The Thirty at Athens

PETER KRENTZ

Cornell University Press

ITHACA AND LONDON
Cornell University Press gratefully acknou:ledges a grant from th<'A11drc1r To Jeri
W. Mellon Foundation that aided in bringing this book to p11blicatio11.

Copyright © 1g82 by Cornell L:nivcrsity Press

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Contents

Preface 9
Abbreviations 11

Introduction 15
I. Peace Negotiations after Aegospotami 28
2. The Summer of 404 44
3. The Thirty in Power 57
4· Thrasybulus 69
5. Civil War 89
6. The Settlement of 403 102
7. Aftermath 109
Conclusion: Was Failure Inevitable? 125
Appendix: Chronology 131
Bibliography 153
Index 161
Maps Preface

1. Greece and the Aegean 29 The story told here is based on the conviction (defended in
2. Athens, Piraeus, and the Long Walls ,31 the Appendix) that there are reasonable grounds for believing
3. Attica 71 that Aristotle's account of the Thirty (Athenaion Politeia 34-
3-40) is taken from the Oxyrhynchus historian, and that it
is more accurate, especially in its order of events, than the
narrative of Xenophon. This conclusion rests on the unprov-
Figures able assumption that the oligarchs of 404, educated and
experienced men that they were, must have had goals in
mind when they took over the government of Athens (though
1. The Pnyx in the early fifth century and in 404'403
of course they did not all agree). I have tried to explain why
2. Chronology of events according to four
the extant accounts do not make these aims clear; after the
major sources 132 restoration of the democracy, no one-not even men who had
3. Proposed relationship of the main sources 1 43 supported the Thirty in 404-was interested in the Thirty's
point of view. It was more convenient to blame the excesses
of 404' 403 on the "tyrannical" rule of the Thirty. The results
of my investigations, then, cannot be regarded as conclusive,
Tables since other possibilities are not ruled out. But they sound
right to me.
1. Members of the Thirty according to the My thanks to Kenneth Harl, who started me thinking about
Loeper hypothesis the Thirty; to Davidson College for a 1980 summer research
2. Reconstructed chronology of events grant; to the staffs of the Elmer Ellis Library of the Univer-
sity of Missouri and the E. H. Little Library of Davidson
College; to Thomas Loening, Josh Ober, and Michael Wal-
bank for sharing unpublished work; to Victor Bers, Brook
9
Preface

\1anville, Ramsay Mac~tullen, two anonymous readers fi)r

Cornell University Press, and particularly my Doktorrnter,
Donald Kagan, for detailed comments on earlier drafts at
various stages; to my wife, Jeri, for her helpful criticism
(from a journalist's perspective) of the style of the penultimate
version; and finally to my parents, Edgar and ~larion Becker
Krentz, for all their support along the way.
All the translations are my own, although I have not hesi-
tated to borrow phrases from others when I could offer noth-
ing better. In the translations of epigraphical and literary
Abbreviations
documents, brackets enclose letters or words that no longer
stand in the text as it survives, hut are restored; italics indi-
cate that only a part of the original word is extant on the AHR American Historical Redeu:
document. American Jounwl of Archaeology
AJA
I have tried to use the spellings that will cause the least AJAlf American Journal of Ancient History
difficulty for the greatest number of readers; therefore most AJP American Journal of Philology
names are Latinized according to the style of the Oxford AntCl L'Antiq11ite classique
Ath.\f itt Mitteilungen des deutschen Archiiologi-
Classical Dictionary, but demotics are usually transliterated. schen Instituts, Athenische Ahteilrmg
All three-figure dates are B.C. AthPol Aristotle, AtluJnai6n Politeia
When this book was already in galley proof, David White- BSA Annual of the British School at Athens
head sent me a copy of his forthcoming article, "Sparta and CB Classical Bulletin
the Thirty Tyrants," in which he reaches conclusions similar CJ Classical Journal
to my own about the goals of the Thirty. ClMed Classica et Mediaevalia
Clod1(:, RestDem Paul Cloche, La restauration democra-
PETER KRENTZ tique d Athenes en 403 avant J .-C.
Davidson, North Carolina (Paris, 191.5)
CP Classical Philology
CQ Classical Quarterly
CSCA California Studies in Classical Antiquity
DaviPs, AthPropfam J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Fami-
lies, Boo-300 B. c. (Oxford, 1971)
FGrHist Felix Jacoby, ed., Die fragmente der
griechl~chen Historiker (Berlin and
Leiden, 1923-)
FVorsok1· Hcnnann Dids and Walther Kranz,
eds., Die Fragmente der Vorsokra-
tiker, 7th ed. (Berlin, 19.54)
GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
10
11
 Abbreviations

IC foscriptiones Graecae
JHS ]ot1rnal of Hellenic Studies
KirchPA Johannes Kirchner, Prosopographia At-
tica (Berlin, 1901-3)
Lotze, LysanPelopKr Detlef Lotze, Lysa11der und der Pelopcm-
nesische Krieg {Berlin, 1g64)
MGR Miscellanea greca e romana
MusAfr Museum Africum
PQ Philological Quarterly
RE A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and \V. Kroll,
Realencyklopiidie der klassischen Al-
The Thirty at Athens
tertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 18g3-)
REG Ret:11edes etudes grecques
RendlstLomb Rendicanti dell' lstit11to Lombardo,
Classe di Lettere, Scienze nwrali e
storiche
RhM Rheinisches M use11mfur Philologie
RivStorAnt Rit:ista storica dell' Antichitd
SEC Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum
TAPA Transactions of the American Philologi-
cal Association
ws Wiener Studien
Xen. All references to Xenophon are to his
Hellenica, unless otherwise noted
YCS Yale Classical Studies
ZPE Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epi-
graphik

12
Introduction
Whan thritty tirauntz, ful of cursednesse,
Hadde slayn Phidon in Atthenes atte feste,
They comanded his doghtres for t'areste,
And bryngen hem bifom hem in despit,
Al naked, to fulfille hir foul delit,
And in hir fadres blood they made hem daunce
Upon the pavement, God yeve hem meschaunce!
For which thise woful maydens, ful of drede,
Rather than they wolde Iese hir maydenhede,
They prively been stirt into a welle,
And dreynte hemselves, as the bookes telle.
Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales V. 1368--781

Chaucer' s lurid anecdote illustrates the commonly ac-

cepted view of the oligarchy of the Thirty, which ruled
Athens for eight months shortly after the end of the Pelopon-
nesian War in 404 B.C. Backed by a garrison from Sparta, the
Thirty were brutal and repressive, executing hundreds of
Athenians during their brief bid for power. They were soon

