Critias of Athens-1

CRITIAS OF ATHENS
Christopher Moore, Christopher C. Raymond
INTRODUCTION
Critias of Athens (c. 460–404/3 BCE), a relative of Plato’s and scion of an elite family that
counted Solon among its kin, is now best remembered for three things: an intellectual association
with Socrates that ended unhappily; authorship of the so-called “Sisyphus” fragment, among the
earliest extant presentations of atheism, and thus a leading instance of the naturalizing
explanations typical of the Sophistic movement; and leadership in the so-called Thirty Tyrants,
the murderous oligarchy that eliminated the democracy, perhaps with the aim to Spartanize the
Athenian polis, in the year following the Peloponnesian War. The last seems to have
overshadowed his many other intellectual and cultural accomplishments, as Aristotle and
Philostratus suggest. Critias wrote works of almost unequalled generic variety: elegiac poetry,
lectures, tragedies (perhaps), analyses of political constitutions (maybe in both poetry and prose),
and even proto-dialogues (conceivably). He had a complex and enduring friendship with
Alcibiades, a nexus of Athenian political, civic, and military life. Plato treats Critias as a central
interlocutor in several dialogues—perhaps more frequently than anyone else besides Socrates.
He made statements in natural philosophy, on the nature of soul and the relationship between
cognition and perception. The extensive scholarship on Critias deals, in the majority case, with
late-5th-century Athenian politics and Euripides’ fragmentary plays, to which ancient authors
attributed the dramatic fragments thought to be his. He is less frequently discussed in studies of
the Sophists, Presocratics, Socrates, or Plato—according to some scholars, rightly so. But he is
not absent from those sub-disciplines, if in a scattered way, and synthetic studies of Critias,
taking account at once of his political, literary, and philosophical life, have been produced over
the past two centuries, especially in the form of dissertations. There is currently no monograph in
English available. This bibliography provides a guide to the materials known about and from
Critias; the problems specific to the various witnesses and texts; solutions offered by the
scholarship; and the shape that future investigations might take. Since Critias is a figure known
only incidentally by most students of classical antiquity it is worth listing here the “hot center” of
debate. Why did Critias become an active member of the “Thirty” oligarchs, and what did he
hope to bring about in Athens? How secure is the attribution of the dramatic fragments to him,
and what might they reveal about his ethical or scientific commitments? Is he the character
presented in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, or is that his grandfather? What is Plato’s attitude
toward him in the Charmides? Is Xenophon right to have treated Critias as virtually the most
bloodthirsty of tyrants known to Greek history? Other questions include the position of Critias
within the Athenian intellectual scene; the likely structure of his constitutional works (in prose
and poetry); the sources of his “philosophical fragments”; the contours of his relationship with
Socrates; the reasons for Plato’s continued literary presentation of Critias; and the overall tenor
of his reception through late antiquity.
REFERENCE WORKS
Ford 1997, Zimmermann 2003, and Németh 2013 sketch Critias’s literary, intellectual, and
political life, each in less than a page but with differing emphases. Necessary detail comes from
Morison, in shorter compass (2018) and in longer (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy), and
from Flashar 1998. Brisson 1994 emphasizes orientation to the literature and ongoing debates.
Brisson, Luc. 1994. Critias [216]. In Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques. Vol. 2, Babélyca
d’Argos à Dyscolius. Edited by Richard Goulet, 512–520. Paris: CNRS Éditions.
Not comprehensive, but learnedly expansive and insightful about a few interpretative problems:
the identity of Critias in the Critias (leaning toward the deliberate-ambiguity thesis); Pirithous;
status as a Sophist; Eryxias; the episode with Theramenes.
Flashar, Hellmut. 1998. Kritias aus Athen. In Sophistik, Sokrates, Sokratik, Mathematik, Medizin
(Die Philosophie der Antike 2/1). Edited by Hellmut Flashar, 81–84. Basel, Switzerland:
Schwabe.
Brief biography, useful catalogue of attested works, and analysis of the Sisyphus fragment as a
Trugrede.
Ford, Andrew. 1997. Critias. In Encyclopedia of classical philosophy. Edited by Donald J. Zeyl,
Daniel Devereux, and Phillip Mitsis, 156–157. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Brief but sensitive overview of the life, main works, and philosophical relevance.
Morison, William. Critias (460–403 B.C.E). In Internet encyclopedia of philosophy.
A perspicuous survey with a positive view of Critias (though with qualifications), with helpful
reference to the ancient evidentiary base for claims about his work and life, though little in terms
of philosophical interpretation, and a minimal bibliography.

Morison, William. 2018. “Kritias of Athens (338a).” In Brill’s New Jacoby. 2d ed. Edited by Ian
Worthington. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
The “biographical essay” refers to all known life events, with links to fuller discussion by the
author elsewhere in the encyclopedia entry, and a focus on the writings about political
constitutions and lives of the poets.
Németh, György. 2013. Kritias. In The encyclopedia of ancient history. Edited by Roger S.
Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine, and Sabine R. Huebner, 3822.
London: Blackwell.
Brief overview of Critias’s life, with a focus on his politics; only half a paragraph is given to his
works. Does not always present controversial matters as controversial. Short bibliography.
Zimmermann, Bernhard. 2003 Kritias. In Brill’s New Pauly. Edited by Hubert Cancik and
Helmuth Schneider, vol. 3, cols. 945–946. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Provides key dates and references to specific fragments, cited by Diels-Kranz number.
GENERAL OVERVIEWS
Freeman 1953 biographizes through all the testimonia and fragments. Guthrie 1971 is intelligent
and sympathetic, with rich context. Nestle 1966 and Nestle 1968 are the most complete
overviews, addressing all aspects of Critias’s life and works, as well as scholarship up to their
original dates of publication. Maykowska 1934 is thorough and concise. Von Blumenthal 1923 is
an early and largely outdated attempt to connect Critias to the Sophistic movement; Patzer 1974
more convincingly tries to distance him from the Sophists; and Lévy 2002 takes a cautious but
insightful approach. Vanotti 1997 is informative but somewhat incautious. See also Romeyer
Dherby 2017 in The Sophistic Movement.
Freeman, Kathleen. 1953. Critias. In The pre-Socratic philosophers: A companion to Diels,
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 3d ed., 405–413. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
A companion to her translation of the so-called “B Fragments” (the ipsissima verba of Critias
collected by Diels and Kranz 1952, cited under Texts Translations, and Commentaries), this
biographizes on the basis of the “A testimonia” and those fragments. A conservative approach,
discounting Critias’s philosophical relevance and asserting that he has “conventional aristocratic
ideas,” “more interested in objects than theories.” Originally published in 1946.
Guthrie, W. K. C. 1971. The Sophists. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
An excellent overview of Critias’s historical life and philosophical relevance. Judges Critias “a
fine nature ruined by the society of his day,” corrupted by cynical Sophistic teaching, and thinks
Plato presents his uncle, in four dialogues, “with respect and affection,” focusing on the “earlier,
happier years of hope and promise.” See pp. 298–304.
Lévy, Edmond. 2002. Critias ou l’Intellectuel au Pouvoir. In Les Anciens Savant: Études Sur Les
Philosophies Préplatoniciennes. Edited by Pierre-Marie Morel and Jean-François Pradeau, 231–
251. Strasbourg, France: Univ. Marc Bloch.
An engaging unifying account of the political-intellectual character of Critias, pressing hard on
the traditional assumptions that he was Laconophilic and oligarchic. Presents Critias’s Sophistic
ideas as egoistic and extreme; develops his ideas about friendship, hierarchy, and excellence.
Concludes that Critias is a man of diverse and interesting contradictions.
Maykowska, Maria. 1934. De Critiae moribus fortunis litteris. In Charisteria Gustavo
Przychocki a discipulis oblate, 119–139. Warsaw, Poland: Gebethner and Wolff.
An efficient survey of all the major fragments and testimonia, with attention to the Platonic and
Xenophontic evidence.
Nestle, Wilhelm. 1966. Kritias. In Von Mythos zum Logos. Die Selbstentfaltung des
Griechischen Denkens von Homer bis auf die Sophistik und Sokrates. 2d ed. By Wilhelm Nestle,
253–320. Aalen, Germany: Scientia.
Summary of Critias’s political activity, overview of literary output, translation and analysis of
the Sisyphus fragment. See pp. 400–420. Originally published in 1940.
Nestle, Wilhelm. 1968. Kritias. In Griechische Studien. Untersuchungen zur Religion, Dichtung
und Philosophie der Griechen. By Wilhelm Nestle, 253–320. Aalen, Germany: Scientia.
Situates Critias’s literary output in the context of late-5th-century political and intellectual
currents. Consolidates much earlier German scholarship and cites illuminating parallels from
Critias’s contemporaries. Suggests that Critias became radicalized during his exile in Thessaly,
under the influence of Gorgias and Thrasymachus. Originally published in 1903.

Patzer, Harald. 1974. Der Tyrann Kritias und die Sophistik. In Studia Platonica. Festschrift für
Hermann Gundert. Edited by Klaus Döring and Wolfgang Kullmann, 3–19. Amsterdam: Verlag
B. R. Grüner.
Attempts to distance Critias from the Sophistic movement through a rereading of his literary
fragments. Critias was no advocate of the relativity of nomoi or Sophistic rhetoric, as we see in
his writings on Sparta and in the dramatic fragments.
Vanotti, Gabriella. 1997. Rileggendo Crizia. Miscellanea Greca e Roma 21:61–92.
Surveys Critias’s writings genre-by-genre, finding him a disillusioned and bitter personality, who
was driven to political extremism by his disenchantment with the present. Discusses key
problems of his biography: his relationship with Alcibiades, his purported involvement with the
oligarchy of 411, and his role in the Thirty. Infers far more than is warranted from the dramatic
fragments.
von Blumenthal, Albrecht. 1923. Der Tyrann Kritias als Dichter und Schriftsteller. Stuttgart: W.
Kohlhammer.
Meandering tour of Critias’s literary output, appealing to the “individualistic tendency” of the
Sophistic movement. A few valuable linguistic observations emerge along the way. The author
gives more weight than most to Plato’s portrayal of Critias as a “philosopher.”
BOOK-LENGTH STUDIES
The turn of the millennium saw the appearance of three books devoted to Critias (Centanni 1997,
Bultrighini 1999, Iannucci 2002), all in Italian, and a French dissertation addressing all relevant
issues and testimonia (Caire 1998, not readily available). The only extensive English-language
studies are Stephans 1939, an insightful doctoral thesis, and Morison 1990, an unpublished
master’s thesis. Németh 2006 (cited under Political Activity), which includes Critias’s name in
the title, is really an analysis of the oligarchy of the Thirty, providing much valuable
prosopographical information. Patrick 1896 is a perspicuously organized early work. Yvonneau
2018a collects diverse papers from a 2009 conference on Critias which did not, however, cover
all aspects of Critias’s life and work.
Bultrighini, Umberto. 1999. “Maladetta democrazia”. Studi su Crizia. Alessandria, Italy:
Edizioni dell’Orso.
Five lengthy and repetitive chapters argue that Critias’s diverse and abundant writings are
unified by the same anti-democratic ideology that animated his political activity. This
systematizing approach yields far more convincing results in some cases (e.g., chapter 1’s
analysis of B2 DK) than others (e.g., chapter 4’s reading of the Sisyphus fragment). The final
chapter suggests that a damnatio memoriae of Critias (sometimes posited to explain his minimal
reception by later authors) is largely due to the polemics of Xenophon and Lysias.
Caire, Emmanuèle. 1998. Critias d’Athènes: Sophiste et Tyran. D.Litt. thesis, Univ. de Provence
Aix-Marseille I.
Explains Critias’s political adventures as manifestations of his intellectual reflections, especially
on constitutional theory, aristocratic valuation, and power—not as one among several
discontinuous faces. In the process, this dissertation, 331 pages long, discusses all attributed
fragments and testimonia, with leisured reflection on all major interpretative issues. Accessible
in North America likely only as microfiche.
Centanni, Monica. 1997. Atena assoluta. Crizia dalla tragedia alla storia. Padua, Italy: Esedra
editrice.
Three wide-ranging chapters cover (i) the diverse portrayals of Critias in Plato, Lysias, and
Xenophon; (ii) the rediscovery of Critias in the Second Sophistic; and (iii) the tragic fragments in
the context of late-5th-century drama (finding the Pirithous parodied in Aristophanes’ Frogs).
Centanni defends Critian authorship of the disputed plays, suggesting that the plots of the trilogy
Tennes–Rhadamanthys–Pirithous reflect Critias’s exile in Thessaly. Fluidly written and often
provocative, though lacking philological detail.
Iannucci, Alessandro. 2002. La parola e l’azione. I frammenti simposiali di Crizia. Bologna,
Italy: Nautilus.
Five densely argued chapters read the poetic fragments as parodic and critical of Athens’
democratization of the symposium, to which Critias opposes a Spartan ideal. Though sometimes
highly speculative, this is the most successful book-length study to date. See other sections in
this bibliography for individual chapters.

Morison, William. 1990. The ‘amateur’ as tyrant: A socioeconomic study of Kritias. MA thesis,
California State Univ.–Fresno.
An overall account of Critias’s life, focusing initially on political sociology, less successfully
arguing the explanatory relevance of his atheistic materialistic theory of self-interest for his
oligarchic activities.
Patrick, Henry. 1896. De Critiae Operibus. Pedestri Oratione Conscriptis. Glasgow, UK:
William Mackenzie.
Untranslated testimony relevant to Critias’s political, intellectual, and speech-making lives
(much not included in Diels and Kranz 1952, cited under Texts Translations, and
Commentaries, and the fragments (pp. 1–13); analysis of such; engagement with Böckh,
Mueller, and Dümmler’s hypotheses.
Stephans, Dorothy. 1939. Critias: Life and literary remains. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Cincinnati.
Though out of date and sometimes inadequate, this remains the longest work on Critias in
English, translating and discussing all collected fragments, and containing many suggestive
claims. It focuses on the political partisanship and revolution contributing to Critias’s oligarchic
membership, a one-time moderate. While Critias lacked the philosophical precision of Socrates,
he may have earliest articulated a range of important intellectual positions.

Yvonneau, Jean. 2018a. La Muse au long couteau. Critias, de la création littéraire au terrorisme
d’État: actes du colloque international de Bordeaux, les 23 et 24 octobre 2009. Bordeaux,
France: Ausonius Éditions.
Nine papers based on a 2009 conference (eight in French, all with English abstracts), on 5th-
century political sociology and the ideal of Sparta, the texts of the Pirithous and the elegiac
fragments, the theme of “excellence” and his advocacy of sôphrosunê, and his Second Sophistic
revival. The editor’s chapter provides a concise and fascinating history of all works ever
attributed to Critias.
TEXTS, TRANSLATIONS, AND COMMENTARIES
The earliest collection of Critiana is the dissertation Bach 1827. Diels (in six editions, with
Kranz co-editing Diels and Kranz 1952) produced the still most authoritative collection, though
it is not exhaustive. After Wilamowitz’s proposal in 1875 that four plays generally attributed in
antiquity to Euripides belong to Critias, most collections have included the fragments of them.
The most up-to-date set of texts and commentaries, though lacking the dramatic fragments
among others without evident historiographical interest, is Morison 2018. A good but incomplete
English translation of Diels-Kranz is found in Dillon and Gergel 2003, with contextualizing
notes; for a sparer version with clearer layout but some unreliability, see Levin 2001. Freeman
1953 (cited under General Overviews) translates just the fragments; Gagarin and Woodruff
1995 translates a third of them. Battegazzore 1962 provides Diels and Kranz’s complete entry in
Greek and Italian translation, with copious running footnotes; Bonazzi 2007 similarly, but with
sparse footnotes. See relevant sections elsewhere in this bibliography for texts and translations of
the (dramatic and non-dramatic) poetic fragments.

