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This is a lovely map I found of the Athenian agora during this era. There would've been houses like Simon's on the bottom left all over the surrounding neighborhoods, but this is focused on all the important public buildings in the area.
We are in the Tholos (Dome) in the center left. The prytany worked, ate, & sacrificed there during the full 36-day month of their service. At least a third, chosen by that day's caretaker, also slept there. The public slave who watched the standard weights & measures also stayed here year round.
The Bouleuterion (Senate House) nearby is where the actual legislation we provide gets threshed out for presentation to the full Assembly on Pnyx Hill every 10 days.
The Old Bouleuterion nearby was used as the national archives. At the same time, it was also converted into the Metroön (House of the Mother) recently, since the Athenians thought that the Plague of Pericles had been caused by their officials beating a missionary priest of Cybele to death for disturbing the public order. The plague was eventually ended by the intervention of the idol Apollo Alexikakos (Apollo, Averter of Sh*t), which was eventually housed in the Temple of Apollo Patroön (Apollo the Father, since as the father of Ios he was also the father of the Ionian peoples, which included the Athenians) currently under construction beside the Stoa of Zeus.
The Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios (Zeus the Free) commemorated the Greek victory over the Persians at Plataea & was decorated with the shields of Athenians who died in battle.
The Poikile Stoa (Painted Stoa) commemorated that and other Athenian victories, like Marathon, in huge and gorgeous murals and was decorated with the arms & other trophies of defeated enemies.
The Royal Stoawas the seat of the king archon [seer] and housed the public copies of the laws & the oath stone upon which we all pledged to vote at least once a day lest we be hit by rocks falling from the heavens.
The altar across the street was dedicated to Aphrodite Urania (Heavenly Aphrodite), the less sexy one.
The Altar of the 12 Gods was obviously dedicated to the Olympian pantheon: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Athena, Ares, Aphrodite, Hermes, and the other one. It was the kilometer zero marker & also the city's most sacred place of sanctuary. Buildings A & B in the northeast were the courts, which involved juries of 500 or so men listening to cases that needed to be argued and decided within a day without judges or other interference.
The Mint in the southeast was for the bronze coinage.
The Fountain House beside it was the area's public water supply.
The South Stoa included the offices of the officials in charge of weights & measures and a bunch of public dining rooms.
The Rectangular Peribolos was the Aiakeion, the shrine dedicated to the Aeginetan hero Aeacus. Aeacus had been a wise & just king, became one of the judges of the underworld, and was an ancestor of Alexander the Great through his mom, but the important bit is that he averted a great famine. As such, the Athenians built this shrine when the Pythia at Delphi told them it was the best way to avert a famine of their own. They subsequently used his shrine as the public granary & the site where legal decisions were publically displayed. The Eponymous Heroes was a long wall used for public announcements and topped by bronze statues of the ten Attic heroes chosen by the Pythia to be the forefathers of the ten tribes established by Cleisthenes: King Erechtheus (founder of Athens), King Aegeus (Theseus's father), King Pandion, Leos, Acamas (younger son of Theseus), King Oeneus (introduced wine), King Cecrops II, King Hippothoön, Ajax the Great, and Antiochus (son of Heracles). Theoretically, we're all from the same tribe since we're all serving on the prytany together. The small buildings nearby include the home of Simon the Cobbler, right on the edge of the agora, which was where Socrates would teach the boys too young to go into the agora itself.
The Strategion was the shrine of the hero Strategos (Army Leader), used as the offices of the ten strategoi who commanded Athens's army and navy.
The Kolonos Agoraios (Agora Hill) just means what it says on the tin.
The Hephaisteion was the temple of Hephaestus and Athena Ergane (Athena the Worker), patrons of Athens' craftsmen. It was also called the Theseion because it was richly decorated with scenes from the lives of Hercules and Theseus.