'Chaucer took this story and a number of other exempla of such virtuous
women from St. Jerome's traet Against Jovinian (1.41 in J.-P. Migne, ed.,
Patrofogia latina 23). In V. 1437-38 Chaucer speaks of the suicide of the
wife of another victim, Niceratus. The source is again Jerome (1.44).
t,;either story is corroborated by more reliable evidence, though a Nicer-
atus was executed by the Thirty.
Introduction
dubbed the 'Thirty Tyrants. "2 The name and the image have
stuck.
At the time of their installation, the Thirty aroused quite
different expectations in the minds of many Greeks. Plato
later described his own feelings at the time:
Once, when I was young, I felt the same way as many others:
I thought that as soon as I came of age I would go into politics.
Then certain political events happ·ened to come my way. For
after many people abused the form of government we had at
that time, there was a revolution. Fifty-one men led the revo-
lution as magistrates, eleven in the city and ten in Piraeus
(each of these two bodies was concerned with the market and
general administration in the cities) and thirty were estab-
lished as absolute rulers over everything. Some of these men
happened to be relatives and friends of mine, and at once they
encouraged me to believe that these were auspicious events.
And, young as I was, no wonder that I felt as I did. I thought
that their administration would lead the city from a rather
unjust to a just way of life; so I eagerly paid attention to what
they would do. 3
There were good reasons for optimism. Years of bitter,
costly warfare had ended in decisive victory for Sparta. The
long walls, which by connecting the city to the sea had al-
lowed the Athenians to endure the devastation of their farm-
land, had been J2~ll~d dow!L'..'.:with$eaLenthusiasm ~d ..to
'The designation 'Thirty Tyrants" was first (so far as we know) used by
Polycrates (c. 44o---c. 370) in a speech praising Thrasybulus (Aristot. Rhet.
1401a). Xenophon, while he does not say "Thirty Tyrants," uses the verb
tyrannein in his account of the Thirty (2-4-1; cf. 2.3. 16 and 6.3.8), and he
portrays the Thirty throughout as typical tyrants. Ephorus probably wrote
'Thirty Tyrants," as the name appears in Diod. 14.2.1, 5.6, 32.1-33.4 and
Justin 5.8.9, and through Ephorus "Thirty Tyrants" became the standard
reference.
Other authors (Andoc. 2.27, AthPol 36.1, Plato Epist. 7.325a, Diod.
14.32.4) use the term dynasteia, on which see H. Berve, Die Tyrannis bei
den Griechen (~unich 1g67) 2.612.
'Epist. 7.324b-d.
16
Introduction
the music of flute girls. It was thought that this day was the
beginning of freedom for Greece. "4 The fact that Athens was
now dependent on unprotected farmland dictated at least a
temporary acceptance of defeat. It was time, many must have
thought, to end the struggle for hegemony, to accept Spar-
ta's leadership, and to begin to rebuild houses and farms
destroyed during the war. A change in government could
promote cordial relations with the Lacedaemonians, and
could prove to be an important first step on the road to a
newly prosperous Athens.
As J. K. Davies wrote recently, "Few episodes in ancient
history are better documented, from so many separate tradi-
tions, ... [than] the subsequent convulsions in Athens [after
the installation of the Thirty in late summer 404} till the
Thirty were deposed in early summer 403, the exiled dem-
ocrats returned in force, and democracy was re-established
in October 403." 5 It was an exciting year, pivotal for foreign
relations as well as domestic politics. Seven hundred Lace-
daemonian hoplites were not enough to sustain the oligarchy
against the rebellious forces of exiled democrats. For Sparta
it would have been better not to have interfered at all: Lac-
edaemonian behavior taught the other Greeks (if another
lesson was needed) that the Spartans were not the "libera-
tors" they had proclaimed themselves to be. New antagon-
isms arose and old ones were exacerbated. Ties with strong
anti-Spartan overtones were forged between Athens and
Thebes, or at least between some Athenians and some The-
bans; in the spring of 404 Thebes had urged the complete
destruction of Attica, but within a year Ismenias and other
Thebans, in express disregard of Spartan decrees, were help-
ing Thrasybulus to restore the democracy. At Athens the
leading members of the restored democracy were all too well
aware that Spartan hegemony did not mean "freedom for
Greece." For the moment the Athenian democracy carefully
•xen. 2.2.23.
5
Democracy and Classical Greece (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1978) 156.
17
Introduction
fulfilled its obligations to Lacedaemon by sending a force on
the campaign against Elis, sending another with Thibron to
Asia, and even repaying the money borrowed by the oli-
garchs in 403. In these years Athens had little choice. But the
alienation of Greek public opinion from Sparta, begun by
Lacedaemonian actions in Attica in 404'1403,was an underly-
ing cause of the Corinthian War, which broke out in less
than a decade and saw Sparta fighting not only with Thebes
and a recovered Athens, but also with Corinth and Argos,
not to mention Persia. -
Oligarchy was so discredited in Athens by the rule of the
Thirty that for three generations it was not a respectable
alternative. Plato commented that the Thirty made the pre-
vious government look like gold by comparison. 6 Criticism
of the democracy continued-Plato looked for philosopher-
kings, Xenophon for a soldier-monarch, Isocrates for a return
to the Areopagite constitution, and considerable reforms for
gr;ater efficiency were actually carried through;-but no
group in the first half of the fourth century actively sought to
replace the democracy with yet another oligarchy.
In broad terms, then, the consequences are well known.
The oligarchy of the Thirty was a conspicuous failure. How
this debacle came about is less clear. What led the Thirty to
follow their "tyrannical" course? What were they trying to
accomplish in the first place? Were they somehow deflected
from their goals, or were they violently dictatorial from the
start? Did they ever have a chance to succeed?
Some background is necessary. Athens did not fit the pat-
tern of constitutional development found in many Greek
poleis, which emerged from the Dark Ages under the control
of a few noble families, experienced a period of rule by a
tyrant who broke the aristocrats' hold on power, and passed
from tyranny into a broader form of oligarchy based on
"Epist. 7.324d.
'See P. J. Rhodes, '"Athenian Democracy after 403 B.c.," CJ75 (1g80)
305-23.
18
Introduction
wealth rather than birth. 8 Internal political struggles followed
the expulsion of the Athenian tyrant Hippias in 511, and
after an ill-fated attempt by the Spartan king Cleomenes to
put Isagoras and three hundred of his friends in control of
the citv, 9 Cleisthenes succeeded in giving the real authority
to the ~ssemblv. Isagoras and his supporters were never able
to return. Stiil, magistrates were elected from among the
prominent men of property and from Athens' leading noble
families. During the time of the Persian Wars the council of
the Areopagus, composed of former archons, achieved as-
cendancv. An increase in prestige acquired from effective
leadership against Xerxes' invasion enabled it to run the
citv although the laws were not changed. 10 In 462 Ephialtes
st;i~ped the Areopagus of its "additional privileges" (ta
epitheta) and ended this trend toward oligarchy. Despite
rumors of a conspiracy to overthrow the democracy during
the campaign of 457 and again after the scandal involving
the profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the mutila-
tion of the herms in 415, 11 it was not until the dark days
after the destruction of the expedition to Sicily that Athenian
oligarchs were able to effect a revolution.
Nevertheless, critics of democracy were common during
these years, when the virtues of the various forms of gov-
ernment became a topic for debate. Like other Greek cities,
'Among the Greeks, who developed a typical constitution with a c?,uncil
and an assembly, the term '"oligarchy" (literally the "rule of the few ) was
used to designate those constitutions in which the final authority rested
with a small council rather than a large assembly. Eligibility for the as-
sembly in an oligarchy wa~ usually determined by a property qua!ificati?n.
An old but still unique treatment is Leonard Whibley, Greek Oligarchies:
Their Character and Organisation (London 18g6).
I use the term '"oligarch" in the sense defined by W. G. Forrest, "An
Athenian Generation Gap," YCS 24 (1975) 39: "An oligarch is a man who
wishes to set up an oligarchic constitution and, if he is a practicing politi-
cian, a man who tries to set up an oligarchic constitution or at least makes
propaganda for one."
•AthPol 20.3.
10
AthPol 23. 1-2.
11Thuc. 1.107.4; 6.28.2, 6o.1.
19
Introduction
Athens was divided between supporters of democracy and its
opponents, who tended to favor the Spartan system. 12
"Some men," says a Sicilian democrat in Thucydides, "will
say that democracy is neither intelligent nor fair, and that
those who have the money are better suited to rule well. " 13
Democracy was unfair, in the oligarchs' view, because it
distributed "a kind of equality to the equal and unequal
alike." 1 ◄ Wealthier citizens contributed more to the state than
their less fortunate neighbors. The rich had to produce the-
atrical performances and athletic games, to undertake trier-
archies, and to pay a property tax on occasion. Men who
could afford the necessary armor served with their bodies
as hoplites. They could argue that their greater financial
and physical stake in the future of the polis earned them a
greater share in the decision-making process. Public service,
in other words, should mean political power. So Pseudo-
Herodes suggests that a man without arms (hopla) or other
power (dynamis) of serving the state is rightly deprived of
citizenship, 15 and Pseudo-Xenophon justifies the relatively
good status of the poor, the slaves, and the metics at Athens
bv their service in the fleet, which gave Athens its strength. 16
"For modem discussions of oligarchic views, see Whibley, Greek Oligar-
chies 38-44; A. H. M. Jones, "The Athenian Democracy and Its Critics,"
Athenian Democracy (Oxford 196g) 41-72; R. Turasiewicz, La de politique
a Athenes aux V'' et IV" siecles ac. J.C. dans le jugement critique des
auteurs contemporains (Krakow 1g68--I have not seen this work); John
Ferguson, Utopias of the Classical World (Ithaca 1975).
"'Thuc. 6.39.1. Aristotle carries this view to an extreme when he defines
oligarchy as the mle of the wealthy, even if they are the majority (Pol.
12791:rBoa).
"Plato Rep. 8.558c.
"Peri politeias 31. This speech has been dated to the summer of 404 by J.
S. Morrison, "Meno of Pharsalus, Polycrates, and lsmenias," CQ 36 (1942)
68-74. Morrison's date was ae,-cepted by H. T. Wade-Gery, "Kritias and
Herodes," Essays in Greek History (Oxford 1958) 276 (though U. Albini
dissented in the introduction to his edition of the speech [Florence 1g68]).
Wade-Gery suggested Critias as the author; he may be correct but the
identification is far from proven.
1
•Ps.-Xen. AthPol 1.2, 10-12. I accept a (probable) 431-424 date for this
pamphlet; see G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian
War (Ithaca 1972) 3o8-10.
20
Introduction
A further argument was that wealth provided its owners
the leisure necessary for the proper education of leaders.
Socrates taught that politics should not be left to amateurs.
As he emphasized to Glaucon, Plato's younger brother, a
politician should have special knowledge of the financial and
military resources of the city (and of its enemies), of the
amount of grain Athens needed to import, of the mines, of
the garrisons guarding the countryside--in short, of all the
needs of the city and how they were supplied. Socrates con-
sidered the Athenian assembly, on the other hand, "an audi-
ence of mere dunces and weaklings . . . the fullers or the
cobblers or the smiths or the farmers or the merchants . . .
men who never gave a thought to politics. "ii
Training was important for all full citizens, the oligarchs
believed, not only for politicians. "More men," said Critias,
leader of the Thirty in 404, "are made good by practice than
by nature. "18 Here is where Sparta stood out as a model: every
full Spartiate passed through a rigorous training program
that began at age seven; adult males continued to train with
their fellow soldiers, while helots worked their lands. The
system was believed to develop good citizens and good fight-
ers. The contrast between the Spartan and the Athenian
(democratic) perceptions of good government is brought out
by Thucydides through the speech of Archidamus and the
Funeral Oration of Pericles. 19 Archidamus praises the Spar-
tans for their well-ordered life, which makes them brave in
war and wise in council. They respect and obey their laws
and customs, and since human beings are much the same,
the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been
''Xen. Mem. 3.6-7. Ps.-Xenophon also notes that poverty makes some
men ignorant and uneducated (AthPol 1.5). For hints that Socrates praised
the Spartan constitution, see Aristoph. Aves 1281-83 and Plato Crito 52e.
18
FVorsokr 88 F 9.
'Vflmc. 1.84; 2.37, 39-40. John Finley has collected a variety of passages
from Sophocles and Euripides which show that Thucydides was echoing
the thought of the time; the virtues and vices of authoritarian vs. liberal
government were much discussed. See his Three Essays on Thucydides
(Cambridge, Mass., 1g67) 14-17.
21
Introduction
trained in the hardest school. Pericles, as if in response, says
that Athenians also respect the laws, and although they are
not restricted by an educational system such as that in
Sparta, they are just as brave as the Spartans. All Athenians,
claims Pericles, are extremely well informed on general poT-
i!ics, and participate in policy decisions. Others are brave
out of ignorance; Athenians estimate the risks beforehand
and are still willing to take them. Thucydides himself seems
reluctant to believe these Periclean sentiments. He later
presents Demosthenes, one of Athens' most successful gen-
erals, giving advice to his soldiers at Pylos which might have
come from the mouth of a Spartan commander (and certainly
not from Pericles): do not pause to discuss the matter, De-
mosthenes says, but head straight for the enemy without
making a precise calculation of the dangers. 20
For a brief summary of oligarchical theory, it is difficult to
better a speech in Herodotus, which he sets in sixth-centurv
Persia. Megabyzus responds to Otanes, who had urged th~
establishment of a democracy, as follows:
I agree with Otanes in all that he said against tyranny, hut he
does not give the best advice when he recommends giving
power to the people, for nothing is more ignorant and violent
than the foolish mob. It is intolerable for men escaping the
arrogance [hybrisJ of a tyrant to subject themselves to the
arrogance [hybris] of the uncontrolled demos. A tvrant at least
knows what he is doing, but the people do not: How could
they know, when they have never been taught and have no
personal experience of anything good? The people rush head-
long into politics without a thought, like a swollen river. Let
the enemies of the Persians rely on the people, but let us
select a group of the best men, and give them political power.
We shall personally be included, and it is reasonable that the
best men will produce the best policy. 21
"'fhuc. 4. 10.1.
1
Z Hdt. 3.81.
22
Introduction
For almost fifty years after Ephialtes the oligarchs had
little chance of persuading many people that democracy was
a mistake, for Athens won victory after victory and the signs
of the city's increasing wealth were readily apparent on the
Acropolis. As Pseudo-Xenophon remarked in the 420s,
"Under these circumstances I deny that affairs at Athens
could be othenvise than they are now, except in minor ways.
Major change is impossible, so that no part of the democracy
can be removed. "22 The best the critics ofdemo~r<!£Y.£~mlddQ
1_ that "in wh~.L:'::,~~
was to sar?...~ith Thu~}'.Qi4t::1 nominally .!1
democracy, power was really in the h<!nds of tb~~izeo" _,,
(Pericles .23 But when the Athenian land and naval forces in •
Sici y were destroyed in 413, it was easy to blame the de-
mocracy for greedily and rashly risking so much on a cam-
paign to an island Athenians knew so little about. In 412 the
Persians made an alliance with the Lacedaemonians, which
precipitated the oligarchical revolution of 411. 24
Alcibiades, who had been exiled after the affair of the
hermes, set the chain of events in motion by suggesting that
if he were recalled, and if Athens changed its form of gov-
ernment to an oligarchy, he could secure an alliance with
Persia. Peisander and other influential Athenians who were
with the fleet at Samos set out to persuade the Athenian
assembly, which was desperate enough to agree to change
the government if that would bring the Persians over to its
side. Peisander was dispatched with ten other representa-
tives to make whatever arrangements seemed best to them
with Tissaphernes and Alcibiades. Before they left, Peisan-
2ZPs.-Xcn. AthPol 3.8.
~'Thuc. 2.65.9.
U'fhc narrative that follows depends mostly on Thuc. 8.47-g8, with some
additions from AthPol 2g-33. Important discussions of the relationship
between the two accounts arc C. Hignett, A History of the Athenian
Constitution to the End of the Fifth Centllry B .C. (Oxford 1952) 268-&,
356--78; Mabel Lang, ..Revolution of the 400: Chronology and Constitu-
tions," AJP 88 (1g67) 1]6--87. I follow the views of P. J. Rhodes, "The Five
Thousand in the Athenian Revolutions of 411 B.C.," JHS 92 (1972) u5-27.
23
Introduction
der urged the political clubs (hetaireiai) to unite and follow a
common policy for overthrowing the democracy. 25 This advice
was apparentlv heeded; while the embassv was awav oli-
garchic conspirators in Athens murdered Androcle·s' and
some other champions of democracy, and they put forward a
program that called for the elimination of state pay (except
for the armed forces) and the restriction of full citizenship to
no more than 5,000.
Peisander and his fellow envoys met with less success.
They discovered that Alcibiades did not carry as much
weight with Tissaphernes as he had led them to believe, and
they left Tissaphernes' court disappointed. Nevertheless, the
plotters decided to continue with their plans, though with-
out Alcibiades.
When Peisander arrived again at Athens, steps were im-
mediately taken to complete the overthrow of the democ-
racy. The extremists decided to moderate their goals, at least
in public; Peisander and his associates knew that they would
not be able to secure an alliance with Persia-although that
pretense seems to have been maintained for a while yet-
and they may have felt it necessary to make more conces-
sions to moderate sentiment, at least on paper. The assem-
bly decided that full citizenship would be restricted to those
best qualified physically and financially to serve the state,
not fewer than 5,000 26 (cf. the earlier proposals, which would
have limited participation to not more than 5,000); that no
one was to receive pay for any office except the nine archons
and the prytaneis; that a council of four hundred was to have
full powers to govern as it thought best and to convene the
""On hetaireiai see George Miller Calhoun, Athenian Clubs in Politics
and Litigation (Austin 1913); Franco Sartori, La eterie nella vita politica
ateniese del VJ e V secolo A .C. (Rome 1957); W. Robert Connor, The New
Politicians of Fifth-Century Athens (Princeton 1971) 25-29.
""AthPol29.5. These were probably the hoplites; at least when Aristotle
says that the Four Hundred were overthrown and power given to the
5,000, it was given to those ek ton lwplon (AthPol 33. 1-2). They num-
bered 9,000 in practice (Lys. 20.13).
Introduction
5,000 whenever it chose. Ten katalogeis were to select the
5,000, and one hundred analogeis were to draw up a con-
stitution for the future.
The analogeis finished their job, and Aristotle gives part of
the results in Athenaion Politeia 30. Eventually, it is clear,
the 5,000 were to be more actively involved in the govern- ,
ment. But for the moment the katalogeis did not publish a
list of the 5,000, and all decisions continued to be made bv
the Four Hundred. The extremists among the Four Hu;-
dred did not want the 5,000 to exist, according to Thucyd-
ides, because they thought that "so many people sharing
power would amount to democracy." 27
It was not long before men realized that Tissaphemes
would not tum against the Spartans just because Athens had
an oligarchy. More serious yet were the events at Samos,
where the fleet, led particularly by Thrasybulus, persisted in
its eagerness to recall Alcibiades, and all at Samos swore to
oppose the Four Hundred. Dissension also arose within the
oligarchs' own ranks in Athens. A group led by Theramenes
called for the actual participation of the 5,000 in the gov-
ernment.
Theramenes, born about 455, was the son of Hagnon of
Steiria, a wealthy and prominent Athenian politician who was
general in 440, oikistes of Amphipolis, general again in 431
and 429, one of the Athenians who signed the peace of Ni-
cias in 421, and one of the ten probouloi chosen in 413 to
draw up emergency measures after the Sicilian disaster. 28
Theramenes natura1ly had received the finest education avail-
able; he became a we1l-known orator, and was said to have
been the teacher of Isocrates. 29 Theramenes himself studied
with the philosopher Prodicus. 30
"'Ilmc. 8.92.11.
zaon Hagnon, see Thuc. 1. 117.2, 2.58.1 and 95.3, 4.102.3, 5.11. 1 and 24,
8. 1.3; Lys. 12.65.
""Diony. Halic. lsoc. 1; Suda Lexicon s.v. "Dexios" and "Isokrates."
•
30
Athen. 5.220b; Schol. Aristoph. Clouck 361. One would like to imag-
me that Theramenes kept in mind Prodicus' famous tale about Heracles at
Introduction Introduction