Bach, Nicolaus. 1827. Critiae Tyranni Carminum. Leipzig: Vogel.
The earliest collection of and commentary on Critias’s work, with a short analytical essay and
introductory remarks for each of its sixty-four fragments or passages. In 142 pages of Latin.
Battegazzore, Antonio. 1962. Crizia. In Sofisti. Testimonianze e frammenti. Fascicolo quatro.
Antifonte, Crizia. Edited by Antonio Battegazzore and Mario Untersteiner, 214–363. Florence:
“La Nuova Italia” Editrice.
Extensive running commentary, with scholarly debate, about each of the Diels-Kranz testimonia
and fragments, which are provided in Greek (without apparatus criticus) and facing Italian
translation.
Bonazzi, Mario. 2007. I Sofisti: Testo Greco a fronte. Milan: Biblioteca Univ. Rizzoli.
After a brief introductory note (and useful biography listed elsewhere), reproduces the Greek text
of Diels-Kranz (without apparatus criticus) with facing Italian translation and sparse explanatory
and textual footnotes. See pp. 365–421.
Diels, Hermann, and Walther Kranz. 1952. Kritias. In Die Fragmente Der Vorsokratiker, 371–
399. 6th ed. Berlin: Weidmann.
This is currently the most complete and familiar collection of testimonia (about Critias’s life) and
fragments (of his work), including single words preserved by lexicographers. It is organized by
genre and known or assumed work. Fragments are usually translated into German and have
critical apparatuses, often with new conjectures. Challenging to use, given typographical
compression. Some testimonia, important mainly for the reception of Critias, are silently
excluded. The first edition, by Diels alone, was published in 1903.
Dillon, John, and Tania Gergel. 2003. Critias of Athens. In The Greek Sophists, 217–265. New
York: Penguin.
Currently the most comprehensive (and, simultaneously, accessible) English translation of
Critias’s fragments and testimonia, omitting some Diels-Kranz items but expanding on several
others, especially from Xenophon. It provides valuable commentary and notes on each time,
though beware some historical inaccuracies and speculation. It accepts, with slight qualification,
the tragic fragments.
Gagarin, Michael, and Paul Woodruff. 1995. Critias. In Early Greek political thought from
Homer to the Sophists, 259–274. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Translates one-third of the “B” fragments collected in Diels and Kranz 1952 (cited under Texts
Translations, and Commentaries), on grounds of their “relation to his thought or practice as a
sophist,” with brief explanatory footnotes, as well as the Peri Politeias ascribed to Herodes
Atticus but sometimes attributed to Critias.

Levin, Donald Norman. 2001. Critias. In The Older Sophists: a complete translation by several
hands of the fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, edited by Diels-Kranz. With a new
edition of Antiphon and of Euthydemus. Edited by Rosamond Kent Sprague, 241–270. Corrected
ed. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Following a dour one-page introduction, a translation of all Diels and Kranz 1952 testimonia and
fragments, without comment. Convenient and in print, but sometimes inaccurate or infelicitous.
(Originally published in 1972 by University of South Carolina Press.)
Morison, William. 2018. Kritias of Athens (338a). In Brill’s New Jacoby. 2d ed. Edited by Ian
Part of an encyclopedia collecting and commenting on all testimonia and fragments of ancient
historians, or those whose works provide historical information. Morison includes everything
about Critias’s life; his elegies, as politically relevant and serving as “media for transmitting
ethnographic and historical knowledge”; writings from three Constitutions, attributing many one-
word fragments to a conjectured Athenian Constitution; and fragments ascribable to a
conjectured Lives of the Poets. Much commentary and apt bibliography.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The earliest literature, which is 19th-century German (and French) scholarship, can be found in
Engelmann and Preuss 1880 and Yvonneau 2018b. For all relevant works after 1923, see the
online L’année philologique (285 hits on “Critias” by the end of 2018); some of the entries
include sentence-long abstracts. Paquet and Roussel 1988–1995 provides longer annotations on
about eighteen entries with cross-references to others. The overviews (especially Brisson 1994)
and book-length studies cited elsewhere in this bibliography generally provide references to
important sources. Studies of Critias have tended not to be included in bibliographies of
Presocratic philosophy or in reference guides to the 5th-century Athenian Sophists.
L’année philologique.
Exhaustive index, both searchable and browsable, of scholarly articles in all languages; often
includes a brief abstract.
Brisson, Luc. 1994. Critias [216]. In Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques. Vol. 2, Babélyca
d’Argos à Dyscolius. Edited by Richard Goulet, 512–520. Paris: CNRS Éditions.
Twenty-five entries, focused on current interpretative questions.
Engelmann, Wilhelm, and E. Preuss. 1880. Critiae (Athen.). In Bibliotheca Scriptorum
Classicorum. Achte Auflage, Umfassend die Literatur von 1700 bis 1878, neu bearbeitet. Erste
Abtheilung: Scriptores Graeci, 251. Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann.
Reference to all pre-1880 discussions of Critias or collections of some of his fragments.
Paquet, Léonce, and M. Roussel. 1988–1995. Critias. In Les présocratiques: bibliographie
analytique, 1879–1980, 375–378. Montréal, Canada: Bellarmin.
Annotated guide to several dozen valuable studies of Critias.

Yvonneau, Jean. 2018b. Critias: l’invention et l’inventaire. In La Muse au long couteau. Critias,
de la création littéraire au terrorisme d’État: actes du colloque international de Bordeaux, les
23 et 24 octobre 2009. Edited by Jean Yvonneau, 14–32. Bordeaux, France: Ausonius Éditions.
The author refers to all early scholarship that aimed at reconstructing Critias’s oeuvre (pp. 29–
32).
LIFE OF CRITIAS
The evidence for Critias’s position in Athenian social, political, and intellectual life is sparse and
at times indeterminate, but also broad-ranging enough to provide a multifaceted portrait. The
following sections address Critias’s family and the identity of various persons named “Critias” in
the ancient record (Prosopography); his participation in Athenian and Thessalian politics and
government (Political Activity); and his role as a public intellectual (The Sophistic
Movement). His written works, and whatever life as an author might be inferred therefrom, are
discussed in the subsequent two sections (Non-Dramatic Writings and Attributed Dramatic
Fragments).
Prosopography
The fragmentary details about Critias’s illustrious lineage—which included at least three
eponymous archons of Athens and some relationship with Solon—matter, especially to
establishing the identity of the character in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias: is it our Critias (born
c. 460) or his grandfather (born c. 520)? The intellectual-political interests ascribable to Critias
depend on it, along with Plato’s attitude toward his mother’s cousin. Other prosopographical
conundrums include the biography of his father Callaeschrus, a name that appears in the
historical record; the referent of the various Critiases that show up especially in recently
unearthed inscriptional findings; the family’s precise relation with Solon and his kin; and his
socioeconomic standing. Traill 2001 organizes the literary and epigraphical evidence for every
classical reference to any Athenian Critias. Davies 1971 and Nails 2002 analyze the details and
come to opposed conclusions. Rosenmeyer 1949 rebuts the most influential assertion (from
Burnet 1914) that the Critias of the Timaeus and Critias must be the grandfather; Labarbe 1990
goes the opposite direction; see further in *Timaeus and Critias*. Van Prinsterer 1823 and
Cobet 1836 provide older but still interesting author-specific discussions.
Burnet, John. 1914. Greek philosophy. Part 1: Thales to Plato. London: Macmillan.
Contains the famous footnote (p. 338n1) stating that the Critias in Critias is the grandfather (also
stated on p. 208), and that “most of the poetical fragments” historically attributed to Critias
actually belong to the grandfather. A stemma appears on p. 351, and two others comments about
Critias at pp. 132 and 208–209.
Cobet, Carol Gabriel. 1836. Commentatio, qua continetur prosopographia Xenophontea. Leiden,
The Netherlands: J. Luchtmans.
Discussion of Critias’s appearances in Xenophon. See pp. 43–46.
Davies, J. K. 1971. Athenian Propertied Families. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
In the course of a systematic account of the families of wealthy Athenian persons, Davies
exhaustively discusses all of Critias’s ancestors and later kin, and the relationship with Solon,
reconstructing the lineage and taking into account pertinent archaeological evidence (from 1949).
He believes that our Critias is in Timaeus-Critias: Plato simplified the family tree for dramatic
purposes. See pp. 322–335.
Kirchner, Johannes. 1901–1903. Prosopographia Attica. Berlin: Reimer.
Historically important scholarly reference, harder to use than Traill but with a page of continuous
discussion and reference to older scholarship. See pp. 592–594.
Labarbe, Jules. 1990. Quel Critias Dans Le Timée et La Critias de Platon? Sacris Erudiri
31:239–256.
The Timaeus-Critias features Critias’s grandfather and takes place c. 450–445, in Socrates’
youth, noting dramatic similarities with the Parmenides. Draws on an unusual range of poetic
material for circumstantial evidence.
Nails, Debra. 2002. Critias III and Critias IV. In The people of Plato: A prosopography of Plato
and Other Socratics. By Debra Nails, 106–111. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Perspicuous and sober organization of all relevant information; argues contra Davies 1971 that
the Timaeus-Critias Critias is the grandfather, on the assumptions that we should take Plato’s (=
the Timaeus Critias’s) claim as serious and based on knowledge of approximate death dates.
Rosenmeyer, T. G. 1949. The family of Critias. American Journal of Philology 70:404–410.
A persuasive response to the argument of Burnet 1914 that the Timaeus-Critias Critias is the
grandfather; references in those dialogues to bad memory or a distant past do not prove any great
age, and references to Critias’s accomplishments are mirrored in Plato’s Charmides (162d–e),
where Socrates again says that Critias “may be expected to know, in view of your years and
studies,” despite his being only in his early thirties.
Traill, John S. 2001. Persons of Ancient Athens. Vol. 10. Toronto: Athenians.
An organized list of references to the various attested Athenian Critiases, with excerpts of
relevant literary and epigraphic texts; reliably presents all relevant data. See pp. 583–588.
Tulli, Mauro. 1995. Il Crizia e la Famiglia di Platone. Studi Classici e Orientali 44:95–107.
A discursive study of the family of Critias and the character Critias in Plato’s eponymous
dialogue; for similar discussions, see *Timaeus and Critias*.
van Prinsterer, Guillaume Groen. 1823. Prosopographia Platonica. Leiden, The Netherlands:
H. W. Hazenberg Jr.
Discussion of Critias’s appearances in Plato. See pp. 137–140.
Political Activity
However early his life as an intellectual or littérateur began—Plato includes him in dialogues set
dramatically in 433 and 429, and he was still famous decades later for skill at the aulos (see
Caire 2015 for political relevance)—Critias appears only decades later to have become explicitly
politically active. This apparent shift from thoughtful writer to a radical and ruthless oligarch has
occasioned much reflection. All the same, the primary task for any biographer of Critias has been
to reconstruct a meaningful political life from scanty and often tendentious testimonia. The
earliest event in which we hear of Critias’s involvement is the affair of the mutilation of the
herms in 415, on the eve of Athens’ disastrous Sicilian expedition. Diocles for some reason
accused him, though on the evidence of Andocides, through one of whose speeches we know of
the matter, he was absolved of responsibility. It is uncertain whether Critias participated in the
first oligarch coup in Athens, in 411 BCE, as a member of the Four Hundred, which sought to
welcome Sparta at Eetioneia and thus to force Athens’ capitulation in the Peloponnesian War
(see *The Four Hundred*). Sometime thereafter, Critias proposed a decree that the Athenians
put the exhumed bones of the assassinated Phrynichus, a member of the Four Hundred who had
rejected Alcibiades’ military advice, on trial for treason, and another decree to have Alcibiades
recalled from exile. Around 407, Critias himself goes into exile on an unknown decree by
Cleophon. We find him in Thessaly in 406, engaging in its politics, said by one unreliable source
to be advancing the democracy and by another the oligarchy (see *Thessaly*). Critias returns to
Athens by 405/4, and becomes, first, one of the five “Ephors” and, second, one of the Thirty
(“Tyrants”), and thus a leading member of the oligarchic coup tagged by the informal name of its
executive council. Most memorable of his actions there is his ouster of a more moderate
oligarch, Theramenes (see Pownall 2012 and *The Thirty* for details, and Caire 2018 for an
attempt at distinguishing those two oligarchs’ ambitions). Critias was killed, at the Battle of
Munychia in 403, fighting against the democrats led by Thrasybulus. A testimonium claims that
his colleagues dedicated a memorial to him, celebrating Oligarchy over Democracy. Grote 1852
provides a still-excellent overview; Adeleye 1977 and Németh 1988 are much shorter though
relatively more up-to-date. Munn 2000 gives the Athenian background to that life; Adkins 1976,
Carter 1986, and Brulé and Wilgaux 2018 focus on the political and ideological context.
Adeleye, Gabriel. 1977/1978. Critias: from moderation to radicalism. Museum Africanum 6:64–
73.
An account of Critias’s political transformation, from unjustified exile through Thessaly to
membership among the Ephors and the oligarchs. Consolidates key findings from the author’s
1971 Princeton Classics dissertation, “Studies in the Oligarchy of the Thirty.”
Adkins, A. W. H. 1976. Polupragmosune and “minding one’s own business”: A study in Greek
social and political values. Classical Philology 71.4: 301–327.
Comprehensive discussion of the rich 5th-century Athenian language of to ta hautou prattein
(“minding one’s own business” or “doing one’s on things”)—which is the definition of
sôphrosunê attributed to Critias in Plato’s Charmides—with a focus on domestic affairs. Plato’s
(aristocratic) readers would treat “keeping to oneself” as valuable, Adkins claims, which explains
why the Republic, for example, starts from that assumption.
Brulé, Pierre, and Jérôme Wilgaux. 2018. Hoi peri Kritian: solidarités et appartenances dans la
vie politique athénienne à la fin due Ve s. a.C. In La muse au long couteau: Critias, de la
création littéraire au terrorisme d’État: actes du colloque international de Bordeaux, les 23 et
24 octobre 2009. Edited by Jean Yvonneau, 139–158. Bordeaux, France: Ausonius éditions.
Describes the elite social movements and networks associated with Athenian “Laconizing” as
key background for understanding Critias’s cultural-political ideals.

Caire, Emmanuèle. 2015. Jouer de l’aulos à Athènes était-il politiquement correct? Pallas 98:
57–72.
A study of the mixed attitudes toward playing and listening to aulos-music in 5th-century
Athens, both of which are politically charged activities, eventually associated with Sparta,
apparently explaining Critias’s affinity for the instrument.
Caire, Emmanuèle. 2018. Du superlatif au comparatif: l’excellence selon Critias. In La muse au
long couteau: Critias, de la création littéraire au terrorisme d’État: actes du colloque
international de Bordeaux, les 23 et 24 octobre 2009. Edited by Jean Yvonneau, 117–136.
Bordeaux, France: Ausonius éditions.
Distinguishes between Theramenes’s aristocratic politics and Critias’s oligarchic-tending-
toward-tyrannical politics through a study of Critias’s apparently agonistic or contestatory vision
of the nature of human and institutional excellence.
Carter, L. B. 1986. The quiet Athenian. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sets out the various threads of apragmosunê (“quietness,” “retirement”) and Laconophilia in
Athenian aristocratic culture, and discusses Critias in their light; Critias himself is not, however,
the author’s priority.
Grote, George. 1852. History of Greece. Vol. 8. Boston: John P. Jewett.
An excellent account of Critias’s role in the Thirty, with general context. Clear and reliable
appreciation for the extent of the evidence, interpreted with deep political and historical insight,
thereby drawing a pretty complete narrative. By contrast with more recent authors, Grote takes
Xenophon’s abomination of Critias seriously. There is good material on Critias’s interactions
with Socrates. See pp. 232–280.
Munn, Mark. 2000. The school of history: Athens in the age of Socrates. Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press.
A brilliant study of Athens up to and during the Peloponnesian War, structured by attention to
Alcibiades and intellectual history, with much detail on the chronology of 411–403, the years
most relevant for understanding Critias’s political life as we know it.
Németh, György. 1988. Metamorphosis Critiae? Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
74:167–180.
Careful study of four issues in Critian political biography—participation in the Four Hundred,
the Phrynichus affair, Theramenes, and the period in Thessaly—with continual attention to the
relationship with Alcibiades.
Pownall, Frances. 2012. Critias in Xenophon’s Hellenica. Scripta Classica Israelica 31:1–18.
Xenophon treats Critias as a stereotypically selfish tyrant, with no political program, but
Xenophon is wrong and tendentious; Critias has principles of moderate oligarchy and seeks to
reform what receives social esteem.
The Four Hundred