What we're sure the base of the Tholos and Old Assembly Hall looked like, before the latter's conversion into a temple of Cybele
θόλος gets translated dome most of the time, but at this point it was really a round building with a conical roof. The first Athenian one was taken out by a fire and rebuilt c. 470 BC. Since that was before Pericles and his public works projects, it's just a fairly plain limestone and mudbrick hut about 55 Attic feet in diameter with six columns near the middle to hold up the roof. Each of the ten Athenian tribes provided fifty men to work as prytaneis, one set for each of the ten months of the Attic calendar. One man was chosen by lot to be daily caretaker; everyone else usually worked one of three 17-man shifts, except during emergencies when everyone stayed put. Each shift ate in the prytany at public expense, and the night shift slept there.
Floorplan, including Roman-era porch, with probable location of shrines, vote boxes, or other large furniture.
It was mostly spared during the sacking of the city by the Heruli in AD 267, but was still gone by late antiquity and only its foundation remains. Because of that, there's some minor controversy among archaeologists whether the roof went all the way to the top and the building included small windows
or whether the summit of the roof was open for smoke and air, removing the need for windows
On the one hand, the building's nickname was the Skias ("Strawhat"), suggesting the first design. On the other, practical considerations and the surviving roof tiles seem to suggest the second.
An artist's depiction of one of the Leontid prytaneis [Aedan777] being murdered (late 5th c. BC)
[The First Night]
It seemed like a promising idea. With a resumption of the war inevitable, now was the time to reach out, strengthening alliances with allies like Ithaca and Samos while turning Spartan friends like Macedon against them. The general Lamachus and the demagogue Hyperbolus were able to convince the Assembly not only to welcome foreign embassies but to welcome their noble ambassadors as honorary Athenian citizens. The idea was that these leaders of their communities would gain deep ties with the children of Theseus and deep respect for their method of government. With first-hand experience of the superiority of democracy, they might even advocate its introduction abroad. Surely, this would be all for the good, for when had one democracy ever attacked another, except for failure to pay its dues to the Delian League?
Things quickly got out of hand. First, Hyperbolus took advantage of the legislation to change the tribal affiliation of some of the old demes, gerrymandering his rivals' political bases out of existence. Socrates found himself thrown into the Leontid tribe with the foreigners, prompting him to praise the Athenian model loudly and often, asking them if legislation in their homelands were powerful enough to change their ancestors. Next, some of the ambassadors began to proclaim themselves the reincarnations of their own great ancestors: suddenly Herodotus, Odysseus, and Pythagoras were buying figs in the agora, arguing with cart drivers in the Panathenaic Way, and heckling orators in the city courts.
On their first day as members of the prytany, the steering committee for the Assembly, these new Leontids threw the city into a tumult. In response to rumors of unrest, they fell back on their experience from their own countries, advocating undemocratic measures like strongmen, a vastly empowered city watch, and a network of informants and spies to investigate questionable citizens. No one could believe such measures were yet necessary, & Hyperbolus began to fear for a coming ostracism for the failure of his pet project.
That night, the foreigners' quick and violent impulses were proved horrifically accurate. Some enemy of the state assaulted the unarmed members of the prytany staying overnight in the Thomos. In the morning, their 22 hacked and mutilated bodies were discovered, some still clutching the silver idol of Apollo. The Assembly howled for blood and quickly passed several of the proposals from the day before, even including trial by combat for whoever might be responsible for this great crime and sacrilege. (In the confusion, the prytany also snuck in some legislation exempting themselves from anticorruption legislation, allowing them to exploit their commercial connections during their time of service.)
On the bright side, a new door was knocked through the north wall of the Tholos and a kitchen set up beside it. Members of the prytany were still expected to bring their own couches and pillows if they didn't intend to eat standing up or sitting on their benches.
Proposals 00-001, 003, 004, 005, 006, 007, 009 pass
Free food is provided for the committee members
A doctor has been hired
Priests can scan
Apprentices have been hired
GM-established guilds are activated
Some villagers have become hunters
Some wolves have become brutal
Aedan777 the villager hunted
JK Stirner urging the members to kill themselves, good with the bad
[The Next Day]
At hearing of the massacre, Athens descended into chaos. Some began to walk around armed, others fled to their country manors. The Assembly met immediately. With the prytany including this year's king archon and polemarch as well as the most renown historians and thinkers in the city, its members were charged to lead the investigation into the murders.
