In 405 BC, a junta of thirty oligarchs took control of Athens’ democracy. In short order, the Spartan-sponsored cadre, known as the “Thirty Tyrants,” consolidated its grip on Athens through a series of proscribed murders of potential political opponents, particularly targeting the wealthy and resident non-citizens. As many as 1,500 citizens, mostly once-powerful Athenian leaders who had resisted Spartan rule, may have been executed in the purges. The reign of terror (the most notorious of The Thirty, Critias, has been called history’s “first Robespierre”) was short-lived. In 403 BC, a campaign led by the exiled pro-democratic general Thrasybulus won Athens back from the oligarchs. The story thus far is a commonplace one from the ancient Mediterranean: someone takes power and then is removed. Big whoop.
In 403, however, the episode becomes unique and of profound significance for history. That year an amnesty was declared by the restored powers in democratic Athens; the amnesty protected former supporters of the Thirty. While Thrasybulus commanded the surviving oligarchs to relocate to Eleusis, a nearby town, where they were prevented from participating in politics, the Athenians otherwise resolved, essentially, to let bygones be bygones. Rather than permitting the trial or execution of the oligarchs, the amnesty stipulated that no crimes from the days of the Thirty could be brought to trial. Athenians were to avoid “remembering wrongs.” They were commanded by law “not to revisit past grievance.” The Athenian Amnesty, the first recorded agreement of its kind, would seem a remarkable document of reconciliation and transitional justice. There’s just one issue: it only lasted a year.
As a political idea, amnesty strikes very deeply at basic human anxieties and concerns. The merits and bounds of acceptable forgiveness in the political realm provoke us to ask very deep questions. When is it okay to forgive someone? How can you let people get away with committing a wrong against you, your friends, your family, or your country? What does it mean to move on? Twenty-four hundred years and nearly as many Geneva Conventions later, we are just as conflicted about how to approach this question.
When Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency in the wake of Watergate in 1974 (AD), his successor, former Vice President Gerald Ford, elected to grant him a “full, free, and absolute pardon.” While the American public had hardly forgiven Nixon for his CREEP-y crimes and distracting scandals, Ford believed that it was best for the country to turn the page on the Watergate Era. Legal scholars and political historians still debate whether Ford deserves credit for the pardon. Many Americans, who had been glued to the televised Watergate hearings but were approaching fatigue with the subject, viewed the decision as corrupt: after all, Ford hardly had to bite his own lip to pardon Nixon, who had elevated him to the Vice Presidency. While the Athenian reconcilers provided amnesty to the oligarchs in spite of the fact that the Thirty had murdered their friends and family, Ford had no reason to desire retribution against Nixon. Americans understood as such, and the pardon was seen by many as an unfair backroom deal, vindication for Tricky Dick.
In order for reconciliation to work, whether in a pardon or an amnesty, both sides (and neutral observers) must conclude that the bestower of forgiveness is fighting an internal instinct for revenge. When Charles II was restored to the throne of England in 1660, he issued the Breda Declaration, a pardon for actions committed by his enemies during the English Civil War and the ensuing Interregnum. Although the Parliamentarians had exiled him from England and executed his own father, Charles II resolved that his state needed to turn the page. His acts of indemnity helped restore a semblance of order and unity to a war-weary, divided population. It wasn’t perfect justice: some escaped regicides were tracked down (as far as North America) and executed, 17th-century Mossad-style. The bodies of Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton, leaders of the anti-royalists, were exhumed. But MPs who had voted to execute Charles I in the Rump Parliament were safe, and Cromwell’s sons were pardoned as well. Historians still debate the decision, but Charles II was wildly popular for it in his own time. England wanted the violence to end more than anything else.
To reconcile or not to reconcile: it’s an internal monologue in our politics today, both international and domestic. Donald Trump has promised to prosecute perceived political enemies in his second term, and has even suggested that he could use the military against political opponents. A favorable Supreme Court ruling has rendered much of that program legally permissible, should he choose to pursue it. He also plans to pardon himself for his Manhattan felony convictions and is expected to pardon many of the Jan. 6 rioters, whom he calls “patriots.” How will the public view such decisions? Will pardons now help us turn the page on an era of divisiveness and retribution? Almost certainly not. In fact, the American people (a majority of whom believe the Jan. 6 rioters deserve to face prison time) are even less likely to see Trump’s pardons and prosecutions as reconciliatory than Ford’s pardon of Nixon. Sometimes it is inappropriate to forget and forgive. In their worst, most insincere form, amnesties allow genuine criminals to walk free, and do nothing to stop them or their imitators from striking again.
But in their best form, when used in the historical situation that demands them, amnesties are one of the most powerful tools in statecraft and human relations. In their best form, amnesties stop conflict in its tracks. Unexpected shows of goodwill demand notice, even from the coldest of hearts. Might an amnesty for Russian sympathizers in eastern Ukraine, who may have been motivated by family concerns or financial desperation, help heal that divided region when the Russo-Ukrainian war finally ends? I don’t presume to know whether that would be appropriate, but it is more than worth thinking about when Zelensky and Putin meet at the negotiating table.
I mentioned at the beginning that the Athenians reneged on their own benevolent amnesty—the first in history—just a year after proposing it. Athenians stormed Eleusis, the oligarchic haven, and slaughtered tyrannical sympathizers. A new amnesty was instated afterwards. In 1949, a brutal civil war in modern Greece was fought between democratic and Communist factions. Over 150,000 people died, some at the ends of vicious death squads. “Memory wars” over the conflict consumed Greek politics for decades, and a memorial to the end of the war stands today in contemporary Athens. A towering abstraction of embracing figures, it is known, perhaps descriptively, or perhaps aspirationally, as the “Memorial of National Reconciliation.” Then and now, the Greeks know that forgiveness has always been the hardest of things, for people and for states. There is no guarantee of success in granting pardon or signing an amnesty; there is not even the promise that reconciling will make things better, not worse. But sometimes not trying is what is truly unforgivable.
by Zachary Partnoy