The Four Hundred, either a violent oligarchic coup (according to Thucydides) or a serious if
nostalgic attempt at constitutional reform (according to the Aristotelian Constitution of the
Athenians), deposed the Athenian democracy for four months, in 411; see Shear 2011 for
coverage. Alcibiades was involved; he said that, were he recalled to an oligarchicized Athens, he
would cut a pact with Persia against Sparta. Scholars debate whether Critias participated, and
thus whether he had political-revolutionary experience before his membership in the Thirty; the
classic exchange is Avery 1963, arguing against membership, and Adeleye 1974, successfully
repudiating Avery’s specific claims but not solving the problem, especially given Xenophon’s
silence about the matter. Jordovic 2014 analyzes philolaconism in late-5th-century Athens and
Simonton 2017 discusses the dynamics of classical Greek oligarchy generally.
Adeleye, Gabriel. 1974. Critias: Member of the Four Hundred? Transactions of the American
Philological Association 104:1–9.
Successfully undermines arguments, provided in Avery 1963, that suggest Critias was not a
member of the Four Hundred, and claims (unprovably) that he very likely was, given the
evidence of pseudo-Demosthenes 58.67 and Lysias 13.74.
Avery, Harry C. 1963. Critias and the Four Hundred. Classical Philology 58.3: 165–167.
Denies Critias was in the Four Hundred, criticizing pseudo-Demosthenes 58.67 as wholly
mistaken, mainly on evidence that Alcibiades was not in the Four Hundred, and Critias was a
friend of Alcibiades’, and that none of those involved in the scandals of 415 were involved in the
Four Hundred.
Jordovic, Ivan. 2014. The origins of philolaconism: Democracy and aristocratic identity in fifth-
century BC Athens. Classica et Mediaevalia 65:127–154.
Argues, among other claims, that the aristocratic oligarchs of 411 and 404/3 did not seek to
reform Athens into a new Sparta; Athenian elite adopted philolaconism as a countercultural
identity meant to preserve their distinctiveness against the masses. Critias was either exceptional
in his interests or merely an extreme version of the same. Excellent bibliography.
Shear, Julia L. 2011. Revolution, oligarchy, and the patrios politeia. In Polis and revolution:
Responding to oligarchy in classical Athens. By Julia L. Shear, 19–69. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge Univ. Press.
Very full and precise discussion of the conflicting evidence about the Four Hundred, with
attention to both oligarchic and then democratic discussion of a supposedly traditional
constitutional organization.
Simonton, Matthew. 2017. Classical Greek oligarchy: A political history. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton Univ. Press.
A broad inquiry into the nature and source of classical oligarchy, with frequent reference to
Critias.
Thessaly
Critias went into exile from Athens, and for some reason ended up in Thessaly, in northeastern
Greece—the region to which, incidentally, Socrates says he would not want to flee in exile, it
being too anti-intellectual. Some debate concerns his reason for exile—Jordovic 2009, among
others, suggests trumped-up charges by sycophants turning the tables on the elites, in restitution
for the actions of the Four Hundred (and those assumed to be associated with it). More debate
concerns Critias’s activities while in Thessaly, though there is also the question why he chose to
go there, including whether he made any connections with Spartan power. Theramenes, in a
speech presented by Xenophon, says that he went there to foment democracy. But this makes
little sense, and Xenophon’s Theramenes is not reliable. Much later, Philostratus says that Critias
went to support the oligarchy, but this claim probably comes from a tendentious anti-Critias
intermediary source. Critias’s partner in Thessaly was someone called “Prometheus”; scholarship
once sought to decode this nom de guerre, but now generally assumes this is a real name. See
generally Sordi 1999.
Jordovic, Ivan. 2009. Critias and democracy. Balcanica. Annual of the Institute for Balcan
Studies 39:33–46.
Critias became politicized from resentment due to his banishment (after 407), presumably an
innocent victim of score-settling sycophants, and from his stay in Thessaly, where he seems to
have sided with Prometheus in local disputes.
Sordi, Marta. 1999. Crizia e la Tessaglia. In Aspirazione al Consenso e azione politica in alcuni
contesti di fine V Sec. a.C.: Il caso Di Alcibiade: Seminario interdisciplinare cattedre di storia
Greca e di epigrafia Greca: Chieti, 12–13 Marzo 1997. Edited by Emma Luppino-Manes, 93–
100. Alessandria, Italy: Edizioni dell’Orso.
A detailed account of the question and relevant scholarship by an expert in classical Thessalian
history.
The Thirty
“The Thirty (Tyrants)” names the executive council of the Spartan-backed oligarchy of three
thousand that came into power after the Athenian loss of the Peloponnesian War; see Krentz
1982, Lewis 2008, and Ostwald 1986 for its place in late-5th--century Athenian history, and
Powell 2018 clarifies Sparta’s involvement. While little that is precise is known about the
determination of the Thirty’s membership, its internal structure, or its specific goals, some
ancient sources present Critias as a dominant force, a representative of the extreme (anti-
democratic) wing with Charicles, enemy of Theramenes, and instigator of the severer instances
of expropriation and assassination; see Canfora 2013, Nails 2002, Shear 2011, and Whitehead
1982/1983. What remains open to debate includes the way Critias found himself among the
Thirty; what if any formal leadership role he had; and how his political or even theoretical views
took effect, or failed to do so, in the brief time the Thirty had to make policy (they soon became
embroiled in civil war), though Németh 2006 endeavors to answer many such questions. Patzer
2012 discusses Socrates’ relations with the Thirty and its members.
Canfora, Luciano. 2013. La guerra civile ateniese. Milan: Rizzoli.
Reconstruction of the dramatic events of 404–403. Part 2 recapitulates the author’s case for
attributing the Pseudo-Xenophontic Athenian Constitution to Critias (pp. 311–318; see also
Canfora 1980 under Doubtful Works) and discusses Philostratus’s biography (pp. 319–332).
Krentz, Peter. 1982. The Thirty at Athens. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
A readable and useful scholarly history of 404/3, providing clear background from the period of
the Four Hundred to the aftermath and amnesty of the civil war until 399. Claims that the
oligarchs “must have had goals in mind when they took over the government of Athens (though
of course they did not all agree),” even though there is little direct evidence for these
(Spartanizing) goals; fortunately, Krentz’s speculation does not over-color his analysis.
Lewis, David M. 2008. Sparta as victor. In The Cambridge ancient history. Vol. 6, The fourth
century B.C. 2d ed. Edited by David M. Lewis, John Boardman, Simon Hornblower, and M.
Ostwald, 24–44. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Reliable discussion of the Thirty (and the Four Hundred) from the perspective of Lysander’s
(Spartan) foreign policy. Clear assessment of the evidence and points of scholarly debate.
Nails, Debra. 2002. Excursus 3: The rule of the Thirty 404/3. In The people of Plato: A
prosopography of Plato and other Socratics. By Debra Nails, 111–113. Indianapolis: Hackett.
This brief “Excursus” cuts through scholarly confusion about the legal status of the Thirty, and in
passing contributes to discussion of Socrates’ disobedience to their (= Critias’s) order to him.
Németh, György. 2006. Kritias und die Dreissig Tyrannen: Untersuchungen zur Politik und
Prosopographie der Führungselite in Athen 404/403 v. Chr. Alte Geschichte, HABES, 43.
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Addresses the size, choice, identity, and internal structure of the Thirty; its leadership; and its
connection to the hoplites and cavalry. Critias’s political life is discussed mainly in chapter 1; his
political theory at the end of chapter 2. Boldly conjectures Socrates’ membership in the Thirty.
Ostwald, Martin. 1986. The second oligarchical challenge. In From popular sovereignty to the
sovereignty of law: Law, society, and politics in fifth-century Athens. By Martin Ostwald, 460–
496. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
Detailed, rich, and sophisticated account, with much attention to the psychology and character of
the various personnel, and many pages on Critias himself.
Patzer, Andreas. 2012. Sokrates und die Dreissig. In Studia Socratica: zwölf Abhandlungen über
den historischen Sokrates. By Andreas Patzer, 283–317. Tübingen, Germany: Narr.
A thorough survey of the evidence for Socrates’ interactions with the oligarchic regime and its
members (including Charmides, one of the ten governors of the Piraeus). Sources include Plato,
Xenophon, Polycrates, Aeschines, Antisthenes, and pseudo-Platonic literature.
Powell, Anton. 2018. Critias, sa révolution et la politique de Sparte. In La muse au long couteau:
Critias, de la création littéraire au terrorisme d’État: actes du colloque international de
Bordeaux, les 23 et 24 octobre 2009. Edited by Jean Yvonneau, 159–175. Bordeaux, France:
Ausonius éditions.
To whatever extent Critias and the “Thirty” tried to Laconize Athens, Sparta did not aim to
rebuild its defeated opponent after its own constitutional image.

Shear, Julia L. 2011. The Thirty and the law. In Polis and revolution: Responding to oligarchy in
classical Athens. By Julia L. Shear, 166–187. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Argues that “the Thirty engaged in a considerable program of reforming the city’s laws and her
constitution from the beginning of their regime,” and aimed to undo democratic reforms after
411.
Whitehead, David. 1982/83. Sparta and the Thirty Tyrants. Ancient Society 13/14: 105–130.
The Thirty actively sought to remake Athens into a Sparta: a closed society, with an anti-
intellectual climate, restrictions on movement, and eradication of immigrants. Critias was the
Laconophilic policy chief. It would have been helpful for the author to have provided a thicker
notion of “Spartanizing.”
The Sophistic Movement
In the 2nd century CE, Philostratus included Critias in his list of sophists (with Gorgias,
Protagoras, Hippias, Prodicus, Polus, Antiphon, and Isocrates); in his collection of Presocratic
fragments, Hermann Diels did again in 1903, in the first edition of his Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker (see Diels and Kranz 1952; Diels did not include him in his 1902 Poetarum
Philosophorum Fragmenta.) Yet scholarship has never committed wholly to this attribution;
Critias found no place, for example, from the capacious collection of Sophistic texts in Laks and
Most 2016 (apart from the Sisyphus fragment, included in a general category). Indeed, many
scholars think that only the Sisyphus fragment, if his, distinguishes him as at all relevant to the
Sophistic movement, as Kerferd 1981 and Bonazzi 2010 reveal. This does make some sense: the
stereotypical Sophist, such as Protagoras, Hippias, or Prodicus, came from abroad, taught for
pay, and carried something of a research profile, and none of this holds true for Critias. History
has remembered him rather as a renaissance man with respect to literature, and an object lesson
with respect to politics, with at best a fascinating poetic fragment reflecting atheism to his name.
Socrates, similarly an Athenian who charged nothing and contributed little to science, has also
long been excluded from the ranks of Sophists (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in
Classics article “Socrates”). For all that, Plato presents Critias in a number of works as an
evident member of the intellectual community now designated as the “Sophistic movement,” and
the testimony and fragments of Critias’s engagement with literary biography, wisdom literature,
metrical experimentation, political constitutions, and human psychology and epistemology show
him deeply engaged with the questions, concepts, methods, and theories developing in late-5th--
century Athens; see Momigliano 1969, Guthrie 1971, De Romilly 1992, Romeyer Dherbey 2017,
and, for a good recent example, Balla 2018.
Balla, Chloe. 2018. Πέφυκεν Πλεονεκτεῖν? Plato and the Sophists on greed and savage
humanity. Polis 35.1: 83–101.
Argues that the Sophists did not have a pessimistic anthropology, whereby people have excessive
desires, as scholarship has often assumed; the Sisyphus fragment, attributed here to Critias, bears
this out, too.
Bonazzi, Mauro. 2010. I Sofisti. Rome: Carocci.
Discusses the Sisyphus fragment in the context of the nomos-physis debate (p. 109) and
Sophistic views of the gods (pp. 140–142). An appendix treats Critias as one of twelve
“protagonists” (pp. 161–162) but questions his Sophistic credentials (doubting his authorship of
the Sisyphus fragment, considered the only real evidence of Sophistic thought).
De Romilly, Jacqueline. 1992. The great Sophists of Athens. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Four pages on the Sisyphus fragment (pp. 108–111), contrasting its naturalizing view of religion
with Prodicus’s (as a form of deception versus an expression of spontaneous feelings of belief),
and claiming that the authorship matters, since Critias is inside the circle of Sophists, Euripides
outside. Also treats of Critias as a political writer (pp. 215–217, 222–223) interested in “practical
customs more than . . . institutions” and a direct influence on Aristotle.
Guthrie, W. K. C. 1971. The Sophists, 298–304. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
A serious engagement with the thinker in the context of an overall study of the “fifth-century
enlightenment.”
Kerferd, George Briscoe. 1981. The Sophistic movement. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.
Press.
A cursory overview (pp. 52–53), asserting that only the Sisyphus fragment, if Critias’s, accords
him status as an at best marginal Sophist.

Laks, André, and Glenn W. Most. 2016. Early Greek philosophy: Volumes XIII and IX: The
Sophists, Part I and II. Cambridge, UK: Harvard Univ. Press.
The most up-to-date bilingual (with English) collection of the testimonia and fragments of the
5th-century Sophists, including Socrates, dramatic excerpts, and 5th- and 4th-century remarks
about sophistry, but excluding Critias. The earlier volumes provide complete accounts of the
major earlier and contemporary philosophers.
Momigliano, Arnaldo. 1969. Ideali di vita nella sofistica: Ippia e Crizia. In Quarto contributo
alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico. By Arnaldo Momigliano, 145–154. Rome:
Edizioni di storia e letteratura.
An early attempt to show Critias’s contribution to the ethical-political thought of the Sophistic
movement. Originally published in 1930.
Romeyer Dherbey, Gilbert. 2017. Critias. In Les Sophistes. 8th ed. By Gilbert Romeyer Dherbey,
115–123. Paris: Presses Univ. de France/Humensis.
A smart and efficient reflection on the intellectual/doctrinal passages, treating them in relation to
Antiphon, highlighting B9 DK (on meletê) as key to Critias’s anthropology, all in his political
context. Engages effectively with Battegazzore 1962 (cited under Philosophical Doctrines).
NON-DRAMATIC WRITINGS
Critias has generic variety to his credit: extant fragments and later remarks testifying to his
authorship of sympotic poetry in various meters and on various topics; works on political
constitutions written in verse (probably) and prose; and speeches and proto-dialogues, on
uncertain subjects, written in prose. He may also have written dramas (see *Attributed
Dramatic Fragments*).
Non-Dramatic Poetry
The surviving non-dramatic poetry of Critias consists of eight fragments (seven in elegiacs and
one in hexameters), several of which evoke the symposium or reflect on correct sympotic
practice. Two address Alcibiades in elegiacs and may or may not belong to the same poem (B4
and B5 DK). Another fragment gives the aetiologies of various luxury goods and inventions
connected to sympotic culture (B2 DK). The longest surviving (discontinuous) passage of
elegiacs praises Sparta’s disciplined drinking habits (B6 DK) and may belong (with B7–9 DK) to
a collection of Constitutions in verse, apparently attested by John Philoponus (A22 DK). Another
ten-line fragment, in hexameters (an unusual but not unknown genre for the symposium),
celebrates the poet Anacreon with a vivid description of sympotic delights (B1 DK). This section
includes scholarship on Critias’s rebuke of Archilochus (B44 DK), transmitted by Aelian, who
may be paraphrasing a lost poem (see Rotstein 2007, cited under *B1 and B44 DK (Anacreon
and Archilochus*). Some scholars have conjectured a collection of Lives of ancient poets as the
source for the Anacreon and Archilochus fragments (see Morison 2018, cited under
Constitutions in Prose).
Texts and Translations of, and Commentaries on, the Non-Dramatic Poetry
The standard editions of the sympotic fragments are Gentili and Prato 2002 and West 1992,
supplanting Diehl 1949, which like Lanata 1963 is still worth consulting. Gerber 1999 is the
most accessible bilingual edition, while Burzacchini 2018 provides the most thorough
commentary on the longer fragments.