After the acolytes had assiduously cleaned away the blood from every corner of the Tholos, after the priests had covered it again in sacrificial blood to thoroughly appease the vengeful spirits of the dead, the members argued violently among themselves. Some were so horrorstruck they urged the entire body to commit suicide, innocent with the guilty, to protect the city from the wrathful Furies. Some of the newcomers proposing still more radical solutions, vastly expanding the city's guard and giving them over to a temporary tyrant on the model of the Romans' dictator. The fine recent example of Cincinnatus even caused some to second the idea. The embassy of the Segestans arrived but, even with the bribes they were able to offer thanks to the 5th law passed the day before, there was no time to hear them out about whatever was going on in Sicily.
In the end, having found nothing definitive but needing a head to give the mob waiting in the Agora, they decided it was best to trump up charges against the one suggesting everyone be killed, good with the bad. Despite the fact that he was an innocent citizen willing to give his life for the greater good, JK Stirner [LatinKaiser] was given over to the city courts. The trial was swift and no exile or hemlock was permitted to him. He was lashed with metal bands to a tympanon at his neck, arms, and legs. Rather than leave him for the customary 10 days of starvation and exposure, the mob was so incensed that some beat him with cudgels as other strangled him to death by violently tightening the neck band.
When that was done, some joined the funeral processions in the evening and lay wreaths at the tomb of the unknown senator [Aedan777]. Everyone returned to stay in the Tholos through the night. The kitchen staff, sadly, were among those who fled the city rather than deal with whatever had happened during the night. The prytaneis all shared bags of dried and fresh figs provided by the Segestans instead.
Proposal 01-009 passes
LatinKaiser the villager was lynched
A photograph of the cursed plane tree as it appears in the modern Agora
[The Second Night]
The next morning, the body of Alexander the Great [Hax] was found hanging lifelessly from one of the plane trees added to the Agora under Kimon. Once it was cut down and the ritual purifications performed, most people shrugged their shoulders and considered it a personal act, possibly from guilt over his votes the day before. The teenaged Plato, however, wondered how he had been able to hang himself so high without any assistance, especially with his hands tied behind his back and his head covered as it was. His father boxed his ears, told him never to mind what suicides got up to, and to get back to his math homework. This surely was going to be hard to explain to the Macedonians, though...
Critias leaving Athens, bitterly swearing his return
[The Next Week]
With the execution of the barbaric mass murderer JK Stirner, things should have settled down. People certainly came back to town to desecrate the corpse still on public display, but as they did so they began to talk and talk turned to rumor, rumor into theories of conspiracy and dark cabals. Many began to demand who Stirner's accomplices had been, as he must have had some—at the very least to have kept some of the prytaneis from fleeing his blade. Others—including many within the prytany itself—proclaimed his innocence with growing surety and demanded to know who had used Stirner as their patsy.
The prytany—though gravely weakened from their overindulgence on figs the day before—returned to their offices. Nothing else for it. They debated quietly among themselves over what dangers real and hidden might still lurk within the city, how much of the mobs' slanders were simply idle talk or repayment of old debts, how much roast lamb they might fit into a single pita. Between delicious sacrifices and rites intended to return the favor of the gods, they also discussed procedural changes and dispensed modest tokens of gratitude to those who had proved able in the crisis.
One man demanded an end to any discussion apart from the murders and even indicted a fourth of his fellows for obstructing public business for discussing public business. They had turned on the one advocating their suicide the day before, and now calling for their execution was no more popular. Still worse was the base greed with which Critias [Euroo7] sought to use the now-passed crisis to draw power to himself, claiming royal rights and purple robes to be paid at the public's expense. There were still enough true democrats to know to turn on one such as this and before the day was out he was called to the Heliaia to answer charges of tyranny.
His speech in his defense was short and to the point. He had no defense and been planning to install himself as Athens' tyrant the entire time. The traitor gave the audience the fig and then turned on his heels. As was his right, he abandonned his fixed property and left for exile. His mercenary forces and warm welcome in the Macedonian court threatened that the penalty might not turn out to be life long.
