order to seize the arms was given, and." It is clear from
Aristoph. "Acharn." 1050, that the citizens kept their weapons at
home. On the other hand, it was a custom not to come to any
meeting in arms. See Thuc. vi. 58. It seems probable that while
the men were being reviewed in the market-place and elsewhere, the
ruling party gave orders to seize their weapons (which they had
left at home), and this was done except in the case of the Three
Thousand. Cf. Arnold, "Thuc." II. 2. 5; and IV. 91.

The ground being thus cleared, as it were, and feeling that they had
it in their power to do what they pleased, they embarked on a course
of wholesale butchery, to which many were sacrificed to the merest
hatred, many to the accident of possessing riches. Presently the
question rose, How they were to get money to pay their guards? and to
meet this difficulty a resolution was passed empowering each of the
committee to seize on one of the resident aliens apiece, to put his
victim to death, and to confiscate his property. Theramenes was
invited, or rather told to seize some one or other. "Choose whom you
will, only let it be done." To which he made answer, it hardly seemed
to him a noble or worthy course on the part of those who claimed to be
the elite of society to go beyond the informers[8] in injustice.
"Yesterday they, to-day we; with this difference, the victim of the
informer must live as a source of income; our innocents must die that
we may get their wealth. Surely their method was innocent in
comparison with ours."

[8] See above.

The rest of the Thirty, who had come to regard Theramenes as an
obstacle to any course they might wish to adopt, proceeded to plot