Burzacchini, Gabriele. 2018. Remarques sur quelques fragments élégiaques de Critias. In La
Muse au long couteau. Critias, de la création littéraire au terrorisme d’État: actes du colloque
Bordeaux, France: Ausonius Éditions.
Contains texts and translations (six in French, one in Italian by Enzo Degani) of the seven
elegiac fragments. A paragraph of commentary on each of the shorter fragments, and an
invaluable line-by-line commentary on the two longer fragments B6 and B2 DK (including a
detailed analysis of the phrase γράμματ’ ἀλεξίλογα at v. 9 of B2). Excellent bibliography.
Diehl, Ernest. 1949. Anthologia lyrica Graeca. Vol. 1, Poetae Elegiaci. 3d ed. Leipzig: Teubner.
Includes critical text (pp. 94–99), with apparatus, of the seven elegiac fragments (B2, B4–9 DK)
and the Anacreon fragment in hexameters (B1). First edition published in 1923.
Gentili, Bruno, and Carlo Prato. 2002. Poetarum elegiacorum testimonia et fragmenta. Vol. 2.
Rev. ed. Munich: K. G. Saur.
Includes critical text (pp. 82–92), with three-layered apparatus, of the fragments collected in
Diehl 1949 (following Diehl’s numbering), prefaced by a generous selection of testimonia
(including several not found in Diels-Kranz) (pp. 93–98). First edition published in 1979.
Gerber, Douglas E. 1999. Greek elegiac poetry. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Univ. Press.
Includes text with facing translation of four testimonia, the Anacreon fragment, and the seven
elegiac fragments (pp. 456–471). Basic apparatus.
Lanata, Giuliana. 1963. Poetica pre-platonica. Testimonianza e frammenti. Florence: La Nuova
Italia.
Includes text with facing Italian translation of Critias’s fragments on earlier poets (B1, B50, B3,
and B44) (pp. 218–223). No apparatus, but useful general and lemmatic commentary.
West, M. L. 1992. Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati. Vol. 2. 2d ed. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Includes critical text with apparatus of the seven elegiac fragments (following Diels-Kranz’s
numbering), prefaced by one testimonium (A22 DK). Lists several other short fragments that
may derive from elegiacs (pp. 52–56). First edition published 1971–1972.
General Studies
The most comprehensive treatment of the sympotic poetry is Iannucci 2002 (cited under Book-
Length Studies); Garzya 1952 and Angiò 1993 are worth consulting mainly for parallel
passages. Wilson 2003 opens many new paths for exploration, while Regali 2006 is an ambitious
attempt to flesh out our picture of Critias the poet through his Platonic characterizations.
Angiò, Francesca. 1993. Aspetti dell’ideologia simposiale in Crizia e Euripide. Atene e Roma
38:187–195.
Focuses on the political character of the sympotic fragments. Proposes that B4 DK responds to
Euripides’ epinician to Alcibiades (dated to 416) and finds several late-5th-century parallels for
B1’s ideal of alupia, notably Polyphemus’s speech from Euripides’ Cyclops.
Garzya, Antonio. 1952. Osservazioni sulla lingua di Crizia. Emerita 20:402–412.
Includes notes on B2, B4, B6, and B1 DK, with attention to stylistic quirks and rare vocabulary.
Citations to parallel passages.
Regali, Mario. 2006. Crizia poeta doctus e Platone. In Esegesi letteraria e riflessione sulla
lingua nella cultura greca. Edited by Graziano Arrighetti and Mauro Tulli, 65–88. Pisa, Italy:
Giardini Editori e Stampatori.
Relates the elegiac fragments to Plato’s representation of Critias as a poet. Illuminating analysis
of Homeric allusions in B1 and B6 DK (pp. 72–78).
Wilson, Peter. 2003. The sound of cultural conflict: Kritias and the culture of Mousikê in Athens.
In The cultures within ancient Greek culture: Contact, conflict, collaboration. Edited by Carol
Dougherty and Leslie Kurke, 181–206. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Provocative, insightful, and sometimes essayistic study of some Critian poetic fragments (esp.
B57, B51, B1, B44, B4–6 DK). Structured as addressing the tumultuous debate about New
Music, which includes adoption of the (non-aristocratic) aulos against the (once-elite)
kithara/phorminx—and thus investigates Critias as informative about the important intersection
of artistic and political culture.
B4 and B5 DK (Alcibiades)
Recent interest in the Alcibiades fragments has focused on the light they shed on the relationship
between two of classical Athens’ most notorious figures. Lapini 1995, followed by Iannucci
2002, reads the apparent encomium of B4 DK as a satirical rebuke of its subject, while
Bultrighini 1999 argues for an initial friendship that eventually soured. Tulli 1985 and Condello
2012 analyze the enigmatic “seal of my tongue” (sphragis d’ hêmeterês glôssês) of B5 DK. (For
scholarship on Alcibiades, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Classics article
“Alcibiades.”)
Bultrighini, Umberto. 1999. Crizia e Alcibiade. In “Maladetta democrazia”. Studi su Crizia. By
Umberto Bultrighini, 185–221. Alessandria, Italy: Edizioni dell’Orso.
The two fragments provide the starting point for a reconstruction of the relationship between
Critias and Alcibiades, which is endeavored with close attention to chronological difficulties. B4
DK is taken to be a complete poem and a playful homage to a friendship that degenerated by the
time B5 DK was composed—Critias had by then found Alcibiades insufficiently anti-
democratic.
Condello, Federico. 2012. Sul sigillo di Crizia (fr. 5 W2 = 3 G.-P.2). Quaderni di Storia 76:165–
185.
“Seal of my tongue” of B5 DK alludes not only to Theognis 19, as has long been noted, but also
to Aeschylus’s Suppliants 946–949. Critically surveys six different interpretations of the

enigmatic phrase, before proposing that it refers to Critias’s public (and oral) role in Alcibiades’
recall from exile. The phrase also implies a critique of the democracy’s use of writing.
Iannucci, Alessandro. 2002. Elegia e lotta politica. In La parola e l’azione. I frammenti
simposiali di Crizia. By Alessandro Iannucci, 35–77. Bologna, Italy: Nautilus.
Includes close readings of both fragments, arguing that B4 DK is a parodic critique of its subject
(pp. 37–44) and that Critias’s action on behalf of Alcibiades, recollected in B5 DK, was mere
opportunism—an attempt to rehabilitate himself in eyes of the dêmos after his (supposed)
participation in the oligarchy of the Four Hundred (pp. 48–58). Suggests that B5 was a response
to Critias’s own exile in 408. Also discusses B2 and B7–9 DK.
Lapini, Walter. 1995. I frammenti alcibiadei di Crizia: Crizia amico di Alcibiade? Prometheus
21:1–14, 111–130.
Two-part study of both fragments, which are taken to belong to a single poem. Argues, against
the mainstream of scholarship, that the metrical violation of B4 DK suggests a parody of
encomia and thus a rebuke of Alcibiades. Also proposes, more speculatively, that the gnômê of
B5 DK refers not to the psêphisma that overturned Alcibiades’ exile (as Plutarch supposed) but
to Critias’s earlier attempt to recall the general from Sicily to face punishment for Athens’
disastrous naval expedition.
Tulli, Mauro. 1985. La σφραγίς di Crizia. Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 19.1: 189–195.
Argues through parallel passages that the “seal of my tongue” of B5 DK refers to Critias’s
distinctive linguistic style, as displayed in the poem itself.

B2 and B6–9 DK (Constitutions in Verse?)
Morison 2018 (cited under Constitutions in Prose) provides valuable historical commentary on
the “aetiologies” passage (B2 DK) and the fragments in praise of Sparta (B6–9 DK). Iannucci
2002, Milesi 2015, and Pownall 2008a and Pownall 2008b reconstruct Critias’s sympotic ethics,
which contrasts a Spartan ideal of sôphrosunê with Athenian luxury and indiscipline (with Usher
1979 as antagonist of Pownall 2008a). (See also *Constitutions in Prose*.)
Iannucci, Alessandro. 2002. Il codice simposiale di Crizia. In La parola e l’azione. I frammenti
simposiali di Crizia. By Alessandro Iannucci, 79–107. Bologna, Italy: Nautilus.
Argues that B6 DK advances a Spartan ideal of political moderation through its advocacy of
Spartan sympotic discipline. Chapter 4 analyzes the term philophrosunê (v. 17).
Milesi, Matteo. 2015. Critias: An aristocrat in Athens. MA thesis, Univ. of Durham.
A helpful discussion of the political content of B6 DK, a metasympotic elegy, treating Critias’s
critique of symposiastic overdrinking as a critique of confused democratic ideals: Athenians
should focus on the exercise of self-restraint. Valuable correlation with Solon’s poetry and
attention to talk of metron and sôphrosunê. Contains an English translation of all DK fragments.
Pownall, Frances. 2008a. “Critias on the aetiology of the Kottabos game.” In L’étiologie dans la
pensée antique. Edited by Martine Chassignet, 17–33. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.
Argues that Critias’s two references to the kottabos (B1 and B2 DK) imply a negative view of
the drinking game, one that would go against his Spartan ideal of sôphrosunê (B6). Thus some
scholars’ assumption (e.g., that of Usher 1979) that Theramenes’s last words and gesture (Xen.
Hell. 2.3.56) imply Critias’s hypocrisy—that he did not really reject Athenian sympotic
decadence and luxury—are unfounded.
Pownall, Frances. 2008b. Critias’ commemoration of Athens. Mouseion (Series III) 8:333–354.
Argues that B2 DK, whose final lines commemorate Athens’ invention of pottery, is a warning
to Critias’s fellow aristocrats against the democratizing forces of imperial Athens’ sympotic
norms. Critias contrasts the practical good-quality Attic pottery from the glory days of Marathon
with the influx of decadent luxury items in the days of (degenerate) empire and newfangled
symposia. This article nicely addresses the competing scholarly interpretations of the fragment.
Usher, S. 1979. This to the fair Critias. Eranos 77:39–42.
A brief overview of the game of kottabos, and the (unsupported) claim that, because “Critias
shared Theramenes’s familiarity and pleasure in the game,” Theramenes skewered his
opponent’s inconsistency (Spartans being anti-kottabos). We see that Theremanes’s “last words
contain the same mixture of ingenuity, courage and balanced assessment of the political situation
that characterized the whole of his career.”
B1 and B44 DK (Anacreon and Archilochus)

The final chapter of Iannucci 2002 offers an unorthodox reading of the Anacreon fragment (B1
DK), in line with the author’s general interpretation of the sympotic poetry as parodic; see
Wilson 2003 for an alternative view. The fullest study of the Archilochus fragment (B44 DK) is
Rotstein 2007, with Rosen 2007 providing further insights, both more promising lines of
interpretation than Rankin 1975, which still has helpful citations from Archilochus’s poetry.
Iannucci, Alessandro. 2002. Crizia e il simposio di Anacreonte. In La parola e l’azione. I
frammenti simposiali di Crizia. By Alessandro Iannucci, 139–157. Bologna, Italy: Nautilus.
Reads B1 DK’s apparent praise of Anacreon as a parodic critique of the decadent Athenian
symposium. More persuasive on lexical details than on the overall interpretation of the fragment.
Rankin, H. D. 1975. Μοιχός, Λάγνος Καὶ Ὑβριστής: Critias and his judgement of Archilochus.
Grazer Beiträge: Zeitschrift für die klassische Altertumswissenschaft 3:323–334.
A psychologizing study of Critias’s attitude toward Archilochus, as factually accurate (pp. 328–
332 list the poet’s sexual references), sensitive to Archilochus’s moral authority, but naively
priggish and snobbish about Archilochus’s lack of (aristocratic) reticence. Does not consider the
possibility that Critias writes ironically or indirectly.
Rosen, Ralph. 2007. Making mockery: The poetics of ancient satire. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
The section on “Critias on Archilochean Abjection” (pp. 248–258) takes B44 DK as charging
Archilochus with failing to maintain a good public face, and thus lacking in an aristocratic
accomplishment, rather than as criticizing the poet’s actions themselves. Critias proves blind to
any literary reasons Archilochus may have had for presenting himself in an abject poetic
persona.
Rotstein, Andrea. 2007. Critias’ invective against Archilochus. Classical Philology 102.2: 139–
154.
Treats B44 DK (= Aelian Historical Miscellanies 10.13), explicitly an abuse of the early “poet of
blame” Archilochus, as in fact Critias’s criticism of democracy. Drawing from Aelian’s other
references to Critias and to the structure of rhetorical diabolê, as well as the Pseudo-Xenophontic
Athenian Constitution, the author argues that Archilochus with his faults stands in for
objectionable demagogues of Cleophon’s sort. Aelian may be paraphrasing a poem originally
meant for elite sympotic performance.
On pp. 190–194, Wilson argues that Anacreon is being treated as an exemplary old poet and
“model elite symposiast,” and thus grist for a contemporary debate about the “New Music” and
aulos-playing, with Telestes as possible implied interlocutor.
Constitutions in Prose
Critias is among the earliest known writers of Politeiai (“Constitutions”)—possibly comparative
studies of cities’ norms, characteristics, and institutions—apparently in both verse and prose.
(For the possible verse Politeiai, see under *Non-dramatic poetry*.) Athenaeus quotes a prose
passage from a Thessalian Constitution (B31 DK) and three others from a Spartan Constitution
(B33–35 DK; cf. B32, B36, B37 DK), which may have been a source for Xenophon’s work of
the same name (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Classics article “Sparta”). Two brief
comments on Athenian political figures (B45 and B52 DK) and a number of lexicographical
fragments (B53–73 DK) are sometimes thought to derive from an (unattested) Athenian
Constitution (see Dümmler 1892). Modern scholars have also sometimes identified Critias as the
“Old Oligarch,” the author of the Athenian Constitution spuriously attributed to Xenophon (see
*Doubtful Works*). For an introduction to the constitutional fragments, see Centanni 1997.
Chapter 2 of Bultrighini 1999 (cited under Book-Length Studies) attempts to reconstruct
features of the Athenian Constitution through Critias’s remarks on Cimon. Menn 2005 is
excellent on the Politeia genre in the 5th and 4th centuries. Pownall 2009 traces the likely
influence of Critias’s account of the Thessalians on later writers; Alvino 2018 traces his
sympotic ethics into Xenophon. Morison 2018 provides historical commentary on the relevant
fragments.
Alvino, Maria Consiglia. 2018. Aphroditê and philophrosunê: Xenophon’s Symposium between
Athenian and Spartan paradigms. In Socrates and the Socratic dialogue. Edited by Alessandro
Stavru and Christopher Moore, 544–563. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Section 3 in particular (pp. 548–554) addresses Xenophon’s reliance on and adaptation of
Critias’s Spartan Constitution in the formulation of his own sympotic ethics, with attention to
both authors’ use of the term philophrosunê, “referring to the mutual friendship proper to the
Spartan political groups in the syssitia.”
Centanni, Monica. 1997. Tracce delle opera perdute di Crizia. In Atena assoluta. Crizia dalla
tragedia alla storia. By Monica Centanni, 89–135. Padua, Italy: Esedra editrice.
Chapter 2 discusses the constitutional fragments in both verse and prose, suggesting that Critias
wrote two versions of the same material to appeal to old and new tastes (pp. 112–125).
Dümmler, Ferdinand. 1892. Die ΑΘΗΝΑΙΟΝ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑ des Kritias. Hermes 27:260–286.
Conjectures a Critian Athenian Constitution on the basis of remarks in the Aristotelian work of
the same name. Critias’s pamphlet is taken to have criticized Solon and provided the Thirty with
their political program of reintroducing the patrios politeia.
Menn, Stephen. 2005. On Plato’s ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑ. Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in
Ancient Philosophy 21:1–55.
Identifies a classical Greek genre of politeiai (writings on political constitutions) in Section I (pp.
2–13), applies it to understand Plato’s Republic, then discusses Plato’s intertwining with Critias
(pp. 47–53). A brilliant work of historicizing philosophical scholarship, and an exemplar of
clarity.
Morison, William. 2018. Kritias of Athens (338a). In Brill’s New Jacoby. 2d ed. Edited by Ian
Argues that the term emmetroi in A22 DK—where the Aristotle-commentator John Philoponus
says, either on his own behalf or an earlier commentator’s, Alexander of Aphrodisias, that Critias
wrote only Politeiai emmetroi—really means “well-balanced,” and not “in verse.” This
influences the way one interprets his reception.