Proposal 02-004 passes: Procedural changes of no real importance
Proposal 02-010 passed
Proposal 02-012 passed: GAs enabled
Proposal 02-013 passed: OEO enabled
Euroo7 the Euroo7ist traitor lynched
Pheidippides attempting to convince the mob that they were too stupid to rule themselves
[The Third Night]
That night, the king archon visited the royal stoa to check over his paperwork, seeking anyone who might have leant Critias the funds needed for his plans. He found nothing until he left his office, where a scroll lay beside the door. Reading it by torchlight, he was awestruck to find that the corrupted youth Pheidippides [Jeray2000] had taken the superiority of the philosophers so deeply into his heart that he wished to overthrow the Democracy. Not to install a tyrant like Critias, mind, but to establish a totalitarian Republic guided by the best men. The criteria for membership to such a club seemed to be being Pheidippides or one of his friends. Confronted immediately, the boy bravely denied nothing but began to beat the archon for having possession of stolen goods.
His 'defense speech' the next day was a three-hour long spectacle of the teen, dressed in his father's armor, berating the citizens in his jury as unworthy to speak to him, let alone judge him. Even his brothers in the Aegaletan phratery were not spared his ridicule, and they joined the rest in calling for his death as atraitorto the city. He prefered to drink hemlock in jail, his suicide allowing his friends to inherit his lands instead of it becoming forfeit upon his execution.
Jeray2000, Republican traitor & member of the Aegaleus Phratery, hunted
The Segestan ambassador explaining the will of the gods to the Oracle of Delphi
[The Next Day]
The initial feeling was that Athens must have fallen far from the gods' favor to be struck by so much unrest in such a short time. The city did not have the worlds' greatest orators for no purpose, however. Ten minutes after Critias had figged them all, rhetors and sophists were being sent out on the fastest ships in the Athenian fleet to spin this. It was not that the city of sycophants, whores, and upstart peasants had finally got what the gods had always intended them to have. Instead, it was a blessing. The cursed and condemned man who had told them all to kill themselves had actually been a herald of the gods, the 22 dead prytaneis accursèd traitors, and the uncovering of Critias and Pheidippides' twin plots the very protection of Athena herself.
Still, best to tie up any loose ends. Despite the warweariness of most of the Athenian people, the Segestans had found a strong well of support among the rich, who realized a nice and distant war would both distract the mob and provide a convenient exile (at best) for the more dangerous members of their own class. The Segestans saw what was needed all around and proposed to fully fund an embassy to the Pythia at Delphi. The gods always seemed to shine their divine radiance brightest on those carrying bags of gold into her treasury, and this was not an exception. Loaded up on hemp, the priestess heard the questions of the Athenians and told them
As you say, the gods bless the virtuous in all things and for this reason will Athens so warmly remember these last few days.
and
Your brother has been bitten by a rabid dog. Protect him! this message brought to you by the segestan council for military tourism
and The gorgon headless lies, but its head lies pressed hard against thy breastplate, O Athens.
Everyone was so busy wondering what the hell she was talking about and thinking about how beautiful Segesta must be this time of year that it wasn't until they got home that they realized they'd lost Conan somewhere.
Proposal 03-007 passes: Psychics enabled
Emperor Ike the psychic villager was lynched
[The Fourth Night]
As they passed Eleusis, they also realized that the friendly ghost Herodotus [Dedonus], whose racy stories about invisible lovers and headless African cannibals they had so enjoyed these past few days, was gone as well. The priests at the sanctuary said their prayers and sought the understanding of the gods, but there was no guidance they could give. The father of history was once again only a memory.
Dedonus the villager & brother of the Aegaletan Phratery hunted
Also, Ike wasn't really the psychic
Sike!