So far as we know, Theramenes first became politically cuted, others went into exile, and soldiers who had remained
active in 411, when he was a leader in the movement to in the city (as opposed to those who had taken down the wall
overthrow the democracy. Thucydides describes him as a at Eetionia?) lost the rights to speak in the assembly and to
"man able to speak and to make sound judgments.,; 11 he was be members of the boule.'' The government of the 5,000,
chosen general under the Four Hundred. When he began to though given high marks by Thucydides, soon gave way to
agitate for change, the threat to the radical oligarchs was full democracy.
serious. Six years later Athens surrendered and the oligarchs had a
At war with the Spartans and Persians, unable to secure second chance.
the support of their own troops, and facing internal opposi- (1975) 271-95. To my mind, the traditional view has been persuasively
tion as well, the extremists among the oligarchs were driven upheld by Rhodes, "The Five Thousand in the Athenian Revolutions of
to desperate measures. They must have realized that their 411 B.c."; now sec also A. W. Gommc. A. Andrcwcs, and K. J. Dover, A
only chance of survival lay in reaching a settlement with Historical Commentary on Tlwcydides (Oxford 1945-81) 5.323-28.
"'Andoc. 1. 75.
Sparta. An embassy was sent to Lacedaemon, and a wall was
bujlt on the mole called Eetionia, at the entrance to the
harbor of Piraeus. The fortification was officially intended to
resist the Athenians at Samos, if they should sail against the
city; but Theramenes claimed (and Thucydides says he was
co;rect) that it was not to keep the fleet out but to let th~.
Spart~i:t§~Jn. Neither measure worked. The negotiations
failect to produce an agreement, and the wall was destroyed
by the hoplites who had been constructing it when news
came that a Spartan fleet was headed toward Piraeus (at
least according to Theramenes). The Spartans sailed on to
Euboea, however, and after defeating an Athenian squadron
they induced most of Euboea to revolt. rhe loss of Euboea
finished the Four Hundred after a rule of only four months;
powe,r was given to the so-callea 5,000, the hoplites.32
Reprisals against the oligarchs followed. Some were exe-

the crossroads, trying to decide whether to follow the road of virtue or the
road of evil (Xcn. Mem. 2. 1.21-33 = FVorsokr 84 F 2).
31
Thuc. 8.68.4.
"The traditional view is that this intermediate regime restricted the
right of voting to the 5,000. Recently it has been argued that only eligibil-
ity for office was restricted; see G. E. ~- de Ste. Croix, "The Constitution
of the Five Thousand," Historia 5 (1956) 1-23; Guido Donini, La posi-
zione di Tucidide verso ii Governo dei Cinquemila (Turin 1g6g) 17-25;
Raphael Sealey, "Constitutional Changes in Athens in 410 B.C.," CSCA 8

26
 1

Peace Negotiations after Aegospotcnni

In September 405, Athenian deserters informed Lysander,

commander of the Peloponnesian fleet anchored at Lamp-
sacus, that the Athenians were going to move from their
base at Aegospotami; without easy access to food supplies
and unable to provoke the Lacedaemonians into fighting, the
Athenians had decided to take Alcibiades' advice and move to
the harbor at Sestos. Lysander saw his opportunity. As the
withdrawal was beginning, he launched his ships en masse
and surprised the Athenians, who had not even manned
all their triremes. The battle was anticlimactic. Except
for a small contingent that escaped with Conon (and perhaps
a few other ships), the entire Athenian fleet was captured.
All the Athenian citizens-some three to four thousand, ac-
cording to later sources-were put to death. 1
Lysander wasted no time in securing control of the route
to the Hellespont (by taking Byzantium, Calchedon, and Ses-
tos) in order to prevent the grain harvest of 405 from reach-
0 100 200 miles
ing Athens. Stopping at Lesbos to secure its cities and paus-
ing briefly at Samos, where he left forty ships to besiege the 0 100 200 300 kilometers