Pownall, Frances. 2009. The decadence of the Thessalians: A topos in the Greek intellectual
tradition from Critias to the time of Alexander. In Alexander & his successors: Essays from the
Antipodes. Edited by Pat Wheatley and Robert Hannah, 237–260. Claremont, CA: Regina
Books.
Argues that Critias is probably responsible for the image of Thessalians as luxurious, and thus
that he must have influenced Plato’s, Xenophon’s, and especially Theopompus’ attitudes toward
them.
Philosophical Doctrines
In his doxographical reports, Aristotle claims that Critias located the soul in the blood; other
authors present Critias as having beliefs about perception and cognition (B39 and B40 DK). It is
unknown whether Critias addressed these topics directly, or whether instead his views were
inferred from incidental remarks in his poetry or prose. Critias also apparently theorized the
moral virtues: Plato represents him as defining sôphrosunê (“discipline”) as “doing one’s own
things” (B41a DK), while Galen quotes a sentence from a work titled Peri Phuseôs erôtos ê
erôtôn [or aretôn] (“On the Nature of Desire or On Desires [or Virtues]”: B42 DK; there is
debate about the correct title and interpretation). Scholarship dedicated to Critias’s philosophical
doctrines is scarce, reflecting the sparseness of evidence. Raoss 1957 reads Critias against the
background of pre-Socratic natural philosophy. Battegazzore 1962 provides the fullest
commentary on the philosophical fragments. Dillon 2012 makes a compelling case for Critias’s
intellectual merits, while doubting his status as a “philosopher.” For the Platonic material, see
*Plato*.
Battegazzore, Antonio. 1962. Crizia. In Sofisti: Testimonianze e Frammenti: Fascicolo quatro:
Antifonte, Crizia. Edited by Antonio Battegazzore and Mario Untersteiner, 214–363. Florence:
“La Nuova Italia” Editrice.
A generous running commentary on the relevant fragments (pp. 331–341), with broad
engagement with older scholarship (often not Critias-specific) not cited in this bibliography.
Dillon, John M. 2012. Will the real Critias please stand up? In Presocratics and Plato:
Festschrift in Honor of Charles Kahn. Edited by Richard Patterson, Vassilis Karasmanis, and
Arnold Hermann, 111–124. Las Vegas, NV: Parmenides.
Even if Critias’s thesis about blood simply quotes Empedocles (as some scholars think), it shows
interest in natural philosophy; more relevantly, Critias has cogent and even radical Antiphonian
epistemological views, and ethical-political views about sôphrosunê (“discipline”) and
gignôskein (“knowledge”) (pp. 113–118).
Raoss, Mariano. 1957. La teoria di Crizia sull’anima ed una possibile confutazione in Ippocrate.
Atti dell’Accademici Roveretana degli Agiati, 5th series, 6:97–130.
A comprehensive study of the attribution to Critias, by Aristotle and then later authors, of an
analysis of soul as blood (A23 DK), one often treated as a citation of Empedoclean doctrine, here
linked with the Hippocratic tradition.
Doubtful Works
Besides the dramatic fragments alternatively ascribed to Euripides and Critias (see *Attributed
Dramatic Fragments*), modern scholarship has sometimes attributed three prose texts to
Critias: a 5th-century anti-democratic Athenian Constitution, conventionally attributed to the
“Old Oligarch” or “Pseudo-Xenophon”; the Anonymous Iamblichus, a Sophistic tract about
education and virtue so-named for following a work of Iamblichus’s in medieval manuscripts
(proposed by Wilamowitz, but not followed up on); and the Peri Politeias attributed to Herodes
Atticus, a Second Sophistic writer, though the text deals with political struggles in Thessaly in
the late 5th century (it has also been ascribed to Thrasymachus). The basic argument for the “Old
Oligarch” attribution was made in Böckh 1886 and revived in Canfora 1980 (and in several other
of the author’s publications). The hypothesis continues to garner some sympathy (Leduc 1976,
with qualification; Rotstein 2007, pp. 147–151 [cited under B1 and B44 DK]; Dillon 2012, pp.
119–123), though not enough to earn a mention in the most recent English-language commentary
(Marr and Rhodes 2008). Wade-Gery 1945 proposed authorship of the Peri Politeias, with
results for our understanding of Critias qualified by Fuks 1956. Albini 1968 argues for a Second
Sophistic dating, and subsequent scholarship has tended to agree; yet it is included in the Critias
section of Gagarin and Woodruff 1995 (cited under Texts, Translations, and Commentaries),
and Pownall 2009 (p. 259) suggests that the speech’s author was relying on a Critian text (cited
under Constitutions in Prose). Finally, Usher 1968 argues that the speeches in Xenophon’s
Hellenika are based on documents of Critias’s own words. Yvonneau 2018b surveys all works
ever attributed to Critias, following the dynamics of their acceptance and rejection (cited under
Bibliography).
Albini, Umberto. 1968. [Erode Attico] ΠΕΡΙ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑΣ. Introduzione, testo critico e
commento. Florence: Le Monnier.
Critical text with commentary of the Peri Politeias attributed to Herodes Atticus, and sometimes
ascribed to Critias. Introduction contains a thorough discussion of the authorship question,
favoring a Second Sophistic dating, thus rejecting Critian authorship. But this work has not
settled the question.
Böckh, August. 1886. Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener. Vol. 1. 3d ed. Berlin: Reimer.
A lengthy footnote (pp. 389–393) proposes Critias as the author of the Athenian Constitution (a
hypothesis floated earlier by Curt Wachsmuth, as the author notes).
Canfora, Luciano. 1980. Studi sull’Athenaion politeia pseudosenofontea. Memorie
dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Cl. di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche. Turin,
Italy: Accademia delle Scienze.
Argument for Critian authorship of the Pseudo-Xenophontic Athenian Constitution by its most
prominent recent advocate. Proposes that the text reflects debates in oligarchic circles, where it
circulated; Critias wrote it between 431 and 424, as a dialogue, manifesting a realist attitude
toward actual political possibilities and the tension between democracy and freedom.
Dillon, John M. 2012. Will the real Critias please stand up? In Presocratics and Plato:
Festschrift in Honor of Charles Kahn. Edited by Richard Patterson, Vassilis Karasmanis, and
Arnold Hermann, 111–124. Las Vegas, NV: Parmenides.
From the stylistic perspective, Critias actually could have written the Athenian Constitution, as
we see from B44, his longest extant prose work, and later testimonia; from a lexical perspective,
he and it are distinctive for using the verb diadikazesthai, “to judge continually” (pp. 119–123).
Fuks, Alexander. 1956. Kritias, Pseudo-Herodes, and Thessaly. Eos 48.2: 47–50.
Responding to Engelbert Drurup’s 1906 edition of Herodes’s Peri Politeias, and more directly to
Wade-Gery 1945, Fuks accepts the Thessalian speech’s date as from 404, and plausibly by
Critias, but as pertinent purely to Thessalian affairs, and thus not revelatory of Critias’s political
outlook.
Leduc, Claudine. 1976. La Constitution d’Athènes Attributée à Xénophon. Traduction et
Commentaire. Paris: Annales Littéraires de l’Univ. de Besançon.
A thorough study of the work and scholarship on it. Pp. 49–51 discuss the plausibility of
Critias’s authorship, concluding that he is the best candidate yet forwarded, but hardly a certain
attribution. Elsewhere: date; political commitments; “Constitution” genre; literary structure.
Marr, J. L., and P. J. Rhodes. 2008. The “Old Oligarch”: The constitution of the Athenians
attributed to Xenophon. Oxford: Aris & Phillips.
Text, translation, introduction, and lemmatic commentary on this work. No discussion of Critias
as even potential author.

Usher, Stephen. 1968. Xenophon, Critias and Theramenes. Journal of Hellenic Studies 88:128–
135.
Examines the speeches of Theramenes and Critias in Xenophon Hell. 2.2–3, for their source,
arguing that they are unlikely to be pure products of Xenophon’s imagination. More likely is
that, in the case of Theramenes, Xenophon used the recollection of others, and in the case of
Critias, that he had a printed version of the speech to consult and condense. Argues from
considerations of both style and content.
Wade-Gery, H. T. 1945. Kritias and Herodes. Classical Quarterly 39.1/2: 19–33.
Hypothesizes that the Peri Politeias attributed to Herodes Atticus, and found in a medieval
manuscript containing speeches by other 5th- and 4th-century orators, is actually by Critias, not
by Herodes himself imitating Critias. The speech, which would be advising Larissa, could just
possibly be written in 404, the last year of Critias’s life. Contains a discussion of style and a
lemmatic commentary.
ATTRIBUTED DRAMATIC FRAGMENTS
Four plays have been attributed by modern scholarship, with varying degrees of confidence, to
Critias: three tragedies (Tennes, Rhadamanthys, Pirithous) and either a satyr play or a tragedy
containing the “Sisyphus” fragment (and possibly titled Sisyphus). The hypothesis of a Critian
tragic tetralogy consisting of these four plays goes back to Wilamowitz 1875 (cited under
Authorship). An Atalante was once attributed to Critias, due to a conjectured correction of an
“Aristias” to a “Critias”; this hypothesis was soon eliminated. Ancient authors, and many
contemporary scholars, believe some or all of the four attributed plays actually to have been
written by Euripides (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Classics article “Euripides”).
There is independent evidence that Critias wrote drama, even if not these ones: Stobaeus credits
Critias with a handful of verses from unknown plays (B26–29 DK), and a pair of passages in
Plato has been thought to hint that he wrote drama (Charmides 162d; Critias 108b). Dramatic
authorship would certainly be of a piece with Critias’s generic range and energy. Though
scholarship has often been consumed by the attribution debate, there has been no shortage of
interest in the Sisyphus fragment and its connection to 5th-century intellectual currents. The
other attributed plays have recently benefited from a surge of interest in Euripidean tragedy and
fragmentary drama more generally.
Texts and Translations of, and Commentaries on, the Dramatic Fragments
The standard edition of the dramatic fragments is Snell and Kannicht 1986, though Diggle 1998
is an important supplement, especially for the papyrus fragments of Pirithous (collected in
Battegazzore and Carlini 1989). Wright 2016 provides an entry-point for Greekless readers,
while Collard and Cropp 2008 is the best starting-point for advanced students and scholars.
Gauly, et al. 1991 provides texts and German translations based on Snell-Kannicht. Pechstein
1998 and Cipolla 2003 include text and commentary for the Sisyphus fragment, Meccariello
2014 for the Hypotheses to the three other plays (i.e., summaries written by later editors or
librarians). Giovanna Alvoni has recently published a series of studies in German and Italian
toward a new critical edition of the dramatic fragments with commentary (see Alvoni 2006,
Alvoni 2008, Alvoni 2011, and Alvoni 2012, all cited under Pirithous, and Alvoni 2017, cited
under General and Textual Studies: The Sisyphus Fragment).

Battegazzore, Antonio, and Antonio Carlini. 1989. Critias 2 (?) Pirithous. In Corpus dei Papiri
Filosofici Greci e Latini (CPF). Testi e lessico nei papyri di cultura greca e latina. Parte I:
Autori Noti. Vol. 1*, 442–466. Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore.
A new critical edition of the Oxyrhynchus papyri 2078 and 3531, fragments from Pirithous, dealt
with rather more briefly in Hunt’s and Cockle’s POxy editions (in 1927 and 1983, respectively).
Bibliography, physical and epigraphical description, elaborate apparatus, and minute general and
lemmatic commentary: concerned with authorship (a little), background myth, and reconstructing
the play’s action (primarily).
Cipolla, Paolo. 2003. Poeti minori del dramma satiresco. Testo critico, traduzione e commento.
Amsterdam: Hakkert.
Includes critical text, with two-layered apparatus and facing Italian translation, of the Sisyphus
fragment and two from unknown plays (frr. 22 and 25 Sn.-K.) (pp. 225–269). Introduction,
lemmatic commentary, and thorough treatment of the authorship debate (including a critique of
Pechstein 1998), leaving the question open.
Collard, Christopher, and Martin Cropp. 2008. Appendix: Critias or Euripides? In Euripides:
Fragments. Vol. 2, 627–677. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
The appendix to the second volume offers the most accessible bilingual edition of the tragic
fragments. The introduction judiciously surveys the evidence and arguments in the authorship
debate (not siding with Critias, as the volume name reveals, but allowing that the question
remains open), with excellent bibliography. There are separate sections on each of the disputed
plays, providing Greek text with basic apparatus, and a prose translation with ample footnotes.
Diggle, James. 1998. Critias. In Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Selecta, 172–179. Oxford
Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Includes critical text and apparatus for the Hypothesis (a later précis) and the three most
substantial passages of the Pirithous (frr. 1, 4a, 5, and 7 Sn.-K.), and the Sisyphus fragment (all
under the heading “Critias”).Suggests multiple supplements to the highly lacunose papyrus
fragments.
Gauly, Bardo, Lutz Käppel, Rainer Klimek-Winter, Helmut Krasser, Karl-Heinz Stanzel, Volker
Uhrmeister. 1991. Critias. In Musa Tragica. Die griechische Tragödie von Thespis bis Ezechiel,
108–125. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Includes short general introduction to Critias as a tragic playwright; long introductory paragraph
on Pirithous; Greek text and German poetic translations of the tragic fragments (excluding
Tennes), laid out nicely. Very little critical apparatus except for the Oxyrhynchus fragments.
Meccariello, Chiara. 2014. Le hypotheseis narrative dei drammi euripidei. Testo, contesto,
fortuna. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
Includes critical text, apparatus, and general and lemmatic commentary for the hypotheses to
Pirithous, Rhadamanthys, and Tennes.
Pechstein, Nikolaus. 1998. Euripides Satyrographos. Ein Kommentar zu den Euripideischen
Satyrspielfragmenten. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner.
The section on the Sisyphus (pp. 185–217) begins with a detailed critique of Wilamowitz’s
hypothesis. The Sisyphus fragment itself, which the author suspects may come from a
Euripidean play titled Autolycus, is treated in a separate section (pp. 289–344). Further
discussion of authorship is found there, along with text, basic apparatus, and lemmatic
commentary. Argues that the speaker does not deny the existence of the gods, only their
omniscience.
Snell, Bruno, and Richard Kannicht. 1986. Critias. In Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol.
1. By Bruno Snell and Richard Kannicht, 170–184. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht.
The standard edition of the tragic fragments; the Sn.-K. numbering is the most commonly used in
the scholarship, even though Nauck’s is still sometimes found. Adduces testimony that Critias
wrote plays; contains a brief note about the state of the question about authorship; then includes
the texts of Pirithous, with much apparatus; Rhadamanthys; “Sisyphus”; Tennes, and fragments
without titles. This second edition (Snell’s first edition: 1971) adds fr. 4a in an appendix.
Wright, Matthew. 2016. The lost plays of Greek tragedy. Vol. 1, Neglected Authors. London:
Bloomsbury.
The section titled “Critias” (pp. 50–58) concisely summarizes the authorship debate (finding the
question undecidable given the state of the evidence), before turning to what can be known or
reasonably conjectured about the plots of the four attributed plays. Makes the most, with due
caution, of what little survives from the Tennes and Rhadamanthys. Casts doubt on the
Pirithous–Frogs hypothesis and the supposed satyric provenance of the Sisyphus fragment.
Translations are provided in the first appendix (pp. 225–229).

Authorship
Until recently, scholarship on the dramatic fragments has been dominated by the authorship
question. The ancient evidence for Critian authorship is thin. Sextus Empiricus (c. 200 CE)
quotes forty-two lines of a speech in iambic trimeter as evidence of Critias’s atheism; the
doxographer Aëtius (1st or 2nd century CE), however, identifying the speaker as Sisyphus,
quotes several of the same lines as the work of Euripides. Athenaeus (170–223 CE) attributes a
two-verse quotation from the Pirithous ambivalently to Critias or Euripides. Other ancient
sources almost unanimously name Euripides as the author, the sole exception being a short
Byzantine biography of Euripides, which identifies three tragedies as spurious—Tennes,
Rhadamanthys, and Pirithous—in addition to one unnamed satyr play (ll. 36, 133–134 Méridier).
This led Wilamowitz to hypothesize a Critian tragic tetralogy (with a Sisyphus as the satyr play),
which ancient editors spuriously ascribed to the better-known Euripides (Wilamowitz-
Moellendorff 1875 and several other publications; see Yvonneau 2018b under Bibliography).
Modern editors tend to follow Wilamowitz and attribute the few surviving fragments from the
Tennes and Rhadamanthys, along with the Pirithous passages and the Sisyphus fragment, to
Critias. Yet Wilamowitz’s hypothesis has always had its detractors (see Kuiper 1907; Alvoni
2011, cited under Pirithous), and there is nothing close to a consensus among recent scholars.
Kannicht 1996 and Collard 2007 survey the evidence, reaching opposed conclusions;
Panchencko 1980 assembles numerous arguments in favor of Critias’s authorship; Scodel 1980
argues for Euripidean authorship of the Sisyphus fragment; Sutton 1987 attributes Tennes,
Rhadamanthys, and Pirithous to Euripides, but the Sisyphus fragment to Critias. Several other
important discussions of the authorship issue are included in the previous section (*Texts and
Translations of, and Commentaries on, the Dramatic Fragments*) and in the entries for
individual plays.
Collard, Christopher. 2007. The Pirithous Fragments. In Tragedy, Euripides and Euripideans. By
Christopher Collard, 57–68. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool Univ. Press.
A precise presentation of all direct evidence of Pirithous, from book sources and papyri.
Adumbrates weaknesses in Wilamowitz’s hypothesis and offers sound arguments in favor of
Euripidean authorship. Less attention is given to the pro-Critias view. An appended chart
helpfully lists scholars’ positions on Critian or Euripidean authorship of the four plays.
Originally published in 1995; a 2006 endnote gives further consideration to the views of
Wilamovitz and Dover 1994 (cited in Pirithous), and adds more bibliography on both sides of
the debate.
Kannicht, Richard. 1996. Zum Corpus Euripideum. In ΛΗΝΑΙΚΑ. Festschrift für Carl Werner
Müller zum 65. Geburtstag am 28. Januar 1996. Edited by Christian Mueller-Goldingen and
Kurt Sier, 21–31. Stuttgart: Teubner.
Reviews the ancient evidence for the Euripidean corpus, concurring with Wilamowitz’s
hypothesis.
Kuiper, K. 1907. De Pirithoo fabula Euripidea. Mnemosyne 35.4: 354–385.
Detailed critique of the arguments in Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1875 (and other publications)
against Euripidean authorship of the Pirithous.