Tzak Donaghy speaking before the few members of the Prytany able to be summoned on such short notice
[The Next Day]
The emergency seemed fully past and a great many legislators decided to enjoy the fine weather. The rich in their litters, the poor on their sandals, they journeyed down the Long Wall to visit the beaches near Piraeus. Already, the poets were testing out odes and rumors about the superhuman barbarian who had walked amongst them and saved the city from the treachery of Critias and Pheidippides before being called off to greater things. In time, what people remembered or invented of Conan would make him a second Hercules, his cult rivaling Mithras for popularity among the Roman legions. Graffiti listing the Three Great Things, crying Valor et Ultio, or stating Lupus non minus lupus was carved into the walls of temples and basilicas from Gibraltar to the Euphrates.
At the time, however, people knew him as just a man and Pythagoras knew that, as the Pythia had said, danger still lay close by. He tried to rouse the people of Athens to aid their allies, but there was no interest. He tried to rouse them to the traitors that remained in their midst, but there was open hostility. A small quorum of assemblymen had already begun distributing pot shards so they could hurl him out of the city for the next few years when messangers burst in with news from the archons: Pythagoras had been right.
Pheidippides had not been acting alone after all. The corrupt youth had himself corrupted a noble named Dracontide [K-59]. Their agreement about the need for the eupatrid upper classes to rule the mob and end democratic rule bonded them. Dracontide claimed his right to trial by combat but was beheaded by Joxer before he had finished the sentence. He had been waiting to do that for so long, you have no idea. Out of everyone filing back into the city in a confused daze, no one understood how Tzak Donaghy [Sleepyhead] could have learned any of this. He had been pointedly napping in the shade of the agora's plane trees for days without being involved. He confessed that it all had come to him in a dream, and everyone understood. The gods work in mysterious ways...
For their part, the Segestans threw up their hands in disgust and hoped that they would be able to convince the Spartans to join their cause on the cheap. It turns out their promises of Sicily's riches had been completely empty and they couldn't possibly afford another trip to Delphi to bring the Spartans on board. In the north, however, the claims of the pretender tyrant-in-exile Critias and the blood of Alexander was calling the Macedonians to arms.
K-59 the Republican traitor was lynched
Dawn breaking over the Acropolis, as seen looking southeast across the Areopagus from near the Agora
[The Fifth Night]
On the fifth night, nothing happened.
But surely Dracontide hadn't been the last of this...
The borders of Macedon after the fall of Amphipolis, controlling all of northern Greece from its base in the fertile valley surrounding its capital Pella
[The Next Week]
The north had been held by Macedon's king Perdiccas II in the eight years since the fall of Amphipolis to the Macedonians and the Spartan general Brasidas, who had been killed in action by Alexios. The Athenians had managed to force Perdiccas back into their camp only a few years later but now there was an open rift and a pretender to assist. The Macedonians have suspended all sales of timber to Athens, and in a few years will have allowed the entire fleet to rot out without repair. This cannot be allowed to stand, least of all because Thucydides' Thracian gold mines have also been seized.
Rather than uniting against the threat, however, the Athenians had dissolved into factions. They couldn't even agree to a public celebration for Tzak Donaghy's help in rallying the city against Dracontide. The main focus was a xenophobic purge of possible Spartan allies, particularly the plain-spoken Alexios. A few held a private drinking party (symposion) in his honor, which he appreciated until the male entertainment started. He had been holding some other information back, as one does til it's most useful. Analyze, Strategize, Succeed. He couldn't think of a more useful moment than this and suddenly announced that the Texcocan prince Nezahualcoyotl [Capibara] was yet another traitor. Without a presentation of evidence, everyone leapt from their couches and hastily assembled a court to indict and try him. Hell, it had worked out last time, hadn't it?
The next day Nezahualcoyotl was thrown alive into the Barathron, the pit of despair. His dream of overthrowing Athens and using its fleets and resources to reconquer his homeland far across the wine-dark sea had come to an end.