'The main sources for the battle of Aegospotami are Xen. 2.1.17-32
and Diod. 13. 105-6; others appear to be derived from Xenophon: Plut.
Lysan. g-13, Fron tin us 2. 1. 18, Polyaen. 1.45.2, Paus. 9.32.9, t\epos
Lysan. 1. Nepos Alcib. 8 and Plut. Alcib. 36-37 contain traces of Diod- Map 1. Greece and the Aegean. Adapted from The Emergence of Greek
orus' version. For the date see Lotze, LysanPelopKr 31. For the execu- Democracy by W. G. Forrest. Copyright© 1g66 W. G. Forrest. Used with
tion of the Athenians see Xen. 2. 1.32; Plut. Lysan. 13. 1; Paus. 9.32.9. the permission of the \1cGraw-Hill Book Company.
The Thirty at Athens

most powerful remaining Athenian ally, Lysander headed for

the city of Athena itself. 2 As he blockaded Piraeus with 150
ships, Agis and Pausanias led a Peloponnesian army that
camped in the Academy-the first time in over a century (jjj7u
that two Spartan kings had been on a campaign together. 1 , ....·_.,··-··-··
Xenophon tells us that the Athenians remembered what
they had done to the ~1elians and the Histiaeans and the
Scioneans and the Toroneans and the Aeginetans-all ex-
pelled from their homelands, enslaved, or executed. 4 Xeno-
phon' s moralizing aside, the Athenians had indeed reason to
fear. It must have been at this time that Agis and Lysander .,;
0
proposed in an assembly of the allies that Athens be obliter- >i:c,._
ated. 5 They had many supporters; numerous sources attest to E-<
i::
the fact that the Corinthians, the Thebans, and "many other ..t::
-.0
._
Creeks" wanted to enslave the citizens and destroy the city. 6 0
>.
Not surprisingly, the Athenians continued to fight. e "'
As it became clear that Athens would not soon surrender,
.,. QJ
t:::,
II)
0
the Spartans decided to wait for their naval blockade to take u
.;
effect. Pausanias went home, Agis took up his old position at
~
Decelea, and Lysander took some of the ships in order to :::
b()
finish securing the Aegean. The departure of the Spartan i::
army may have encouraged the Athenians to send out a j
QJ
peace feeler;7 another inducement was that grain had already
\
-=
-0
i::
'Byzantium and Calchedon: Xcn. 2.2.1; Sestos: Diod. 13. 106.8 and (un- \ i:c
dated) Plut. Lysan. 14.2; Lesbos: Xen. 2.2.5. According to Diod. 13. 1o6.8, \ .,;
::,
the siege of Samos began before the blockade of Athens. The same chro- \ ~
,._
nology can be deduced from Xenophon, who says that Lysander left the
Hellespont with 200 ships (2.2.5), sent ten to Thrace (2.2.5), and block-
@ c::
.,;
aded Piraeus with 150 (2.2.9); so forty must have been left at Samos. \a
i::
QJ
Plutarch mentions only the end of the siege, which he places (incorrectly) ....
..t::
before Athens' surrender (Lysan. 14.1). \
:
: 0
<
1 Diod. 13.107.2; cf. Plut. Lysan. 14.1. Xen. 2.2.8 specifies the Academy. ! ~
s:i.
•xen. 2.2.3. \i
,::s
'Paus. 3.8.6. For the date see Charles D. Hamilton, Sparta's Bitter ~
Victories: Politics and Diplomacy in the Corinthian War (Ithaca 1979)
51-52.
"Xen. 2.2. 19, 6.5.35 and 46; Andoc. 1. 142, 3.21; Isoc. 14.31, 18.29; Plut.
Lysan. 15.2; Justin 5.8-4-
1Hamilton, Sparta's Bitter Victories 45.
The Thirty at Athens
begun to run short. By mid-November, according to Xen-
1 (on the Laconian border), and told the ambassadors to go
ophon, the supply had entirely given out.'
The Athenians sent ambassadors to Agis and offered to
make peace on the conditions that they keep their walls and
Piraeus, and that they become allies of the Lacedaemonians. 9
Agis was probably chosen as the target for this first peace
initiative because, if a truce were declared, he could have
the blockade lifted almost immediately (the trip to Sparta
and hack would have taken several weeks). But the king
refused to discuss terms; he had, he said, no authority in the
matter. One would like to know if Agis still wanted to see
Athens demolished, and if he communicated his feelings to
the Athenians. At any rate, his blunt refusal to talk was not
encouraging.
When the ambassadors reported his answer, thev were
sent on to Sparta. The ephors met the embassy at Sellasia
'Xen. 2.2.11. The date can be calculated approximately from the date of
Athens' surrender, in March 404. We must allow several weeks for the
final embassy to Sparta, more than three months for Thcramcnes' mission
to Lysandcr, and two weeks or so for the embassies to Agis and to the
ephors at Sellasia. The first Athenian peace feeler to Agis, then, was sent
out about four months before the peace.
That Athens surrendered in March 404 is evident from Thucydidcs'
statement (5.26.3) that the war lasted "not many days" longer than twenty-
seven years (see Andrewes' remarks in Gommc, Andrewes, and Dover,
Historical Commentary on Thucydides 4.12), and Diodorns' comment
(13. 1o8. 1) that Darius II of Persia died not long after the peace. Persian
records show that Artaxerxes was recognized as king by 10 April 404
(Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubbcrstein, Babylonian Chronology
6:z6 B .C .-A .D. 45 2 [Chicago 1946] 16, 32). Some scholars have seen a
contradiction with Plutarch's date of 16 Munichion (normally late April) for
Lysander's entry into Piraeus, and have either dismissed Plutarch or pro-
posed that some time elapsed between the acceptance of an armistice and
Lysander's arrival for the formal surrender (so J. A. R. Munro, "The End
of the Peloponnesian War," CQ 31 [1937] 32-38). Detlef Lotze has sug-
gested another way out: given the fact that the Athenian calendar was
irregular, he argues, the year 4osf 404 could have begun as early as 18 June,
which would put 16 Munichion near the end of March 404 ("Der Munich-
ion 404 v. Chr. und das Problem der Schaltfolge im Athenischen Kalen-
dar," Philologus 111 [ 1967] 34-46).
•xen.2. 2. 11.
32
Peace Negotiations after Aegospotami
back and think again, if Athens really wanted peace. The
ephors indicated the terms they would consider: according
to Xenophon, Athens had to dismantle ten stades of each of
the long walls. 10 In a speech delivered in 343, Aeschines men-
tioned some more favorable clauses that were also included
in the proposal. 11 He asked the Athenians to avoid the mis-
takes of their ancestors. such as
when they were defeated in the war, and the Lacedaemonians
were proposing peace on the terms that Athens should have
Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros in addition to Attica, and should
keep the democratic constitution. They refused all of these
terms, and chose to go on fighting beyond their capacity. And
Cleophon the lyremaker. whom many remembered chained
[as a slave] to foot irons, who had disgracefully had himself
made a citizen and had corrupted the people by the distribu-
tion of money, threatened to use his dagger to cut the throat
of anyone who mentioned peace.
Yet it was not a bad offer, if they could be sure the terms
would be kept. But they probably knew, and could at least
imagine, that Agis and Lysander wanted to see the complete
destruction of Athens. Lysander had shown that he was ca-
pable of such violence-when he captured Iasos, an ally of
Athens, he executed 800 men, sold the women and children
'°Xcn. 2.2. 15.
"Aeschin. 2. 76. The only time the Spartans were in a position to make
such an offer, refused by Cleophon, was in 405. Fourth-century orators
have never been accused of meticulous historical accuracy, and it is possi-
ble that Acschincs confused the 405 offer with later peace proposals in the
Corinthian War which permitted Athens to keep the three islands (39z/391
and 387'386). Or Acschines may have relied exclusively on his imagina-
tion. On the other hand, these three important islands received special
mention in the final peace of 404, if Andocides is really quoting terms
from the inscribed stele, as he claims (3.12); and some Spartans may have
been willing to let Athens keep the islands in 405, since the original
islanders had been driven out many years before.
33
 The Thirty at Athens
into slavery, and razed the city to the ground. 12 Even if a
treaty guaranteeing Athenian autonomy were sworn, might
not Lysander-said to have commented once that he "cheated
boys with dice, but men with oaths" 11-break the agreement?
To the Athenians, the risks seemed too great. When Arches-
tratus proposed that the ephors' terms be accepted, he was
thrown into prison (apparently with his throat intact) and a
decree was passed forbidding the boule to discuss the dis-
mantling of the walls. 14
Theramenes now, about the beginning of December,
came forward and offered to undertake an extraordinarv mis-
sion. According to Xenophon, Theramenes suggested that he
be sent to Lysander to find out whether the Lacedaemonians
insisted on the demolition of the walls in order to enslave
the Athenians or merely as a guarantee of good faith. In
other words, he would find out whether the terms proposed
by the ephors were acceptable to Lysander. 13 Lysias tells a
somewhat different story: his Theramenes declared that he
would secure peace without giving up ships, hostages, or
walls, and he alleged that he had discovered "something
wo~th a great deal. " 16 What it was he would not say; he ex-
plamed that he did not want to commit the Athenians to any
17
concessions. Michigan papyrus no. 5982 confirms Lysias in
12
~.~od.!3.104.' 7, with ~aimer's correction of the manuscripts' 'Thasos in
Kana to Iasos m Karia.
~e tre~tment of Iasos was not the only such atrocity. Lysander sold all
the mhab1tants of another Athenian ally, Cedreae, into slavery (Xen
~· 1. 1:5),and he aided the massacre of several hundred democratic leader~
m 1~iletus (Diod. 13. 104.5-6; Plut. Lysan. 8. 1-3; Polyaen. 1. 5. 1).
Plut. Lysan. 8.4. 4
"Xen. z. z. 15.
15
Xen. z.z. 16.
'"Lys. 13·9 ("he thought that he would secure from the Lacedaemonians
~ome other. good thing for the city"; cf. 13. 14) is probably Lysias' mislead-
•~g re~ordmg of what !heramenes said, reported more literally at 12.68
( 1}egmg that he h~d discovered something worth a great deal").
.. . Lys .. 1~·68; P.Mich.5g8211. 1-10, in R. Merkelbach and H. C. Youtie,
Em M1ch1~an-P~pyrusiiber Theramenes," ZPE z (1g68) i6i-6g. See fur-
ther the d1scuss1ons of A. Henrichs ("Zur Interpretation des Michigan-
34
Peace Negotiations after Aegospotami
saying that the assembly elected Theramenes ambassador
with full powers to make peace;" he would hardly have needed
such powers if he were only to discover Spartan intentions.
Lysias, then, is probably correct. Theramenes believed
he could secure better terms than those proposed by the
ephors.
Theramenes did not return for more than three months. 19
He claimed that Lysander had forcibly detained him; his
explanation was rightly rejected by Xenophon and Lysias,
although some modern scholars have put more faith in Thera-