Panchencko, D. V. 1980. Euripides or Critias? Vestnik drevnej istorii 151:144–161.
Seven arguments in favor of Critias’s authorship of the four plays, among them: Athenaeus’s
source, Pamphilus, has reliable earlier sources; Plato implies Critias’s plays were performed; the
Sisyphus fragment presents its author’s view, and Euripides did not write this way; the plays fit
Critias’s biography and literary themes; Euripides’ works would not be wrongly attributed to
someone little known as a dramatist. In Russian.
Scodel, Ruth. 1980. The Sisyphus and the gods. In The Trojan Trilogy of Euripides. By Ruth
Scodel, 122–137. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
An expansive, detailed, and valuable reading of the Sisyphus fragment, arguing, however, that it
comes from Euripides’ Sisyphus, the satyr-play concluding the trilogy of 415 BCE, Alexander–
Palamedes–Trojan Women, and explaining it in light of their narrative course.
Sutton, D. F. 1987. Two lost plays of Euripides. New York: Peter Lang.
The Pirithous must be Euripidean, given the many linguistic parallels with extant works—the
citation of which fills many pages—and minimal number of purportedly non-Euripidean
features. The method of argument is dubious (and was critically panned); the engagement with
scholarship and presentation of dramatic events is more provocative and useful. Sympathetic
with Mette 1983 (cited under *Pirithous*). Accepts Euripides as author of Tennes and
Rhadamathys but Critias for the Sisyphus fragment.

von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich. 1875. Analecta Euripidea. Berlin: Borntraeger.
The section on the Pirithous (pp. 161–172) contains the original argument for a Critian tetralogy
consisting of Tennes, Rhadamanthys, Pirithous, and Sisyphus. Claims that Aristophanes’ Frogs
parodies the Pirithous.
Tennes and Rhadamanthys
Of these two plays very little survives: from the Tennes, a papyrus fragment containing the last
few lines of the Hypothesis and a single verse quoted in Stobaeus; from the Rhadamanthys, a
slightly more substantial papyrus fragment of the Hypothesis, a ten-line passage from Stobaeus,
and two other single-verse quotations. Their connection to Critias is also extremely tenuous (see
under *Authorship*). Collard and Cropp 2008 provides texts and translations, prefaced with the
relevant information on the myths; Wright 2016 suggests attractive ways to fill the gaps in the
plots (for both, see under Texts and Translations of, and Commentaries on, the Dramatic
Fragments). For the mythical background to both plays, see Gantz 1996. On the Tennes myth,
which may have been largely shaped by the 5th-century play, see also Halliday 1927. Wilson
2003 connects the plot of the Tennes to Critias’s apparent attitude toward the aulos.
Gantz, Timothy. 1996. Early Greek myth: A guide to literary and artistic sources. Vol. 1.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Concise guide to the mythical traditions about Rhadamanthys (pp. 259–260) and Tennes (pp.
591–592). Also contains entries on Pirithous (pp. 277–282) and Sisyphus (pp. 173–176).
Halliday, W. R. 1927. Tenes. Classical Quarterly 21:37–44.
Critical assessment of the various Tennes stories, concluding that they may not predate the 5th
century.
A two-page section on the Tennes (pp. 188–189) speculates on the role in the drama of an aulos-
player named Eumolpus, and thus relates the play to Critias’s critique of the “New Music.”
Pirithous
From the Pirithous, we have the complete Hypothesis and about a dozen serviceable fragments,
some of quite substantial length. Aside from the authorship question (see Collard 2007 and
Sutton 1987, both cited under Authorship, and Alvoni 2011), scholarship has centered on basic
issues of plot reconstruction and interpretation (e.g., Mette 1983, Alvoni 2006), cosmology (e.g.,
Raoss 1951, Alvoni 2012, Boschi 2018), and a possible intertextual connection to Aristophanes’
Frogs (e.g., Centanni 1997, Dobrov 2001, Dover 1994, Alvoni 2008).
Alvoni, Giovanna. 2006. Nur Theseus oder auch Peirithoos? Zur Hypothesis des Pseudo-
Euripideischen Peirithoos. Hermes 134.3: 290–300.
Provides a critical text with apparatus of the Hypothesis, based on an examination of all known
manuscripts. Argues that Heracles rescued both Theseus and Pirithous from the underworld, not
just Theseus (as in some ancient versions of the myth).

Alvoni, Giovanna. 2008. Eracle ed Eaco alle porte dell’Ade (Critias fr. 1 Sn.-K.). Philologus
152.1: 40–48.
Provides a critical text with apparatus of fr. 1 Snell-Kannicht, based on an examination of all
known manuscripts, and proposes a new emendation of v. 14. Discusses the possible parody by
Aristophanes’ Frogs of Heracles’ arrival at the gates to the underworld. Finds another possible
allusion to the scene in Lucian Necyomantia 8.
Alvoni, Giovanna. 2011. Ist Critias Fr. 1 Sn.-K. Teil des Peirithoos-Prologs? Zu Wilamowitzens
Memorandum über die Peirithoosfrage. Hermes 139.1: 120–130.
Provides a running commentary, along with the complete text (originally published in J. M.
Bremer and W. M. Calder III, “Prussia and Holland: Wilamowitz and Two Kuipers,”
Mnemosyne 47.2 (1994): 177–216), of a memorandum that Wilamowitz sent to Koenraad Kuiper
criticizing his defense of Euripidean authorship (Kuiper 1907, cited under Authorship). The
commentary elucidates Wilamowitz’s response by drawing from his published remarks, arguing
that Wilamowitz did not deny that fr. 1 Snell-Kannicht came from the Prologue to the Pirithous,
only that Euripides could have written such a prologue.
Alvoni, Giovanna. 2012. Autogenerazione della divinità: Da Crizia (frammenti 3 e 4 Snell-
Kannicht) al dio cristiano. Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 16:477–486.
Argues, against the majority view, that the “self-generating” (autophuês) god of fr. 4 Snell-
Kannicht should not be identified with Time, who is similarly described in fr. 3. Instead, the
context of the citation of fr. 4 in Satyrus’s Vita of Euripides suggests that the Pirithous author
chose to leave the god unidentified. Includes text and apparatus for both fragments.
Boschi, Alessandro. 2018. Vision célestes dans la parodos du Pirithoos: deux notes à Critias, fr. 3
et 4 Snell. In La Muse au long couteau: Critias, de la création littéraire au terrorisme d’État:
actes du colloque international de Bordeaux, les 23 et 24 octobre 2009. Edited by Jean
Yvonneau, 61–79. Bordeaux, France: Ausonius Éditions.
Some new editorial conjectures about Pirithous frr. 3 and 4 Snell-Kannicht, connected to the
cosmological language found therein.
Centanni, Monica. 1997. Il tiranno a teatro. In Atena assoluta. Crizia dalla tragedia alla storia.
By Monica Centanni, 137–226. Padua, Italy: Esedra editrice.
Includes a reconstruction of the plot of the Pirithous (pp. 159–170) and a lengthy analysis of the
possible parody of Heracles’ katabasis in Aristophanes’ Frogs (pp. 183–212).
Dobrov, Gregory W. 2001. Herakles: Euripides’ Peirithous and Aristophanes’ Frogs. In Figures
of Play: Greek Drama and Metafictional Poetics. By Gregory Dobrov, 133–156. Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press.
Presents a fresh argument for the connection to Aristophanes’ Frogs, accepting Euripidean
authorship of the Pirithous. Offers a reconstruction of the plot and a number of suggestive
interpretive claims.
Dover, Kenneth. 1994. Aristophanes: Frogs. Edited with introduction, revisted text, commentary,
and index. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
In assessing the late conjecture that the unnamed doorman of Pluto in the Frogs is “Aiakos,”
Dover discusses several hypotheses about the Pirithous (pp. 54–55): that it preceded and was
parodied by the Frogs; or that the text circulated unperformed; or that the Thirty gave Critias a
chorus to produce it at the Lenaia of 403 (Euripides being dead by then), and he borrowed from
the Frogs.
Mette, Hans-Joachim. 1983. Peirithous, Theseus, Herakles bei Euripides. Zeitschrit für
Papyrologie und Epigraphik 50:13–19.
Argues for a close connection between the Pirithous and Euripides’ Heracles, indeed that the
two probably belonged to the same (Euripidean) trilogy.
Raoss, Mariano. 1951. Anassagora e Crizia. Rivista Rosminiana di Filosofia e di Cultura
45:250–259.
Follows up on a conjecture by Wilamowitz in 1929 that Anaxagoras’s conception of cosmic nous
underlies Critias’s idea of the autophuê in the Pirithous.
The Sisyphus Fragment
The Sisyphus fragment, forty-two lines of a speech in iambic trimeter, presents a radically
naturalizing, perhaps even atheistic, account of the origin of religious worship. The constitution
of the text, its authorship, genre, meaning, and position within the variety of related ideas in
Sophistic and tragic writing of the late 5th century are all matters of vigorous debate.
General and Textual Studies

This section deals with scholarship on textual issues and general problems of interpretation.
Scholarship focused on the fragment’s connection to atheism, and Sophistic views of the gods is
treated separately below. Sutton 1974 questions the common view that the speech derives from a
satyr play. Dihle 1977 revived doubts about Critian authorship, followed by Pöhlmann 1984 and
Yunis 1988, and opposed by Winiarczyk 1987. Davies 1989 and Whitmarsh 2014 are wide-
ranging and judicious treatments of the fragment, with Hesk 2000 addressing ironies specific to
its dramatic context. Holzhausen 1999 and Alvoni 2017 contribute to the reconstitution of the
text.
Alvoni, Giovanna. 2017. Die Rhesis des Sisyphos über den Ursprung der Religion (Kritias, fr. 19
Sn.-K.). Paideia 72:467–481.
Defends Wiliamowitz’s hypothesis of a Critian tragic tetralogy as the best way to explain the
available evidence. Valuable discussion of the textual issues at vv. 12–13, arguing for νόον to fill
the gap at the start of v. 12, and defending the transmitted text at v. 13 against modern editors.
Offers three alternative translations of the reconstituted text.
Davies, Malcolm. 1989. Sisyphus and the invention of religion. (‘Critias’ TrGF 1 (43) F 19 = B
25DK). Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 36:16–32.
Presents its own text of the Sisyphus fragment (related to Snell’s), with full apparatus, prose
translation, extensive lemmatic commentary, careful discussion of scholarship on authorship, and
remarks on genre. Finds the question of authorship ultimately undecidable, but lodges effective
arguments against those overly confident that it could not be by Critias.
Dihle, Albrecht. 1977. Der Satyrspiel “Sisyphos.” Hermes 105.1: 28–42.
Rejects Wilamowitz’s hypothesis of a Critian tragic tetralogy, favoring Euripidean authorship for
all four plays. Suggests that the Sisyphus fragment was spuriously attributed to Critias through
contamination of Sextus’s sources, and gives alternative reasons why Critias, if he did not write
it, might have earned a reputation for atheism. Argues for satyric provenance, finding a parallel
in Euripides’ Cyclops. An appendix provides textual notes on the fragment.
Hesk, Jon. 2000. Deception and democracy in classical Athens. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Univ. Press.
In the section “Fiction problematised: religion as ‘noble lie’ in the Sisyphus” (pp. 179–188),
engaging with Scodel 1980 (cited under Authorship), Hesk shows the multiple ironies that arise
when a playwright, whose works maintain a (salutary?) belief in the gods, presents a character
explaining the way a society maintains a (salutary) belief in the gods. Valuable parallels to other
plays and Sophistic writings.
Holzhausen, Jens. 1999. Zu TrGF 43 F 19 (= VS 88 B 25). Hermes 127.3: 286–292.
Addresses multiple textual issues in the Sisyphus fragment, with particular attention to vv. 13
and 37. Suggests that the speech is not an endorsement of atheism, but a reflection on the
negative consequences for morality of disbelief in the gods.
Pöhlmann, Egert. 1984. Sisyphos oder der Tod in Fesseln. In Tradition und Rezeption. Edited by
Peter Neukam, 7–20. Munich: Bayerischer Schulbuch-Verlag.
An ambitious attempt to reconstruct the context of the Sisyphus fragment, assuming it to be a
Trugrede from a satyr play about Sisyphus’s binding Death in chains. Sisyphus convinces
Death’s henchmen, the satyr-chorus, that they can help him without fear of punishment from
Zeus.
Sutton, Dana. 1974. The nature of Critias’s Sisyphus. Rivista di Studi Classici 22:11–15.
Supports Wilamowitz’s view that Tennes, Rhadamanthys, and Pirithous were written as a
trilogy, but sees no reason to identify a Sisyphus as the satyr play completing the set—nor any
reason, from style or content, to believe the Sisyphus fragment comes from a satyr play.
Similarity of the speech to passages in Euripides’ First Autolycus and Antiope may have led to
confusion about authorship.
Whitmarsh, Tim. 2014. Atheistic aesthetics: The Sisyphus fragment, poetics and the creativity of
drama. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 60:109–126.
A fresh look at the fragment, casting doubt on confident claims about satyric provenance and
cautiously favoring Critian over Euripidean authorship. Suggests that the “wise man” of v. 12 is
to be identified with Hesiod, and that the speech refers, self-reflexively, to poetry and the
theater’s role in creating conviction in powerful gods.
Winiarczyk, Marek. 1987. Nochmals das Satyrspiel “Sisyphos.” Wiener Studien 100:35–45.
Critique of the case in Dihle 1977 against Critian authorship of the Sisyphus fragment, arguing
that Critias’s appearance in the Epicurean catalogue of atheists is best explained by his
association with the speech, rather than his political activity. Also argues that Sextus Empiricus
is a more reliable source than Aëtius, who attributes the lines to Euripides.
Yunis, Harvey. 1988. The debate on undetected crime and an undetected fragment from
Euripides’ Sisyphus. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 75:39–46.
Argues that a two-line fragment preserved in Satyrus’s Vita of Euripides (fr. 1007c Nauck-Snell)
probably preceded Sisyphus’s speech, lending further support to Euripidean authorship (which
the author accepts, following Dihle 1977). An appendix raises objections to Winiarczyk 1987.
Critias and Atheism

Some ancient writers called Critias an atheist, though whether they did on the basis of the
Sisyphus fragment is uncertain. Most scholars now agree that the religious views of the speech’s
author cannot simply be inferred from the text (see Sutton 1981). It is even debated whether the
speech expresses atheism (Kahn 1997) or a more moderate view (see Holzhausen 1999, cited
under General and Textual Studies); and even if atheism, whether it casts false belief in the
gods in a positive (O’Sullivan 2012) or negative (Sedley 2013) light. The category of atheist
(atheos) developed in the late 5th century, in the sort of intellectual circles frequented by Critias.
Bremmer 2006 provides a brief introduction; Whitmarsh 2015 is an accessible though also rich
study of the phenomenon; Winiarcyzk 2016, written by the most dedicated scholar of the topic,
focuses on Critias’s contemporary Diagoras of Melos to ask serious questions about the nature of
atheism; all three discuss Critias. Ascription of atheism to Critias is known earliest from
Epicurus, in a report from the On Piety of the 1st-century BCE Epicurean Philodemus; Obbink
1996 provides a complete reconstruction and analysis of the source text. Critias as atheist seems
to have been added to philosophical doxography via Clitomachus of Carthage, and appears in
Plutarch and other authors. The evidence for these judgments is again unclear; was it inferred
from the Sisyphus fragment, or was it instead that Xenophon at least presented Critias as impious
(see Pownall 2016)?