Capibara the spiritually-attuned Capibarite traitor was lynched
Diogenes cheerfully entertaining one of Athens' philosophical groupies
[The Sixth Night]
Diogeneshad never slept in the Tholos even during the height of the crisis. He had his favorite overturned wine urn (pithos) off the Agora and he had his straw matted just right and he'd be damned if he was going to let a vagrant or stray ruin it for him. Going home this evening, he shrugged his shoulders and stepped over the corpse of the doctor the Assembly had hired. Diogenes had found him perfectly honest and forthright citizen at all times, but despite being a foreign loon who claimed to be psychic and the reincarnation of Odysseus [Chieron] he had still managed to be soooo profoundly boring, never supporting the needful reforms to keep the Prytany from just turning itself round in circles. At least bled like this, he was making the walk more interesting and wouldn't need to be prescribed any leeches when the next overpriced quack found him. Diogenes found his way to his corner and urn and slept like the dead.
In the morning, one of the members of the Watchman's Guild stopped by the Tholos to report that Diogenes[Marty99] would not be attending the day's session. Certainly, he was usually a peaceable enough citizen but he was well known as a public nuissance as well. Around the seventh hour (reckoned from sunset as such things were), a patrol near his urn had found him snoring a bit too loudly and, as he violently resisted his arrest for disturbing public order, they had been ultimately been forced to beat him to death. In the interest of protecting the good name of the guild, one of the rhetors they had on retainer also applied for a posthumous indictment of the philosopher on charges of interfering with the orderly running of the city government, seeing as he consistently wasted the Prytany and Assembly's time on the same consistently defeated or ignored pieces of legislation.
Chieron the incorruptible psychic doctor was hunted
The Watchman's Guild assassinated Marty99 the villager
Perdiccas had begun the war as a Spartan ally. Now he had become one again, through not for lack of trying to avoid it: Brasidas's men had gone brigand and plundered his fields and supply wagons after Lyncestis. A corps of Illyrian reïnforcements had turned traitor, the green Macedonian troops had believed rumors of a still larger host following close behind, and the Spartans had been left to fend for themselves, which they did by raiding their supposed ally. Still, his anger at Athens' betrayal of Alexander was greater, as was the profit to be made by installing Critias. He tried a sample campaign at first. Despite the obvious need for greater training and better generals, it had gone well enough: Lycophron had been installed as tyrant of Pherae, a chokepoint that turned Thessaly into a patchwork of Macedonian and Spartan clients. With northern timber sales halted and Scythian grain shipments interdicted, Athens' fleet needed to act or be lost. The only reason the recently-restored democrats in Argos still held on as allies was from their own fear of Spartan reprisals upon surrender.
The only ray of light in this miasma was that the Segestans had found an impoverished seer who had proved able to convince the Spartans' of Castor and Pollux's blessing for only a fraction of the Pythia's rates. Hoping that proving themselves truer allies than the Athenians would bring over the rest of Athens' allies, dependencies, and slaves, they had taken the majority of their fleet on an expedition to Sicily. Syracuse was offering terms for an Athenian alliance in case the Spartans had an eye for anything besides narrow support of the Segestans.
In the meantime, Athens sputtered on and had its seasons and festivals. Aristophanes won the better Dionysia with The Spoon, a parody of the petty tyrants and philosophers he had helped defeat. Tzak and his fellows remained the pride of the Leontid tribe and were unprecidentedly invited to repeat their terms as prytaneis in the new year. Along the way, however, the general Thucydides [Panzer Commader]—saddened that he'd never gotten to see the spy reports which had been the only reason he'd agreed to serve the Prytany and ruined by the Macedonians' seizure of his ancestral lands—and the immigrant Pythagoras [Avernite]—who deserves a much better and better-written send-off than this will be—were both brought up on completely fabricated charges of embezzlement of public funds and dismissed from public life. They had both been loyal citizens to the last, fat lot of good it did them.
Avernite the villager was lynched
Panzer Commader the guardian angel was lynched
[The Seventh Night]
The highlight of the year had been the steady work of the king archon in uncovering the remaining members of Pheidippides and Dracontide's conspiracy. It was finally realized that the funds had not come from the choregosAntimachos but from his playwright Aristophanes [Alynkio]. Although his Clouds had lampooned Socratic sophistry and arrogance, in his old age he had become something of a philosopher himself. He was quite romantic when it came to love, weaving a myth of mankinds' predecessors who had left us all with a missing piece, but rather more hard-nosed towards the imbecility on display in the Assemblies. He, too, had been a Republican traitor to Athens but—as many enemies as he had accumulated over the years—he would not be allowed to join Critias in causing trouble in exile. Let out along the road to Sparta, he was set upon by 'highwaymen' near Eleusis and left in a shallow grave.
