimed that Theramenes wrote speeches only in the γένος ξυμβουλευτικόν.46 It seems more credible that Cicero ' s praise of Theramenes was based on Theramenes' speech as recorded by Xenophon in his Hellenica, 47 or more likely still on Thucydides ' brief statement that Theramenes was ἀνὴρ οὔτε εἰπεῖν οὔτε γνῶναι ἀδύνατος.48 We have seen that Cicero admired Theramenes ' courage in the face of death and considered him an accomplished orator.Cicero had his own reasons for sympathizing with an orator-politician who often changed allegiances in order to promote what he thought best for himself, and for his country.Yet Cicero also knew that Theramenes was one of the two leading figures among the thirty tyrants, and he repeatedly couples Theramenes with Critias, the worst tyrant of Athenian history.For this reason, I would hesitate to claim that "Cicero shows no ambivalence about Theramenes; he is unreservedly favorable." 49 I would prefer to say that Cicero would not have agreed with everything Theramenes did; but chose not to mention it.

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As a conclusion, how can we explain that Theramenes easily overshadowed the other three Athenian oligarchs?Athenian history might have been mentioned occasionally during political debates in Rome, 50 but the Romans did not usually invoke the Greeks as politicians worth imitating. 51Accordingly, they focused on the artistic achievements of Antiphon and Theramenes, on the book of dream-interpretation perhaps written by the former and on the moral exemplum furnished by the latter in the face of death.Cicero ' s contemporaries were not interested in trying to give an overall assessment of the Athenian oligarchs ' political careers.They had their own history to make.