menes' words. Lysander had nothing to gain by holding
Theramenes. Xenophon and Lysias both assert that Thera-
menes was really waiting until the Athenians were so short of
food that they \Vould agree to any terms whatever. Though it
Papyrus iiber Theramenes," ZPE 3 [ig68] 101-8), A. Andrewes ("Lysias
and the Theramencs Papyrns," ZPE 6 [1970] 35-38), and Raphael Sealey
("Pap. ~1ich. inv. 5g82: Theramenes," ZPE 16 (1975] 27g-88). The J?apy-
rus is (probably) part of a reputable fourth-century history. Sealey s ~-
guments against Henrichs (who maintained that the author used Lys1as
and was therefore a second-rate historian) and Andrewes (who suggested
that the papyrus is part of a pro-Theramenean pamphlet rebutting Lysias'
charges) seem to me convincing: the author need not have used Lys1as ~t
all, and since no statement is demonstrably partial to Theramenes, 1t
seems perverse to claim the writer as a pro-Theramenean pamphleteer.
Sealey goes on to suggest that Theramenes was sent on only one mission
(so Lysias) and that he detoured to visit Lysander on his way to Sparta.
But then how are we to explain Xenophon's account of two distinct mis-
sions? I prefer to assume that Lysias condensed the two missions into one
and that Xenophon overlooked the grant of "full powers" to Theramenes
on his first mission.
18
LI. 35-37. In response to an argument put forward against the trustwor-
thiness of this evidence by Henrichs (that Greek diplomacy was not car-
ried on by the granting of full powers to an individual), Sealey. su~e~ted
that Theramcnes may have had (unmentioned) colleagues on this m1ss10n,
and so he may. I prefer to believe that exceptional circumstances led to an
exceptional mission. Note that the Athenian assembly still had .the }ast
word; it could reject an agreement made by an ambassador with full
powers." See D. J. Mosley, Envoys and Diplomacy in Ancient Greece
(Wiesbaden 1973) 30-38 .
1
9Xen. z.z. 16-17; "a long time," Lys. 13. u.
00
Bemadotte Perrin, "The Rehabilitation ofTheramenes," AHR 9 (1903-
4) 667.
35
 The Thirty at Athens
has been widely accepted, this explanation is a curious one
Athens' resistance was already weakening. \\'e have ahun~
dant testimony concerning the famine in the city. 22 Hesistance
leaders were still in control, as Archestratus· imprisonnwnt
shows. But the decree forbidding discussion of the demoli-
tion of the walls indicates that someone was afraid such dis-
cussions \vould take place. '"1 \\'as it necessarv to wait three
months for the Athenians to be willing to co1~e to terms'.; Or
is the memory of Athens' heroic resistance exaggerated?
Perhaps Theramcnes' intentions were just the opposite of
what Lysias and Xenophon would have us think. By staying
away from Athens for three months, Theramenes prece11ted
the Athenians from surrendering. Theramenes has alwavs
been a rather enigmatic figure; judgments on his career ai~d
character vary widely. This much can be said for him: he was
a consistent Athenian patriot who fought throughout his life
for ,\thenian independence. In 411 he had turned against
the Four Hundred when the extreme oligarchs schemed to
betray the city to the Spartans. He then served as a general
under the 5,000, and helped to win the battle of Cyzicus in
"Some r~cent exan~ples: Gabriel Adeleye, "Theramenes: The End of a
Contro:ersial ~a.rcer, MusAfr 5 (1976) 10; W. James McCov, "Aristotle's
Athenaion Polrteia and the Establishment of the Thirty Tyr;nts, ·· YCS
23
(~975) 135: J. B. Bury and Bussell Meiggs, A llistonJ of Greece· 1 (I\ew
1
for.k 975) 3~7: ~ust~v Adolph Lehmann, "Die revolutionare ~fachter-
g~e•fu~g de: Dre1ssig. und die staatliche Teilung Attikas (40 4- 401 / 0 v.
Chr. ). Antrke 1md U1111;ersalgeschichte. Festschrift Stier (Miinster 19 )
206-7. 72
:xen. 2.2'. 1~• 11, 1~, 21; Dio<l._1~.107,4; Plut. Lysan. 14.3; Justin 5 .8. 1- .
3
A furth~r md1cation that opmmn in Athens was shifting mav be the
d:~th of Cleopho~, the leading "hawk"' in the city. The stasis during
"'h1eh Cleophon died (Xen. 1. 7.35) was evidently a dispute over whether
or not Athens should make peace (Lys. 13. 12, 30.10- 14), and his death
shows that at ~he moment the pro-peace forces were stronger. Unfortu-
nately the precise date ofCleophon·s execution is unclear; Theramenes was
~w~y (Lys. I?·12), but since Lysias conflated Theramenes' two joumevs,
11 1s uneert~m whether Theramenes was at Samos or at Sparta wh.en
Cleophon died.
Peace Negotiations after Aegospotami
410. \Vhen the democracy was restored, Theramenes lost a
good deal of his influence at Athens. But he continued to
fight with Alcibiades, perhaps without authorization or help
from the citv. He managed to avoid sharing Alcibiades' dis-
grace in 406 and served as a trierarch at Arginusae; the
unfortunate political trial that followed that battle was not his
fault."' Later in 404 he opposed the Thirty when they pre-
pared to bring in a Spartan garrison. Why not see his role in
the peace 1wgotiations of 4osf 404 as consistent with his
foreign policy at other times?
In prolonging Athenian resistance, what did Theramenes
have in mind? Did Athens have a chance of surviving the
blockade? There was one (and only one) chance in sight.
Recall the situation in December 405. Lysander had tri-
umphed at Aegospotami largely because he had Persian sup-
port. More specifically, Lysander had developed close per-
sonal ties with Cvrus the Great King's younger son, who
had followed an ~neq~ivocally pro-Spartan policy since 407
as commander in chief of all Persian armies operating in Asia
Minor. Before the battle of Aegospotami, however, Cyrus
had been summoned to the side of his father. Darius II had
fallen seriouslv ill at Thamneria in Media; he eventually died
at Babylon in· March 404. 2s For the moment, Cyrus' absence
did not cause Lysander difficulties. Before he departed for
Thamneria, Cyrus gave Lysander the money he had on
hand, and assigned to the Spartan commander all the tribute
that belonged to him personally (probably all that from the
Ionian Greek cities). 26
The Athenians surely knew of Cyrus' departure, and no
24A. Andrewcs, "The Arginousai Trial," Phoenix zB(1974) 112-22. Ac-
cording to Lys. 13. 10, Theramenes was elected general agai~ in 4?5 but
was rejected at his dokinwsia. One would like to have confirm mg evidence
for this storv.
"'Xen. 2. {.9, 13, 15; Anab. 1. 1. 1-2; Plut. Art. 2.2 and Lysan. 9.2; Ctes-
ias, FGrHist 688 F 16.57; Dio<l. 13. 104.4. For the date, seen. 8.
"'See David M. Lewis, Sparta and Persia (Leiden 1977) 120-22.
37
The Thirty at Athens
doubt they learned the reasons behind it. Darius' persistent
illness offered a straw of hope to the Athenians besieged hv
Lysander' s fleet, as Theramenes possibly realized. What if
the king should die soon? In the event, Darius' death had a
serious effect on the situation in the Aegean. The sequence
of events went something like this: Cyrus' older brother,
Artaxerxes, became king; Tissaphernes, the satrap who had
controlled lonia before Cyrus' arrival in 407, brought to Ar-
taxerxes' attention information about plans Cyrus had to assas-
sinate him at the coronation ceremonies; Cvrus was arrested
and detained for an unknown length of -time; the queen
mother, Parysatis, secured his pardon and even his rein-
statement in his command; Tissaphernes, however, received
the cities in lonia, and by the end of the summer of 404 he
had secured control of at least two Greek cities, Ephesus and
Notion. 27 At some point Tissaphernes took at least one other
city, Miletus. The likelihood is that if he was able to secure
these famous cities, he was responsible for deposing many of
the governments installed by Lysander and for reestablish-
ing Persian control over Ionia. Fairly rapidly, then, Persian
policy turned anti-Spartan. Once the Athenian presence in
the Aegean had been removed, Persians (other than Cyrus,
who had his own plans for his Spartan allies) could see little
reason for supporting another Greek navy in the area.
The rivalry between Cyrus and Artaxerxes was no secret.
Theramenes could certainly have foreseen that Darius' death
would mean an end to Cyrus' command and to active Persian
support for the Spartans. This Persian card (the "something
21)(en.Anab. 1.3; Ctesias, FGrHist 688 F 16.59; Plut. Art. 2-3=FGrHist
688 F 17; see A. Andrewes, 'Two Notes on Lysander," Phoenix 25 (1971)
2o6-16, especially 214-15 on Notion and Ephesus and the Greek cities of
Asia. I aeeept Lewis' modifications (Sparta and Persia 120-22) of Andrewes'
conclusions. In addition it might be worth pointing out that Plutarch does
mention an arrest, which certainly implies a period of imprisonment (per-
haps short). In that respect Plutarch confirms Xenophon' s version, pace
Andrewes 2o8.
38
Peace Negotiations after Aegospotami
worth a great deal" which Theramenes claimed to have dis-
covered?) was one he could play to his advantage. If Darius
died and events worked out as Theramenes hoped, the Athe-
nians would have a chance to endure--not to win the war,
but to keep their walls and their lives. The Ionians would
have to defend themselves against the Persians, and to do so
would have to withdraw their contingents from the Spartan
navy. Or if they joined the Persian Empire peacefully, they
would be under a new leader (perhaps Tissaphernes) who
could be expected to return to the (his) earlier policy of
playing Sparta and Athens off against each other. The Per-
sians might even be induced to help the Athenians, as Phar-
nabazus later aided the Athenian admiral Conon.
None of this scenario was guaranteed, of course, as Thera-
menes must have known. He went out on a limb when he
promised the Athenians he would secure peace without
giving hostages or dismantling the walls or surrendering
the ships. Was that why he refused to tell the assembly
what he would say to Lysander, fearing that the Athenians
would regard his plan as too risky and would instead make
peace immediately? .
Even if Darius did not die just yet, the prospect of his
impending death and its potential consequences were good
debating points, especially in a discussion with Lysander,
who owed his current powerful position as much to his rela-
tionship with Cyrus as to his own soldiering ability. In fact,
Lysander had reason enough to want a settlement with
Athens; he was not a king, and if he was given divine honors
in parts of the Aegean, he surely aroused resentment in
Sparta. Lysander needed victory, and Theramenes .could
hope that if total victory seemed beyond reach-or if Ly-
sander learned he would soon be replaced by a new com-
mander-he would settle for something less in order to gain
the credit for defeating Athens.
Imagine that the course of the negotiations between Thera-
39