Alynkio the spiritually-attuned Republican traitor & Aegaletic guild member was hunted
[ ATTACH=big ] PICTURE [ /ATTACH ] Caption relating the picture to the game
[The Next Time Unit]
Descriptive text with colored names.
Capage the brutal sorceror's apprentice was lynched
Tamius23 the incorruptible brutal seer was brutalized
Capage the deceased brutal sorceror's apprentice's corpse was brutalized
MarcoRossolini the villager was lynched
[ ATTACH=big ] 2nd PICTURE [ /ATTACH ] A 2nd caption relating this new picture to the game
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Ironhide G1 the Sorceror was lynched
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[Night 10]
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This space intentionally left blank.
Post no bills.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs: when he first appears above ground he is a protector. Yes, that is quite clear.
How then does a protector begin to change into a tyrant? Clearly when he does what the man is said to do in the tale of the Arcadian temple of Lycaean Zeus. What tale?
The tale is that he who has tasted the entrails of a single human victim minced up with the entrails of other victims is destined to become a wolf. Did you never hear it? Oh, yes.
And the protector of the people is like him. Having a mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen. By false accusation he brings them into court and murders them, making men's lives disappear and with unholy tongue and lips tasting the blood of his fellow citizens. Some he kills and others he banishes, at the same time hinting at the abolition of debts and the partition of lands. And after this, what will be his destiny?Must he not either perish at the hands of his enemies, or from being a man become a wolf—that is, a tyrant? Inevitably.
And if they are unable to expel him or to get him condemned to death by a public accusation, they conspire to assassinate him. Yes, he said, that is their usual way.
Then comes the famous request for a bodyguard, which is the device of all those who have got thus far in their tyrannical career—"Let not the people's friend", as such men say, "be lost to them". Exactly.
The people readily assent; all their fears are for him—they have none for themselves. Very true.
And when a man who is wealthy and is also accused of being an enemy of the people sees this, then, my friend, as the oracle said to Croesus, By pebbly Hermus' shore he flees and rests not and is not ashamed to be a coward. And quite right too, said he, for if he were, he would never be ashamed again.
But if he is caught he dies. Of course.
And he, the protector of whom we spoke, is to be seen, not "larding the plain" with his bulk, but himself the overthrower of many, standing up in the chariot of State with the reins in his hand, no longer protector, but tyrant absolute. No doubt, he said.
And now let us consider the happiness of the man, and also of the State in which a creature like him is generated. Yes, he said, let us consider that.
At first, in the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he salutes every one whom he meets; --he to be called a tyrant, who is making promises in public and also in private! liberating debtors, and distributing land to the people and his followers, and wanting to be so kind and good to every one! Of course, he said.
But when he has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. To be sure.
Has he not also another object, which is that they may be impoverished by payment of taxes and thus compelled to devote themselves to their daily wants and therefore less likely to conspire against him? Clearly.
And if any of them are suspected by him of having notions of freedom and of resistance to his authority, he will have a good pretext for destroying them by placing them at the mercy of the enemy and for all these reasons the tyrant must be always getting up a war. He must.
Now he begins to grow unpopular. A necessary result.
Then some of those who joined in setting him up and who are in power speak their minds to him and to one another, and the more courageous of them cast in his teeth what is being done. Yes, that may be expected.
And the tyrant, if he means to rule, must get rid of them; he cannot stop while he has a friend or an enemy who is good for anything. He cannot.
And therefore he must look about him and see who is valiant, who is high-minded, who is wise, who is wealthy; happy man, he is the enemy of them all and must seek occasion against them whether he will or no, until he has made a purgation of the State. Yes, he said, and a rare purgation.