Bremmer, Jan N. 2006. Atheism in antiquity. In The Cambridge companion to atheism. Edited
by Michael Martin, 11–26. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
A breezy overview of late-5th-century Athenian atheism. Considers the Sisyphus fragment as
probably by Critias, and believes that it cannot have been a wholly new view, even if it did
innovate: as part of a public work of drama, it would have to reflect ideas the audience would
already have known about, for example from Euripides, Antiphon, and Democritus.
Kahn, Charles. 1997. Greek religion and philosophy in the Sisyphus fragment. Phronesis 42.3:
247–262.
Situates the Sisyphus fragment, which is assumed to be Euripidean (following Dihle 1977, cited
under General and Textual Studies), against the background of Ionian natural philosophy and
5th-century accounts of the origins of human culture. Takes the speech to be an extreme
expression of atheism and moral cynicism. Compares its theory to the less radical views of
Prodicus and Democritus.
Obbink, Dirk. 1996. Philodemus: On Piety. Critical text with commentary. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Edition of the book that presents Epicurus’s claim that Critias was an atheist—our earliest such
evidence. Essential discussion of the relevant text and its meaning.

O’Sullivan, Patrick. 2012. Sophistic ethics, old atheism, and “Critias” on religion. Classical
World 105.2: 167–185.
The Sisyphus fragment does presuppose atheism, but also presents the invention of religion as a
social boon, parallel to other culture-discoveries as discussed by Antiphon, Protagoras,
Euripides, among others, and consolidates views already expressed by Hesiod and Xenophanes,
anticipating Plato’s “Noble Lie.” This article stands as a corrective to other scholarship on the
Sisyphus fragment that treat of the supposed badness of atheism.
Pownall, Francis. 2016. Tyrants as impious leaders in Xenophon’s Hellenica. Histos Suppl.
5:51–83.
Xenophon treats the essential failure of “tyrannical” bad leaders as connected to their impiety. In
Critias’s case, this involved violating rules of supplication by ordering Theramenes dragged from
the alter (Hell. 2.3.53–54); his death at Munychia is explained by a storm, treated as divine
retribution (2.4.14–15).
Runia, David T. 1996. Atheists in Aëtius: Text, translation and comments on “De Placitis” 1.7.1–
10. Mnemosyne 49:542–576.
A translation of and commentary on Aëtius 1.7, a treatment of historical atheistic views, which
includes (§2) a partial quotation of the Sisyphus fragment, by Aëtius attributed to Euripides (but
Runia believes it Critias’s). Aëtius is making an argument, not merely doxographizing. Aëtius
relies on a mixture of (Academic) Skeptical, Epicurean, and doxographical sources.

Sedley, David. 2013. The atheist underground. In Politeia in Greek and Roman philosophy.
Edited by Verity Harte and Melissa Lane, 329–348. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
On the basis of a passage in Plato’s Laws (886b–c), Sedley proposes that the Sisyphus fragment
was an anonymous text, probably written neither by Critias nor by Euripides, and perhaps not
even belonging to a longer dramatic work. A provocative treatment of ancient atheism, but less
convincing on the meaning of Sisyphus’s speech.
Sutton, Dana. 1981. Critias and atheism. Classical Quarterly 31.1: 33–38.
Accepts Critian authorship of Sisyphus, but rejects the imputation of atheism to Critias on its
account; the view is Sisyphus’s, a “cunning rogue.” Nor does the fragment offer “an apology for
criminality [or an] attack [on] nomos, and does not seem to parody—let alone endorse—the kind
of philosophy expressed by the Platonic Thrasymachus and Callicles.”
Whitmarsh, Tim. 2015. Battling the gods: Atheism in the ancient world. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf.
An accessible and useful narrative assessment of Greek atheism, providing good context for
Critias’s being called an atheist, though without close attention to the specific data about him.
Whitmarsh 2014 (cited in General and Textual Studies) provides closer analysis of the
Sisyphus fragment.
Winiarczyk, Marek. 2016. Diagoras of Melos: A contribution to the history of ancient atheism.
Berlin: De Gruyter.
A reliable close study of the purported atheism of Critias’s most famously atheistic
contemporary, with an appraisal of all the evidence, theoretical positions, and scholarship that
pertains to Critias as well. A capstone of many decades of publications on the issue.
NACHLEBEN
It is perhaps impossible altogether to separate the understanding of Critias from his reception by
later authors, given the paucity of extant fragments and the percentage of those whose attribution
and interpretation depends on issues of his later reputation. Nevertheless, at least two areas of
reception have sufficient content to deserve independent investigation. Plato wrote two or
(probably) four or (possibly) five texts that include or refer to Critias, and more that may have
Critian ideas in the background, in particular the Republic; and at least one pseudepigraphic
Platonic dialogue includes Critias as a major interlocutor. So Plato’s writerly project illuminates
Critias’s intellectual importance and, even more, is to be made sense of as something of a
response to Critias. Half a millennium later, in the period called the Second Sophistic, a
resurgence of interest in Attic prose and culture, Critias became an icon of that style and set of
interests.
Plato
Critias was the cousin of Plato’s mother and his senior by about thirty-five years. According to
the Seventh Letter (attributed to Plato but perhaps not written by him), Critias, among others,
influenced Plato’s desire to enter Athenian politics: “I thought that they [sc. Critias and other
relatives] were going to lead the city out of the unjust life she had been living and establish her in
the path of justice, so that I watched them eagerly to see what they would do. But as I watched
them they showed in a short time that the preceding constitution had been a precious thing”
(324e, tr. Morrow). In the event, Plato did not enter Athenian politics; he started or continued to
write philosophical dialogues instead (though doing much else too), a number of which feature
Critias. How many precisely is the dominant scholarly question: the Protagoras and the
Charmides do for certain, but the Timaeus and Critias only possibly, since some believe they
present his grandfather instead. In either case, tough questions arise and are important for
understanding Critias’s position in 5th- and 4th-century intellectual and political life, and,
indeed, for making sense of Plato’s literary-theoretical project. Why does Plato present Critias
howsoever frequently as he does? The 19th-century scholarship, sometimes assuming Plato
wrote while Socrates still lived, could imagine that Plato meant to change Critias’s behavior
(especially via the Charmides); no longer a common view, some scholars now speculate that
Plato depicts, through the dramatic sequencing of his dialogues, a time-lapse criticism of Critias
(see Zuckert 2009, Lampert 2010, Flores 2018; for a distinct but related approach, see Altman
2016). What difference does Plato’s sharing a family lineage with Critias make? Is Critias in the
shadows even when not named, perhaps as author of ideas to which Plato responds in his own
Politeia (see Notomi 2000, Donovan 2003, Howland 2018, Herrmann 2018a and Herrmann
2018b)? How similar to Critias’s actual speeches, writings, and views are those attributed to him
in the dialogues? How do we characterize the apparent difference of attitudes toward Critias
found in Plato and in Xenophon (one side of the debate presented in Danzig 2014)? What do the
dialogues tell us about the apparently imperfect relationship between Critias and Socrates,
including in light of the shared association with Alcibiades? (See the separate Oxford
Bibliographies in Classics article “Plato”.)
Altman, William H. F. 2016. Critias, Phaedrus, and the theological-political problem. In The
guardians in action: Plato the teacher and the post-Republic dialogues from Timaeus to
Theaetetus. By William H. F. Altman, 117–137. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
There is only one Critias in Plato; in the Timaeus, Critias is actually reporting his grandfather’s
account of talking with his own grandfather (21a7–b2); we are to read “an extra set of quotation
marks.” Plato can assume his readers know his other works that feature Critias, and that Critias is
an atheistic liar. This section contains novel and intriguing arguments, and useful appeal to
pertinent scholarship.
Danzig, Gabriel. 2014. The use and abuse of Critias: Conflicting portraits in Plato and
Xenophon. Classical Quarterly 64.2: 507–524.
A complex and provocative historicizing account of perceived differences between Plato’s
presentation of Critias, which involves family connection, political sympathy, and theoretical
acceptance, and Xenophon’s rivalrous one, which involves an active defense of Socrates. In the
end, it is probably too conjectural and too committed to an unsubstantiated “positive” appraisal
by Plato of Critias.
Donovan, B. R. 2003. The do-it-yourselfer in Plato’s Republic. American Journal of Philology
124.1: 1–18.
Sets of ambiguities with Critias’s definition of sôphrosunê as “doing one’s own things” as
portrayed by Plato in the Republic.
Flores, Samuel Ortencio. 2018. The development of Critias in Plato’s dialogues. Classical
Philology 113.2: 162–188.
Reading in dramatic chronological order, we see Critias “as an estranged former companion of
Socrates, one whose life as poet, sophist, and tyrant makes him representative of a type of
learning opposed to Socrates and the Socratic dialectic.” Much more argument would be needed
to substantiate this interesting thesis.
Herrmann, Fritz-Gregor. 2018a. Plato and Critias. In La muse au long couteau: Critias, de la
création littéraire au terrorisme d’État: actes du colloque international de Bordeaux, les 23 et
24 octobre 2009. Edited by Jean Yvonneau, 83–115. Bordeaux, France: Ausonius Éditions.
Plato takes up Critias’s definition of sôphrosunê in both Charmides and Republic, and makes it
his own, surpassing Critias’s own understanding of it.

Herrmann, Fritz-Gregor. 2018b. Spartan echoes in Plato’s Republic. In The Greek superpower:
Sparta in the self-definitions of Athenians. Edited by Paul Cartledge and Anton Powell, 185–214.
Swansea, UK: Classical Press of Wales.
Plato contends with Critias’s Laconizing throughout his work, notably in the Protagoras, when
speaking of the Spartan origins of philosophy and interpreting Simonides’ song to Scopas, and in
the Republic, which despite flavors of the Spartan constitution in fact criticizes that state.
Howland, Jacob. 2018. Glaucon’s fate: History, myth, and character in Plato’s Republic.
Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books.
Development of an intriguing conjecture by Mark Munn that Glaucon sided with Critias in the
civil war, and died with him at Munychia. The book is a reading of the Republic; evidence about
Critias (esp. pp. 83–122) is mainly Platonic and potentially overplayed. The claim: “Critias’
thought takes root in the Republic through the speeches of Thrasymachus [ch. 4] and Glaucon
[ch. 1], and comes to fruition in Callipolis.”
Lampert, Laurence. 2010. How philosophy became Socratic: A study of Plato’s Protagoras,
Charmides, and Republic. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Critias has adopted Socratic theses, but misunderstood them.

Notomi, Noboru. 2000. Critias and the origin of Plato’s political philosophy. In Plato:
Euthydemus, Lysis, Charmides. Proceedings of the V Symposium Platonicum (selected papers).
Edited by Thomas Robinson, 237–250. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Academia Verlag.
Plato believes Critias had good intentions, but failed politically because he failed epistemically,
not appreciating the extent of his ignorance. And yet neither was Socrates faultless, causing
skepticism about virtue, a prelude to “absolutism.” So Plato posits the form of the good as the
object of the philosopher-kings’ knowledge. It turns out this is basically Critias’s view. Thus
Critias’s view is at the complicated heart of Plato’s political project for his entire life.
Zuckert, Catherine. 2009. Plato’s philosophers: The coherence of the dialogues. Chicago: Univ.
of Chicago Press.
Argues that all four dialogues present the same Critias, and lays the groundwork for the
dramatic-chronological approach.
Protagoras
In 433/2, at the party of Sophists and students at the house of Callias, the richest man in Athens,
Critias enters with Alcibiades directly behind Socrates, and thus as the final guest (316a). He
would be only in his late twenties, but is already prominent enough to participate in the
conversation: in the dialogue’s middle, he is the third of five speakers to encourage Socrates and
Protagoras to overcome their dialectical differences and continue their conversation (336d–e).
What does his presence in this dialogue mean? What does his contribution about the nature of
conversation mean (he claims that people should not side with either Protagoras or Socrates but
should instead request that the conversation keep going)? Does his position in the middle make
any difference? This is an undeveloped area in recent Protagoras scholarship.

Lampert, Laurence. 2010. How philosophy became Socratic: A study of Plato’s Protagoras,
Charmides, and Republic. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Contains a close reading of the conversational exchange, with Critias interpreted, for unclear
reasons, as advocating the rule of the wise, consistent with his Charmides character (pp. 81–85).
See also p. 36 for some questions about the earlier entrance scene.
Charmides
Socrates again reports a conversation, this one probably in 429, after Socrates’ return from battle
at Potidaea, at a palaestra with his friends and acquaintances. The ensuing discussion between
Charmides, Critias, and himself, apparently an instance of philosophia, mainly concerns
sôphrosunê (“discipline”), a canonical Greek virtue of orderliness and focused determination in
private and civic contexts. After Charmides, Critias’s ward and relative, fails to defend his own
well-formulated definitions, Critias defines sôphrosunê at first as doing one’s own thing and
eventually as knowing oneself and as the knowledge of knowledge. There is non-Platonic
evidence that Critias really did theorize sôphrosunê, perhaps in reflections on Sparta and on
sympotic culture. Critias in the Charmides also gives two remarkable speeches, interpreting a
line of Hesiod and a Delphic maxim. The dialogue ends with an exchange that might hint at the
Thirty’s abrogation of rights to legal hearings. The main relevant scholarly debate, though of
surprisingly little moment to earlier interpreters, concerns Plato’s presentation of Critias, in
particular whether it counts as relatively mild, for which see Dusanic 2000, Tuozzo 2011, and
Danzig 2013, or relatively harsh, for which see Schmid 1998, Stern 1999, Eisenstadt 2008, and
Lampert 2010. Other questions concern the historicity of Critias’s definition of sôphrosunê, his
interpretative speeches, and his philosophical acumen; his influence on Charmides; and his
relationship with Socrates before, during, and after the period depicted in the dialogue. See
Moore and Raymond 2019 for remarks about some of these issues and a guide to further
literature.
Danzig, Gabriel. 2013. Plato’s Charmides as a political act: Apologetics and the promotion of
ideology. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 53:486–519.
Plato’s Charmides defends Critias—criticizing him only mildly, having Socrates treat him
gently—so as to preserve Plato’s own career, which with the family connection to a so-called
“Tyrant” and with similar political-epistemological slogans, could have suffered. Plato presents
Critias as propounding promising but misinterpreted ideas concerning sôphrosunê, including
“doing one’s own thing,” and “knowing oneself,” some of which Plato presents afresh in the
Republic. Danzig contrasts this approach to Critias with Xenophon’s.
Dusanic, Slobodan. 2000. Critias in the Charmides. Aevum 74:53–63.
Plato’s Charmides responds to events in 382/1 with an apologia for Critias whom Plato esteems
as an advocate for aristocratic sôphrosunê and thus for peace, anti-imperialism, anti-
demagoguery, anti-Persian accommodation, and anti-misolaconism.
Eisenstadt, Michael. 2008. Critias’ definitions of σωφροσύνη in Plato’s Charmides. Hermes
136.4: 492–495.
Critias’s definition of sôphrosunê implies he seeks to be an autocrat who does his own things by
appropriating to himself what is public; his Hesiod speech shows he believes that his affairs
alone constitute ta agatha; his Delphic speech shows that he willingly greets but withholds
advice from most; etc.
Lampert, Laurence. 2010. Charmides: Socrates’ philosophy and its transmission. In How
philosophy became Socratic: A study of Plato’s Protagoras, Charmides, and Republic. By
Laurence Lampert, 147–240. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Critias parrots Socrates’ words but intends them with a grievously different sense.
Moore, Christopher, and Christopher C. Raymond. 2019. Plato: Charmides. Translated, with
Introduction, Notes, and Analysis. Indianapolis: Hackett.
An historically contextualizing interpretation of the dialogue, attentive to the contrast between
Critias and Socrates, with extensive but not exhaustive bibliography.
Schmid, W. Thomas. 1998. Plato’s Charmides and the Socratic ideal of rationality. Albany:
State Univ. of New York Press.
Critias’s long speeches in particular show the hubris of his thinking and self-conception. Critias
is contrasted distinctly with Socrates and his epistemic modesty and view of rational agency.
Stern, P. 1999. Tyranny and self-knowledge: Critias and Socrates in Plato’s Charmides.
American Political Science Review 93.2: 399–412.
The Charmides is a critique of Critias’s totalitarianism, grounded in his epistemic certainty by
contrast to Socrates’ epistemic humility. Plato’s articulation and implied assessment of Critias’s
views are presented as relevant to 20th-century discussions of tyranny (e.g., in Derrida and
Levinas), which have largely assumed, with Popper, that Plato legitimized tyranny.
Tuozzo, Thomas M. 2011. Plato’s Charmides: Positive Elenchus in a “Socratic” dialogue.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
In the course of an impressive interpretation of the dialogue, Tuozzo claims that “the allusions to
the excesses of the Thirty in the dialogue are meant not to discredit Critias’s political thought but
rather to point to the perils that attend any attempt to set a corrupt society aright. . . . That Critias
was unable to avoid these dangers shows that his thought needs deepening and further
development.”
Timaeus and Critias