The Thirty at Athens
menes and Lysander went somewhat as follows. Initiallv
Lysander was unreceptive to discussion; he wanted to d~-
stroy Athe1~s co11_1pletely.Theramenes countered by pointing
out Athens usefulness to Sparta as a check against Theban
expansion (according to Polyaenus, Lysander ultimatelv used
the Thehan argument to persuade the Spartans not ·to de-
stroy Athens)."' Once Lysander had accepted the validitv of
that point, he wanted to treat Athens as he had treated n{anv
of its former subjects: he wanted to demolish Athenian forti-
fications and to install a garrison and a narrow oligarchy of
his supporters. 29 Theramenes then argued that many Spartans
would not b~ willing to allow L~sander to install a puppet
government 111 Athens, and that if he insisted on such terms,
he would encounter serious opposition. He also stated that
the Athenians were willing to take back their exiles, which
would ensure the presence of a powerful pro-Spartan and
pro-Lysander group at Athens (and he added that he would
do _what he could personally to lead Athens to a foreign
poh~y ,agreeable to Lysander). Final1y, he mentioned that
Danus death would upset Lysander's plans entirely; Lysan-
der ought to make peace now.
A~ time wore on, Lysander proposed a compromise. It
was important for him to crown his earlier victories bv taking
Athens itself. He therefore agreed to Athenian au'tonomv
provided the Athenians took down their long walls and th~
"'Polyaen. 1.45. 5 :
';_hen th~ Laceda~monians and the allies wanted to destroy Athens, Lvsander
sa1J that _11would m no way be advantageous; for the result would be that th
nearby city. of the Thehans would become stronger and greater, and if the~
held Athens thro1111:h tyrants, they could 11:uardthe Thebans closelv and hav~
them weaker m everv· respect · Seemin",., to ,.,.,
m"e good ad vice,
•· Lvsan
· d er per-
sua d e d them not to destroy Athens. ·
~J.~- R. ~fonro C"Theramenes against Lysander," CQ 32 [1938J 18- 26)
mamtamed that Theramenes won a victorv of sorts when th Th' tv
t l J· h d h • · e ir were
e_sa J 1s e ra~ er than. a deearchy. But Lysander may not have· estab-
lished decarch1es exclusively; see Diod. 14.13.1 and perhaps Xen. 6. 3 .8-g.
40
Peace Negotiations after Aegospotami
walls of Piraeus; he knew that once the walls were down, he
could do what he wanted. Although these terms were some-
what harsher than those suggested by the ephors earlier,
Therarnenes eventually had to accept them. He realized that
Athens was defenseless without her walls, but he knew that
Lysander was not the only powerful figure in Sparta. A
sworn treaty might be upheld despite any treachery Lysan-
der had in mind. Most important, Darius had not died.
Even if he died now, it would be some months before his
death would have its anticipated effect. Theramenes' hopes
had not been fulfilled; surely disappointed, he decided to
end the famine in Athens and rely on the treaty to protect
Athens' autonomv.
After negotiations along these or similar lines, Thera-
menes returned to Athens about the beginning of March. He
reported that Lysander had detained him all this time and
finally told him to go to Sparta; the ephors, not Lysander,
had the authority in these matters (patriotic motives did not30
make Therarnenes want to take the blame for his failure).
With this assurance that Lysander would abide by whatever
terms were settled with the ephors, and because they were
suffering more and more from famine, the Athenians sent an
embassy of Theramenes and nine others to Sparta to make
the peace. Lysander also sent representatives, including Ar-
istoteles, one of the Athenian exiles.
At the assembly in Sparta the Corinthians, the Thebans,
and many other Greeks urged that Athens be destroyed. The
ephors, as they had earlier, probably favored a more lenient
settlement. Lysander' s representatives must now have
stressed the value of Athens as a counterweight to Thebes,
and Aristoteles no doubt emphasized that the Athenian exiles
would cooperate with the Spartans. Essentially Lysander got
what he wanted. With some rhetoric to the effect that they
"Xen. 2.2.17.
41
 Peace Negotiations after Aegospotami
The Thirty at Athens
Probablv at the same meeting of the assembly, the day aft~r
could not destroy a city that had done such good service for
Theram~nes returned from Sparta in late March 404, t e
Greece in the time of the greatest dangers, 31 or, as another 35

source reports, that they could not pluck out one of the two Athenians accepted the peace,
eyes of Greece, 32 the Spartans proposed the following peace . I . h· h arrest of the generals took place before
"Lvsias indicates clear Y t at t e ) Since Xenophon
tenns: the long walls and the Piraeus fortifications to be the a~sembly met to consider the ~cace ~Lr;-
~v:ias'
l~t~~•~e~amenes returned
destroyed; the commander on the spot (Lysander) to decide says the peace terms were _accepte . one~ chronology and dated the
from Sparta, manv scholars have reJect . h ds that a single dav
how many ships Athens could keep; the exiles to be taken arrests after the acceptance of the peace on t ck'grolun I prefer to folio~
back; the Athenians to leave all the cities and to possess their • ~ 11these events to ta e P ace.
was not enoug I1 tune or a , . . de ab anno 410 usque ad annum 403
own land; Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros to be left in the Adolf Boemer (De rchu~ a Grarts I~ .. [cl'. Gottingen 1894] 44-49),
hands of those currently living there (originally settlers from a. Chr. n. gestis quae~ttone~ •~to:~~eothe:s:hronology and maintained
who pointed out the d1fficulttes 111 , ·dt . !\. ainst Boemer Lehmann
Athens), but to be completely independent of Athens; Athens that it is possible that events mo\f·epd· rap1 }· , s~ have been lifted since
to be governed according to the ancestral constitution (pa- t th , blockade o iraeus mu h
has argue d t I1a b h' ("Revolutionare Mac ter-
trios politeia); the Athenians to have the same friends and
l

greifung der Drc1ss1g 212 n. 30.

i
Agoratus was .offered ~ .~hance to ei5caifu~ ~r~ius· friends may have been
g kl lockades not being impen-
enemies as the Lacedaemonians and to follow them wher- suggesting that they nm the blockade, ~r~;or~tJ1s probably rejected the
ever they might lead on land or sea. l• etrable (Lotze, L!lsanPelopKr 92 n. 5. f h blockade
Although Cleophon had been executed and Theramenes offer to flee because he was frightened o t e .
had deserted their ranks, resistance leaders in Athens had
not yet given up all hope. Some of the generals and taxi-
archs, including Strombichides and Dionysodorus, went to
Theramenes and protested strongly against the term$ brought
back from Sparta. Those in favor of peace acted quickly.
They seized one of the objectors, Agoratus, and forced him
to reveal the names of other politicians who were planning to
sabotage the peace. These stubborn leaders were accused of
plotting against the people and were thrown into prison.J.I
"Xen. 2.2.20, referring to the Persian Wars.
31
Justin 5.8-4-
"Xen. 2.2.20; Diod. 13.107.4 and 14-3.2; Pint. Lysan. 14.4; Andoc.
3. 11-12, 39; Lys. 13. 14; AthPol 34.3. For a bibliography on the question of
whether the patrios politeia clause was included in the treaty, and a de-
fense of its inclusion, see McCoy, "Aristotle's Athenaion Politeia" 136-37
with n. 22.
"'Because they refused to assent to the peace terms, Agoratus brought
about their deaths by accusing them of "plotting against your plethos"
(Lys. 13.4B; cf. Lys. 13.51, 84). In another context this could mean "intri-
guing against the democracy," as translated in the Loeb. Here it refers
rather to their refusal to accept peace although many Athenians were
starving.
43
 The Summer of 404

once more. According to.Lysias,.th.e}:c.selup five "ephors" to

~ their efforts, and appointed "tri'6ar~governors"
(phylarchoi) to control voting. 3 It has been suggested that the
"ep~ were state magm?ates, chosen as an interim gov-
ernment. But Lysias says that they were set up by the club
2 4

members (hetaireioi), not by the assembly.

