Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens

4: Remembering Amnesty

∂ F R E M E M B E R I N G A M N E S T Y It is also worth remembering that, while our ancestors performed many fine deeds in war, not least of all will the city gain renown for the reconciliation. Although many cities could be found to have fought well in war, one could not find another city to have planned better than ours in civil war. Moreover, most accomplishments done at great risk are due to luck, but no one could o√er another reason for our moderation towards each other than our wisdom. isoc. 18.31–32 T he civil war shattered Athenians’ notions about their community. With little resistance from the rest of the population, conspirators seized power. They carried out a brutal reign, and when democratic exiles began their campaign to remove the oligarchs, they received only modest support from the rest of the citizens. After all that, Sparta forced the democrats to accept an agreement that allowed the collaborators to participate in the restored democracy, thus sowing the seeds for dissension, division, and conflict. Although ancient testimony presents the reconciliation as a fait accompli, the legislation enacted after the restoration of the democracy and the disputes heard in the courts reveal that there were still significant disagreements that disrupted the peace among the citizens. Yet Athens did not sink again into civil war. We cannot fully appreciate how the Athenians were able to maintain the peace until we consider how they remembered the past and how they fostered images of defeat and civil war in civic discourse that promoted reconciliation, in spite of the anger and animosity that remained in the community. The success of the reconciliation depended on the ability of the Athenians to create narratives about the past which rea≈rmed their beliefs in the stability of the democracy, the loyalty of the citizens, and the unity of the demos. Through civic discourse, they distanced themselves from the Thirty while simultaneously constructing a continuity with the democracy of the fifth century. π∏ F C I V I C M E M O RY amnesty as a cultural construct The wording of the reconciliation agreement is startling—‘‘not to remember past wrongs’’—as if it were possible to mandate a collective forgetting and to enforce such a prohibition; even if it were possible, it is hard to imagine how this erasing of the past would insure the success of the restored democracy. Even more di≈cult to explain is how the democratic exiles could agree to terms that forced them to abandon the bene- fits of victory: revenge, retribution, and the dissemination of their version of the civil war. We could dismiss these questions by reducing me mnesikakein to mean simply that oligarchic collaborators were granted impunity for o√enses committed during the civil war. As shown in Chapters 2 and 3, the Athenians were prohibited only from initiating certain types of legal procedures. They were not literally prohibited from speaking about the past. Still, it is remarkable that they defined such prohibitions with the term me mnesikakein, the meaning of which is even retained in the English derivative, ‘‘amnesty.’’ By exploring the cultural significance of this phrase, we can better understand why amnesty had such a strong emotional appeal to the Athenians (regardless of whether they adhered to it) and why they had such confidence in the reconciliation, even though it was imposed on them. Of course, 403 was not the first time that me mnesikakein was used to denote amnesty. In 424, some Megarians began negotiations with the Athenian army in order to prevent their fellow citizens from restoring oligarchic exiles (Thuc. 4.66). Their plans, however, backfired (4.67–73). The exiles returned to Megara, and some who had participated in the plot with the Athenians fled. The rest swore oaths to act in the best interest of the city and not to remember past wrongs. But afterward, the exiles established a narrow oligarchy and compelled the people to condemn some one hundred Megarians who were their personal enemies to death on the grounds that they had collaborated with the Athenians (4.74). Another amnesty occurred in 422 when the Athenians put an end to the rebellion of the Bottiaeans. Under the terms of the agreement, the generals, Council, and other magistrates promised not to remember wrongs (IG I≥ 76 l. 15). In 411 the democratic faction of Samos, with...