In an unspecified year, in conversation with men named Timaeus, Hermocrates, and Critias,
Socrates says that on the previous day he told the story of an ideal city—the details he goes on to
recount look like those discussed in the first half of the conversation in Plato’s Republic—and
then asks his interlocutors to speechify on a city in motion—that is, at war. At the beginning of
the Timaeus, and through the whole of the Critias, Critias summarizes and recalls a story of
ancient Athens in competition with the ancient island empire Atlantis, including a detailed
geographical and political account of Atlantis. He claims to have heard the story when he was
ten from his grandfather who was ninety and who in turn got it from Solon. This displacement of
authority for the story is just one of many complexities in understanding the point of the
dialogue; see Lampert and Planeaux 1998, Ausland 2000. The perennial scholarly question,
genuinely dividing commentators, is whether this Critias is ours (e.g., Morgan 1998, Broadie
2013, Gill 2015) or his grandfather (e.g., Welliver 1977, Burnet 1914 [cited in
Prosopography]). Arguments depend on Critias’s self-characterization as a forgetful person and
having heard the account long ago; Plato’s knowledge of his family’s lineage and the ancientness
of Solon; Plato’s literary goals and reasons, if any, to misrepresent that lineage; and the meaning
of Critias’s claim that Solon’s poems were “new” when he was a child. If it is ours, then Plato
can be read as yet again characterizing Critias, with consequences for our knowledge of the
historical figure; we can also ask whether Critias’s Atlantis story reproduces or hints at
something the historical Critias really wrote or spoke about, a supposition made not implausible
by his authorship of Politeai (“Constitutions,” probably outlines of a city’s material and
intellectual culture). Even if we must understand Socrates to be talking to Critias’s grandfather,
we can ask whether Plato intended a prosopographical ambiguity, and if so, why. The Critias
gets special attention for being Plato’s only dialogue that reads as incomplete, cutting off just
where Zeus is said to begin giving advice about restoring the political turmoil that has lately
plagued the city; it is plausible that this strange ending reflects somehow on Critias as a
speechmaker. (See the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Classics article “Plato’s Timaeus”.)
Aloni, Antonio, and Alessandro Iannucci. 2016. Writing Solon. In Iambus and elegy: New
approaches. Edited by Laura Swift and Chris Carey, 155–173. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Against the argument that these dialogues must feature Critias’s grandfather because he said that
he recited Solon’s “new” poems when he was ten years old (and Solon would have written in the
mid-6th century), those poems may have become public, as scripts for festival recitation, only in
450, having before had solely intra-familial circulation. Ends with a conjecture that Critias may
have brought out the first edition of Solon’s works.

Ausland, Hayden W. 2000. Who speaks for whom in the Timaeus-Critias? In Who speak for
Plato?: Studies in Platonic anonymity. Edited by Gerald A. Press, 183–198. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Though providing little about Critias the character, Ausland undermines any easy treatment of
these dialogues as presentations of Platonic dogma; thus his article opens queries into their
potentially complex purposes.
Brisson, Luc. 1999. Plato the myth maker. Translated and edited by Gerard Naddaf. Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press.
Contains a particularly clear and efficient presentation of the basic chronological issues relevant
to the characters in these dialogues, as part of a reflection on oral transmission of stories (pp. 25–
31). Includes an introduction by Naddaf. Published in French in 1994.
Broadie, Sarah. 2013. “Truth and story in the Timaeus-Critias.” In The Platonic art of
philosophy. Edited by G. R. Boys-Stones, 249–268. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
A brilliant philosophical argument that Plato presents his Critias character (our Critias) as
uninterested in reason or ethical theory; he wants merely to convey a story, not to share it with
fellow citizens as a model political constitution. Socrates, by contrast, takes its truth as not
enough: its value would come only from the chance to evaluate institutions claimed to foster a
flourishing city and populace.

Gill, Mary Louise. 2015. Plato’s unfinished trilogy: Timaeus–Critias–Hermocrates. In Plato’s
styles and characters: Between literature and philosophy. Edited by Gabriele Cornelli, 33–45.
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Proposes that Plato intended his audience to identify “Critias” as the tyrant, but that he distorted
the chronology in order to mask his critique of Athens from authorities. The older Critias, the
only chronologically possible character, recalls Athens’ glorious past, while his grandson’s
presence points to the city’s decline, and thus reinforces the trilogy’s theme of degeneration.
Lampert, Laurence, and Christopher Planeaux. 1998. Who’s who in Plato’s Timaeus-Critias and
why. Review of Metaphysics 52.1: 87–125.
A fine-grained reading of the dialogues’ dramatic setting and characters, with some novel
conjectures—including that the missing fourth character is Alcibiades. This article is provocative
despite the authors’ view that it features Critias’s grandfather and the minimal attention to the
speech about Atlantis itself.
Morgan, Kathryn A. 1998. Designer history: Plato’s Atlantis story and fourth-century ideology.
Journal of Hellenic Studies 118:101–118.
Situates the Timaeus-Critias speech about ancient Athens within or beyond 4th-century genres of
political discourse, especially civic charters (including “noble lies”), encomiastic funeral
orations, and idealizing Egyptian constitutionalism. This is helpful for understanding the
structure and topoi of Critias’s speeches even as it does not consider Critias’s character and reads
the dialogues as positive proposals by Plato. Useful bibliographic notes. A shorter version is in
the author’s 2000 Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato.
Nagy, Gregory. 2002. Epic as music: Rhapsodic models of Homer in Plato’s Timaeus and
Critias. In Plato’s rhapsody and Homer’s music. By Gregory Nagy, 36–69. Washington, DC:
Center for Hellenic Studies.
An insightful account of the rhapsodic background of Critias’s speeches in Timaeus and Critias,
arguing for intentional incompleteness and that “Critias [is] still . . . playing rhapsode, [with] the
impression that Critias’s game is still in some ways a children’s game.” Originally published in
2000, in The Oral Epic: Performance and Music (ed. K. Reichl).
Nesselrath, Heinz-Günther. 2006. Platon, Kritias. Übersetzung und Kommentar. Göttingen,
Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
The first philological commentary on the whole of the dialogue. Thorough discussion of the
“Critias” problem (pp. 43–50), identifying the character as the eventual tyrant; a dramatic date
prior to 404 would have allowed a mid-4th century audience to discount his bad reputation.
Generational issues are explained as due to Platonic error and a traditional (late) dating of Solon.
Welliver, Warman. 1977. Character, plot and thought in Plato’s Timaeus-Critias. Leiden, The
Netherlands: Brill.
Beginning as a defense against scholarship derogating Plato’s assembly of Timaeus and Critias,
it comes to focus on Socrates’ disdain for Critias, studying Critias’s peevishness, intellectual
weakness, and hijacking of the planned-upon order of discussion. Admirable in providing a
character study, it is also overly subtle, and hardly explains Plato’s purpose in so treating
Critias—who the author believes is the grandfather.

Seventh Letter
Two potentially inauthentic works in the Platonic corpus deal with Critias: the Seventh Letter and
Eryxias. Presumably the earlier of the two, the Seventh Letter, purportedly written after the
summer of 354, narrates, in the form of a letter to the friends of Dion, tyrant of Syracuse, Plato’s
entry into adult life. In its opening lines it refers to Critias, without, however, naming him
(324d); the writer classes him as one of his relatives leading the coup in 404/3, which at first
appealed to him, as to many others, and then quite disgusted him, not least for its members’
harsh dealings with Socrates. The point is to explain Plato’s initial eagerness for the active life in
Athens and his subsequent rejection of it. Because this work is of disputed authenticity—see
Burnyeat and Frede 2015, who come down negatively; Irwin 2009 is qualifiedly in the same
camp—the way it affects one’s view of Plato’s understanding of Critias is uncertain.
Burnyeat, Myles, and Michael Frede. 2015. The pseudo-Platonic seventh letter: A seminar.
Edited by Dominic Scott. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Both authors of this pair of contributions to a 2001 seminar on the Letter believe it inauthentic,
and not even by a knowledgeable Academic colleague, for distinct reasons; if they are right, then
the attitude toward Critias projected at its beginning cannot be proven to be Plato’s.
Irwin, Terence H. 2009. The inside story of the seventh Platonic letter: A skeptical introduction.
Rhizai 6.2: 127–160.
A comprehensive, careful, and fine assessment of the arguments for and against authenticity; it
leans toward inauthenticity, suggesting Speusippus or a colleague as possible author.

Eryxias
The pseudo-Platonic Eryxias is a dialogue in familiar Socratic form but likely from the late-
Hellenistic period; it addresses the relationship between wealth and happiness. Critias is the
major interlocutor in the dialogue’s second half, and gives powerful arguments. No scholarship
yet focuses on the illumination of his life or reception the presence of Critias in the Eryxias
gives; but Eichholz 1935 and Schrohl 1901 analyze his arguments and provide worthwhile
context; significant discussion is also found in Souilhé.
Eichholz, D. E. 1935. The pseudo-Platonic dialogue Eryxias. Classical Quarterly 29.3–4: 129.
The longest analysis of Eryxias in English, but without interest in Critias’s being present as a
character.
Schrohl, Otto. 1901. De Eryxia Qui Fertur Platonis. Diss., Göttingen Univ.
The only full-length study of the dialogue (at fifty pages), with attention to dramatic situation,
historical background, and the characters, including Critias.
Souilhé, Joseph. 1930. Œuvres complètes. Tome XIII, 3e partie: Dialogues apocryphes (Du Juste
- De la Vertu - Démodocos - Sisyphe - Eryxias - Axiochos - Définitions). Paris: Les Belles
Lettres.
A full introduction to the dialogue.
The Second Sophistic
The prose style of Critias came into vogue during the Second Sophistic, a revival of interest in
and analysis of Athenian literature and oratory during the Roman 2nd and 3rd centuries CE.
Herodes Atticus adopted him as his favorite Attic author; Philostratus treated him as an essential
Sophist; Hermogenes of Tarsus wrote much about Critias’s style. There was even a verb,
Kritiazein, “to write like Critias.” Gotteland 2018 is the best available overview of Critias’s
reception in this period. Breitenbach 2003 and Condello 2014 focus on Philosratus’s portrayal.
Kim 2017 discusses the Atticist movement, the vogue for writing in classical Attic dialect, which
seems to have taken Critias as a model.
Breitenbach, Alfred. 2003. Kritias und Herodes Attikos: Zwei Tyrannen in Philostrats
Sophistenviten. Wiener Studien 116:109–113.
Argues that, according to Philostratus, Herodes Atticus took Critias as a model not only for his
literary style, but also for his tyrannical character.
Condello, Federico. 2014. Le γνῶμαι di Crizia: Noterella a Philostr. VS I 16. Quaderni di Storia
79:151–157.
Philosotratus’s expression γνώμας . . . πλείστας ἑρμηνεύων does not suggest that Critias engaged
in broad speculative activity, as some scholars have supposed. Rather, it refers to the fact that
Critias both expounded his own moral maxims and interpreted the maxims of others. There is
good reason to think Philostratus had direct access to a large amount of Critias’s writing.
Gotteland, Sophie. 2018. Critias dans la Seconde Sophistique et les traités des rhéteurs. In La
Muse au long couteau. Critias, de la création littéraire au terrorisme d’État: actes du colloque
Bordeaux, France: Ausonius Éditions.
Illuminating survey of Critias’s role in Second Sophistic writers including Plutarch,
Hermogenes, Apsines, Aelius Aristides, and Libanius. Critias serves as an exemplum of the
fallen tyrant, whom even Socrates could not save, and as a scapegoat for classical Athens’
failures.
Kim, Lawrence. 2017. Atticism and Asianism. In The Oxford handbook of the Second Sophistic.
Edited by Daniel S. Richter and William A. Johnson, 41–66. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
The first half of the chapter (pp. 43–53) provides a clear introduction to Atticism: its history,
exemplars, technical features, varieties, and ideological significance. Draws a useful distinction
between “Atticism” (imitation of classical Attic dialect) and “Classicism” (imitation of classical
Greek rhetorical styles).

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CRITIAS OF ATHENS

Christopher Moore, Christopher C. Raymond

of his reception through late antiquity.

d’Argos à Dyscolius. Edited by Richard Goulet, 512–520. Paris: CNRS Éditions.

status as a Sophist; Eryxias; the episode with Theramenes.

Morison, William. Critias (460–403 B.C.E). In Internet encyclopedia of philosophy.

of philosophical interpretation, and a minimal bibliography.

Worthington. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

constitutions and lives of the poets.

Helmuth Schneider, vol. 3, cols. 945–946. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

Dherby 2017 in The Sophistic Movement.

Freeman, Kathleen. 1953. Critias. In The pre-Socratic philosophers: A companion to Diels,

Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 3d ed., 405–413. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

ideas,” “more interested in objects than theories.” Originally published in 1946.

Guthrie, W. K. C. 1971. The Sophists. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

happier years of hope and promise.” See pp. 298–304.

Philosophies Préplatoniciennes. Edited by Pierre-Marie Morel and Jean-François Pradeau, 231–

251. Strasbourg, France: Univ. Marc Bloch.

An engaging unifying account of the political-intellectual character of Critias, pressing hard on

Concludes that Critias is a man of diverse and interesting contradictions.

Maykowska, Maria. 1934. De Critiae moribus fortunis litteris. In Charisteria Gustavo

Przychocki a discipulis oblate, 119–139. Warsaw, Poland: Gebethner and Wolff.

253–320. Aalen, Germany: Scientia.

the Sisyphus fragment. See pp. 400–420. Originally published in 1940.

under the influence of Gorgias and Thrasymachus. Originally published in 1903.

his writings on Sparta and in the dramatic fragments.

Vanotti, Gabriella. 1997. Rileggendo Crizia. Miscellanea Greca e Roma 21:61–92.

gives more weight than most to Plato’s portrayal of Critias as a “philosopher.”

prosopographical information. Patrick 1896 is a perspicuously organized early work. Yvonneau

all aspects of Critias’s life and work.

Bultrighini, Umberto. 1999. “Maladetta democrazia”. Studi su Crizia. Alessandria, Italy:

Explains Critias’s political adventures as manifestations of his intellectual reflections, especially

on constitutional theory, aristocratic valuation, and power—not as one among several

in North America likely only as microfiche.

Tennes–Rhadamanthys–Pirithous reflect Critias’s exile in Thessaly. Fluidly written and often

provocative, though lacking philological detail.

Iannucci, Alessandro. 2002. La parola e l’azione. I frammenti simposiali di Crizia. Bologna,

this bibliography for individual chapters.

California State Univ.–Fresno.

Untranslated testimony relevant to Critias’s political, intellectual, and speech-making lives

Mueller, and Dümmler’s hypotheses.

he may have earliest articulated a range of important intellectual positions.

d’État: actes du colloque international de Bordeaux, les 23 et 24 octobre 2009. Bordeaux,

France: Ausonius Éditions.

TEXTS, TRANSLATIONS, AND COMMENTARIES

the (dramatic and non-dramatic) poetic fragments.

Battegazzore, Antonio. 1962. Crizia. In Sofisti. Testimonianze e frammenti. Fascicolo quatro.

“La Nuova Italia” Editrice.

and textual footnotes. See pp. 365–421.

399. 6th ed. Berlin: Weidmann.

excluded. The first edition, by Diels alone, was published in 1903.

Currently the most comprehensive (and, simultaneously, accessible) English translation of

the tragic fragments.

Homer to the Sophists, 259–274. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Translations, and Commentaries), on grounds of their “relation to his thought or practice as a

Atticus but sometimes attributed to Critias.

ed. Indianapolis: Hackett.

(Originally published in 1972 by University of South Carolina Press.)

dialogue; for similar discussions, see Timaeus and Critias.