The Summer of 404
Lysander watched the beginning of the demolition of Ath-
ens' defenses and then went to oversee the continuing siege
of Samas, leaving the Athenians to contemplate their new
situatio~. Aristotle indicates that there were three political
groups m Athens at this time:
After ~eace was made on the condition that they be governed
aecordmg to the ancestral constitution [patrios politeia] the
democrats tried to preserve the democracy, the nobles' who
belonged to the political clubs [hetaireiai] and the exiles who
had r~turned after the peace wanted an oligarchy, and those
who did not belong to any political club but otherwise seemed
to_be th~ ~est citizens sought the ancestral constitution [pa-
tnos pol,teia]; among them were Archinus, Anytus, Cleito-
phon, Phormisius, and many others, and their leader was
Theramenes. 1
The peace treaty had required that the Athenians take back
their exiles,. '_Vho_asa group were pro-Spartan and eager to
reassert political mfluence in Athens. One was Aristoteles
who had been an extremist among the Four Hundred and i~
exile had _joined the Spartan camp. 2 The exiles joined with
the men m the hetaireiai-which had been instrumental in
the overthrow of the democracy in 411-and began to plot
'AthPol 34.3.
•xen. 2.3.46 and 2.2. 18.
44
Among the "ephors" was Critias, son of Callaeschrus, born
into an old Athenian family about 46o or a little later. Critias
had studied with Socrates. He was described as an "amateur5
among philosophers, and a philosopher among amateurs."
Despite the notoriety Critias acquired as the leader of the
Thirty, Plato put him in a number of dialogues as a speaking
character. 6 He himself wrote prose and verse, ranging from
plays to studies of constitutions, speeches to elegiacs; frag-
ments of his writing survive.· Socrates was later charged with
teaching Critias disrespect for Athenian laws and govern-
ment. s Xenophon has Critias say that the Spartans had the
best constitution (kalliste politeia).9 The surviving bits of Crit-
ias' treatise on the Spartan Constitution suggest that Critias
admired everything about the Spartans, from their exercise
to their drinking cups, household furniture, and style of
dancing. 10
In 415 Critias was implicated in the mutilation of the
'Lys. 12.43-46. .
'Boemer, "De rebus a Graecis" 75-78; accepted by Walther Jude1ch,
..Die fiinf Athenischen Ephoren," RllM 74 (1925) 261--66.
'Proclus 1. 70 on Plato Tim. 20a.
•chann. 153c ff., Prot. 316a ff., Critias (named after him) 1o6b ~-,
and most memorably, Tim. 1gc ff., where Critias tells the story of Atlantis.
7 See FVorsokr 88. Particularly well known is F 25, from the satyr play
Sisyphus, where he presented the radical view that men invented the
gods to control lawlessness. .
"This was apparently a major charge in the accu5:1t10~composed_ ?Y
Polycrates c. 393'392, to which Xenophon responded m his A!emorabilw.
See Anton-Hermann Chroust, "Xenophon and Polycrates, ClMed 16
(1955} 1-77.
"Xen. 2.3.34.
••F 32-37, though the last might reflect some dissatisfaction with the
treatment of the helots.
45
 The Thirty at Athens
herms and was released from prison on the evidence of
11
Andocides. His role during the nile of the Four Hundred is
not entirely clear. He was probably a member of the oli-
garchy himself, but not an extremist, since he was not exiled. 12
After the fall of the Four Hundred he proposed first the trial
of the dead oligarch Phrynichus (an enemv of Alcihiades) for
13
treaso~, a~d second the recall of Alcibiades, as he proudly
proclaimed m these lines to Alcibiades: "I publiclv made the
motion that brought you back, and by writing it I accom-
plished this deed. The seal of my tongue lies upon these
14
matters. " If Critias was a supporter of Alcibiades at the time,
as these measures suggest, Alcibiades' fall from favor in 40 6
might explain Critias' exile after his prosecution bv Cleoph-
15
on. But Critias did not follow Alcibiades to the Chersonese;
he went instead to Thessaly, where he participated in a revo-
lution to set up a hoplite democracy. 1" There is no evidence
that he fought with Sparta against Athens, but as he was a
notorious Laconophile, he was a suitable choice to lead the
oligarchs. If he had not been an extremist in the past, so
much the better for the oligarchs' goal of eliciting support for
the overthrow of the democracy. The other "ephor" whose
name we know, Eratosthenes, also claimed to be more mod-
erate than radical; 17 this claim supports the suggestion that in
the ~arly summer of 404 the oligarchs were trying to appeal
to middle-of-the-road Athenians who might be persuaded to
back an oligarchv.
Aristotle names some of the men at whom this sort of
appeal was aimed: Archinus, Anytus, Cleitophon, Phonnis-
11Andoc.1.47-68.
11
See Gabriel Adeleye, "Critias: Member of the Four Hundred?," TAPA
104 (1974) 1-9; ..for another view, see Harry C. Avery, "Critias and the
Four Hundred, CP 58 (1963) 165-67. The Callaeschrus cited at Lys
12
-66 ~- o~e of the leading members of the Four Hundred was probabl~
no~ Cntias father; see Davies, AthPropFam 27.
Lycurg. Leoc. u3. 3
"Plut. Alcib. 33.1.
'5Xen. 2.3. 15; Aristot. Rhet. 1375b.
:~See Wade-Gery, "Kritias and Herodes" 275-82.
'Lys. 12.62.
The Summer of 404
ius, and Theramenes. Aristotle says this moderate group
was aiming at the patrios politeia; he meant that they did not
want a narrow oligarchy, but sought a powerful and re-
spected Areopagus council, property qualifications for magis-
tracies, and the elimination of pay for magistrates (a return,
in short, to the constitution of Cleisthenes). ts But Aristotle has
rightly been criticized for being too schematic in dividing
Athenian politicians into only three groups; the moderates,
in particular, were far from united on all questions. Thera-
menes wanted to limit citizenship to the hoplites, as in the
constitution of the 5,000 in 411. He was willing to work with
more extreme oligarchs, at least temporarily, as he showed
in both 411 and 404- The others named by Aristotle would
not go so far. Of the five men, only Theramenes joined the
Thirty. Archinus, Anytus, and Phormisius all participated in
the resistance against the oligarchy.
"'The phrase patrios politeia appears to have been used as a political
slogan by moderates at Athens during the last years of the fifth century.
See particularly Alexander Fuks, Tlie Ancestral Constitution (London
1953). Patrios normally meant "ancestral and still in use" until the mod-
erates gave it a new twist. Their use of patrios is clear from AthPol 29.3,
where Aristotle records that Cleitophon proposed that "they should seek
out the ancestral laws [patrioi nomoi] passed by Cleisthenes when he
established the democracv ... on the grounds that Cleisthenes' constitu-
tion was not democratic l;ut was similar to that of Solon . .,
The explanation is probably Aristotle's own, but I see no reason why he
should be wrong. Against K. R. Walter's recent assertion that there is no
contemporary evidence of a patrios politeia program between 411 and 404
("The 'Ancestral Constitution· and Fourth Century Historiography in
Athens," AJAH 1 [ 1976] 129-44), see Thrasymachus F 1 (FVorsokr 85).
Some scholars have understood Aristotle to mean something like "On
the basis of the stipulation that they have the patrios politeia, different
Athenians wanted different constitutions." Sec Adeleye, ''Theramenes:
The End of a Controversial Career" 10-11; McCoy, "Aristotle's Athenaion
Politeia·· 141; the translations of J. M. Moore (Berkeley 1975) and Kurt
von Fritz and Ernst Kapp (New York 1950). I take the genitive absolute
· at the beginning of AtliPol 34.3 to be temporal, not causal. There is no
evidence that the oligarchs claimed a narrow oligarchy was the patrios
politeia (they did say they wanted "the old order," ten palaian katastasin
[Diod. 14.3.3]). The other two groups mentioned by Aristotle did claim to
want the patrios politeia, but there is no evidence that any group asserted
that the treaty obligated the Athenians to follow the constitution it favored.
47
 The Thirty at Athens
Discussions continued almost the entire sumnwr. At this
point everyone seems to have made an effort not to antago-
nize the others. Critias and Thenunenes, for a notable exam-
ple, are said to have still been friends after the institution of
1 against the treatv-but
the oligarchy. One can imagine the type of conversation that
ij
took place, Theramenes reviewing the failure of thl' .Four
Hundred and the more successful· rule of the 5, ooo. Critias
objecting that even so the 5,000 had soon turned into full
democracy again, and that conditions were altogether differ-
ent now that the war had been lost. But neither Critias nor
Theramenes could afford to appear unwilling to compromise;
each needed the other because the supporters of democracy
were still strong.
The democrats not only refused to change the constitu-
tion, but even delayed in destroying the walls, as the peace
treaty required. Some leaders no doubt still hoped that some-
how Athens could keep its walls. Their delay opened the
gate for the radical oligarchs, who finally sent to Samos for
Lysander. The Spartan commander had for some time been
following a policy of installing narrow oligarchies of his sup-
porters in cities around the Aegean, a strategy that enabled
him to maintain a strong influence both on these cities an<i
on Spartan foreign policy. Probably because of his victory at
Sam?s, where he had received enough honors to swell any
man s head, Lysander was sufficiently confident of his power
to help the oligarchs overthrow the democracy at Athens,
although to do so meant breaking the peace treaty.
Near the end of the summer, perhaps in September, Ly-
sander returned to Athens, bringing with him the Spartan
navy. An assembly was called at which two Spartan officers,
Philochares and Miltiades, 20 appeared along with Lysander,
"'Xen. 2..3.15-16.
'°~II has pointed out that Philochares and Miltiades were
Sparoi.?s, _not _Athenians ("Athenian Politics and Genealogy; Some Pen-
dants, Ht8tona z3 [1974] 153-54); I agree with him that the two were
Spartan commanders, not ambassadors, as D. H. Kelly has suggested on
the grounds that neither name appears on the monument to the victors
48
The Summer of 404
who advised the Athenians to choose thirty men to head the
government and to manage all the affairs of the city. 2 t Initially
he mav have intended only to give advice-which was not
when Theramenes protested, citing
the terms of the peace, Lysander curtly stated that the treaty
had been broken by the Athenians, since they had destroyed
the walls later than the time agreed upon, and threatened
Theramenes with death if he did not stop opposing the Lace-
daemonians. Lvsander ma~e two, 1cQncessions: the Thirty
1:i<.fll, f'A', h
.
were officially instructed to t:iaraw up t e ancestr al Iaws (pa-
trioi nomoi) and Theramenes was allowed to nominate ten of
the thirtv men. Under the circumstances Theramenes had
no choic~ but to give in-his opposition may have been
more to Ly sander' s interference than to the substance o~ the
proposal-and he recommended the election of the Thirty.
of Aegospotami found at Delphi ("Lysias XII 72.," Historia 28 [1~79] g8-
101). The monument is incomplete. (Kelly rightly scorns Bicknell s fantasy
about the ancestry of this Miltiades.)
21
On the assembly that elected the Thirty, see AthPol 34.3, Plut. Lysan.
15 and particularly Lys. 12.71-76 and Diod. 14.3.5-7. I have followed th:
suggestions of Pierre Salmon, "L'Etablissement des Trente a Ath~ne_s,
AntCl 3s (1g6g) 497-500. Salmon resolved the notorious co?trad1ct~on
between Diodorus (who asserts that Theramenes oppose~ the mstalla~1on
of the Thirty) and Lysias (who portrays Theramenes as c~1efly responsible
for the Thirty) by saying that Theramenes made two different speeches,
the first opposing the oligarchy (as in Diodorus) _and the second, ~e~
Lysander's threats, recommending that the Athemans pass Dracontides
motion (as in Lysias; Lysias, however, reverses the order of the speeches
by Theramenes and Lysander). Earlier scholars (for references see McC~y,
"Aristotle's Athenaion Politeia" 143 n. 45) had generally followed Lys1as,
creating a hypothetical pro-Theramenean source to explain the accounts of
Diodorus and Aristotle (who does not give a lengthy account_ of the as-
sembly, but clearly does not include Theramenes among the oligarch~ and
so supports Diodorus rather than Lysias). I believe that the u_ltim~te
source of both Diodorus and Aristotle here is the Oxyr~yn~hus ~stonan
(see Appendix), though Diodorus (or Ephorus) has overs_1mplifiedm lump-
ing Theramenes with the democrats. Bias, of course, 1s muc~ more ~b-
vious in the blatantly anti-Thera'!'enean. statements of Lys~as: Lys1~
grossly misrepresents Theramenes goals m the p~ace_ negotiations an
Theramenes' stance at the assembly about the constitution.
Xenophon says simply that the demos elected the Thirty (2.3.2.). His
silence about the manner of their election is intriguing.
49
The Thirty at Athens The Summer of 404