Yes, I said, not the sort of purgation which the physicians make of the body; for they take away the worse and leave the better part, but he does the reverse. If he is to rule, I suppose that he cannot help himself.
What a blessed alternative, I said:—to be compelled to dwell only with the many bad, and to be by them hated, or not to live at all! Yes, that is the alternative.
And the more detestable his actions are to the citizens the more satellites and the greater devotion in them will he require? Certainly.
And who are the devoted band, and where will he procure them? They will flock to him, he said, of their own accord, if he pays them.
De Chatillôn the one-eye-open cursed-villager cum Republican-traitor was lynched
Ramius3443 the villager & member of the Watchmen's Guild was hunted
I'll be doing a full epilogue for the scenario in a bit but so the full gloating and congratulations and recriminations can commence
JOPIIST PACK VICTORY
Hyperbolus [Jopi] the terrified traitor, now tyrant of Athens
Jack Donaghy [Sleepyhead] the cursed villager turned traitor, now general & CEO of General Athenian
Plato's criticisms of Hyperbolus were bitter and sharp, written in exile following his master Socrates' suicide. Eupolis' comedy The Grasshoppers imagined an alternative history where Hyperbolus had been ostracized early on, the Athenians had lost themselves in Sicily, and Socrates still ended up murdered by the democrats... but in the real timeline it was owing to his continued dissatisfaction with rule under a tyrant who didn't listen to him. The utterly charmed golden age that unfolded under the demogogue, however, blunted most of the philosophers' attacks.
Hyperbolus's plan had required both great daring and great patience. Having brought in his main opponents and potential foreign allies into the seat of power, he precipitated a bloodbath which he allowed them to blame on one another. He laid low and stayed quiet, supporting popular legislation but preventing his rivals from gaining any real power. He further participated in the condemnation of every single one of those rivals aside from Klaus Teuber—who managed to kill the king archon Phormio by dumb luck... thanks to the provisions for trial by combat which Hyperbolus had quietly helped support. The great coup had been helping the Prytany avoid doing anything in Macedonia after Critias had killed their prince: the barbarian who created the post of city press secretary for himself, Jack Donaghy, lost his shirt on his investments in the gold and timber there and was more than willing to join Hyperbolus's new regime at the right price. In for an obol, in for a tetradrachm. With his black belt in Six Sigma and existing contacts among the city elite, Jack was able to guide them by the nose even while simultaneously admitting the complete guilt of his new master. If they had tympanized the guy anyway, he could still pocket all the Persian gold he'd been handed as seed money; in the end, he joined Hyperbolus in power, naming himself CEO of General Athenian—a conglomerate consolidating the forfeited investments of their rivals into an entertainment, shipping, and olive oil powerhouse.
But the news wasn't all bad. Generous bounties and generous terms with the Persians (ending all aid to Ionian rebels on the Anatolian mainland) meant that Critias's villa was surrounded and torched. His brave last stand was flooded with a rain of arrows, and the threat of his return was over. Without Athenian interference, the Spartans had limited themselves solely to beating back the Segestans' neighbors, leaving Sicily to its existing colonies and counting themselves lucky to gain an alliance with the Syracusians. That had worked fine until it involved them in a protracted war with the Tyrian mercantile colony at Carthage, which surprised and eviscerated a fleet under Mindarus off Malta. Similarly, the regime that Sparta and Macedon had been happy to install at Pherae had proven far too capable. Lycophron united Thessaly under their noses and then thumbed his own, signing alliances with Athens after Jack managed to starve out the Spartan garrison at Decelea by undercutting their suppliers and then tying up the actual provision of provisions in temple rituals and contractual disputes for months. The closer had been his negotiation of nominal but secret fealty to the Persians: the flood of cash allowed Hyperbolus to flip Thebes and push Thessaly into Macedonia, recovering Amphipolis and permitting the rebuilding of the fleet.
Sparta was starved and burning within a decade, and the Athenians had made their peace with the new regime even before it pulled off the hostile takeover of Persia in a confederation with Jason of Pherae. But that's a story for another time...