Theramenes nominated ten men, the "ephors" chose another Xenophon gives the names of all thirty, but further identi-
ten, and ten were chosen from those present at the assem- fication is notoriouslv difficult, since he gives neither patro-
bly. The notion has been advanced that this method of selec- nvmics nor demotic~. 2' After his examination of Xenophon' s
tion represents the tripartite division described by Aristotle, 22 li~t, R. Loeper formulated the following hypothesis: the
but in view of what happened later, the ten "from those Thirtv were chosen one from each trittys and are named not
present" must have been antidemocratic. onlv ·in tribal order (three to a tribe) but also, within each
The Thirty were elected as a government, not merely as a tribe, in the trittyal order: city/inland/coast. 29 Table 1 illus-
legislative committee. The mistaken statement that the trates his hypothesis.
Thirty were a legislative commission that usurped further ~1embers of the Thirty according to the Loeper hypothesis
Table 1.
powers continues to appear in scholarly works, and goes
back at least as far as Leonard Whibley. 23 Xenophon says, City Inland Coast
trittys trittys trittys
"The demos resolved to choose thirty men, who should draw Tribe
up [syngrapsousi] the ancestral laws [patrioi nomoi] accord- Polyehares Critias Melobius
I. Erechthcis
ing to which they would govern [politeusousi]." 24 Here the Hippolochus Eucleides Hieron
II. Aigeis
subject of politeusousi (as of syngrapsousi) is most easily the ~1nesilochus Chremon Theramenes
III. Pandionis
"thirty men," not the derrws. The point is made more clearly Leontis Aresias Diodes Phaedrias
IV.
by Diodorus: "Thirty men were chosen to manage the affairs V. Akamantis Chaereleus Anactius Peison
of the city." 25 The Thirty were not accused by their contem- VI. Oineis Sophocles Eratosthenes Charicles
poraries of usurping power. Lysias refers to the politeia pro- Onomacles Theognis Aeschines
VII. Kekropis
posed by Dracontides, 26 and in an inscription and many times Theogenes Cleomedcs Erasistratus
VIII. Hippothontis
in the orators the Thirty are referred to simply as "the oli- Pheidon Dracontides Eumathes
IX. Aiantis
garchy. "27 Hippomachus Mnesitheides
x. Antiochis Aristoteles

22
Fuks, Ancestral Constitution 73.
"'Whibley, Greek Oligarchies 194-95 n. 10, and more recently Walters,
"'Ancestral Constitution· and Fourth-Century Historiography in Athens"
137; Eugenio Lanzillotta, "Ricerche sulla guerra civile ateniese dopo la
sconfitta di Egospotami," MGR 5 (1977) 133; Oxford Classical Dictionary 2
(Oxford 1970) s.v. 'Thirty Tyrants." Adeleye tried to find a middle ground,
by suggesting that the Thirty were installed as a government but usurped
additional powers such as the right to bring in a Spartan garrison ('Thera-
menes: The End of a Controversial Career" 14-16). Adeleye is. no doubt
correct that Dracontides· motion did not specifically say the Thirty could
hire Spartan soldiers. But that is not to say the Thirty "usurped" any
authority. Dracontides' motion was probably framed in general terms that
granted full powers to govern the city.
24
Xen. 2.3.2; cf. 2.3.11 and Diod. 14.4. 1.
zoiod. 14.3.7.
00
Lys. 12.73; cf. Isoc. 18.48-49.
,:,Hesperia40 (1971) 28o no. 7 l. 5; Lys. passim, particularly in 18 and 25;
Isoc. 7.6g, 16.50, 18.35, 18.40, 20.4; Andoc. 1.99. Lys. 12.48 charges the
A recent epigraphical discovery shows at least that the
names are not in this trittyal order. An inscription fragment
found in the Athenian agora in 1970, identified as part of t~e
record of the sale of the property of the Thirty completed m
402'401, 30 gives us a previously unknown demotic for Eu-
Thirty with having ruled paranomos, ..hut this ne:.d_not mean "unconstitu-
tionally" (as in Loeb); it might mean unlawfully, 1.e., badly.
,. Xen. 2.3.2. N d
""R Lo "Th Thirtv Tvrants," Zhurnal Ministerstva , aro nago
· eper, e , - d b D ·d wh·t1
Prosveshcheniya (May 18g6) 90-101, recently reassesse Y aVJ e-
head "The Tribes of the Thirty Tyrants," JHS 100 (1g8o) 2o8- 13•
"'P~blication forthcoming in Hesperia by Michael Walbank. For a P:e-
liminary summary of his conclusions, see his abstract, 'The Co~fiscatmn
and Sale of the Property of the Thirty Tyrants in 4oz/1 .B.C., AJA 8_4
(1g8o) 238. I am indebted to him for sending me a working draft of his
readings and reconstruction.

50 51
The Thirty at Athens
mathes. Line 8 has [ Eu ]mathes of Phale[ ro ]n, which puts him
in the proper tribe (Aiantis, IX) hut the \\Tong trittys (city
rather than coast). Loeper's full hypothesis is therefore
wrong. 11 But could the Thirty still have heen chosen three
from each tribe and listed in tribal order~
A number of identifications fit this re\'ised \'ersion of the
Loeper hypothesis. The other certain demotic is that of
2
Theramenes, the son of Hagnon of Steiria (Pandionis, 111),3
and a third, as good as certain, is that of Dracontides, the
man from Aphidna (Aiantis, IX) who made the motion to
elect the Thirty. 11 Four other possibilities seem likely. Anae-
tius may he Anaetius of Sphettos (Akamantis, V), hellenota-
mias in 410/409; 1·1 [Anaetius of S]phettos fits in line 16 of the
inscription referred to above. Aristoteles may be the hellen-
otamias in 421/420 of the tribe Antiochis (X), who may be the
-eles of Thorai who was general in 431/430 (?) and/or the
Aristoteles son of Timocrates who was general (or navarch)
in 426/ 425. 1' Eucleides may be the general of 410/409 and
the secretary of 408/407, who may be the custodian of rit-
ual vessels from Ankyle (Aigeis, II) in 420/419.:i,; Chaereleus,
a rare name, may be the Chaereleus of Kikynna (Akamantis,
V) who appears as a neokoros sometime between 413 and
406.'7
One identification formerly claimed as support for Loeper
31
As is Bicknell's resuscitation of the trittys theory in "Athenian Politics
and Genealogy; Some Pendants" 155.
12
Davies, AthPropFam no. 7234.
"AthPol 34.3; Schol. Aristoph. Wasps 157.
"IC 1 3 .375 I. 20.
"For the hellenotamias, see IC 13 . 285 I. 5. -cles ofThorai (IC 1 3 . 3661.
6) was originally identified as Aristoteles the son of Timocrates, active in
426/425 (Thue. 3.105.3), when the inscription was dated to 426/425. It is
now generally believed to be earlier (Benjamin D. Meritt, Athenian Fi-
nancial Documents of the Fifth CentuT'lj [Ann Arbor 1932] 8:J-86). We
might have three different Aristoteles, or two Aristoteles and --eles of
Thorai, for which other restorations arc possible.
36
IC 1 3 .375 I. 17, 1 3 . 110 ll. 3-4, 13 .473 I. 8, respectively.
"'SEC 21. 72 a II. 2, 16, and b I. 6.
The Summer of 404
is surelv wrong. Johannes Kirchner identified Eratosthenes
with tl;e Eratosthenes of Oe murdered by Lysias' client
Euphiletus. :i,, If the two were one, however, Lysias would not
have failed to point out that the victim was a member of the
Thirtv, and thus deserved to be killed. 39 Because of the rare-
ness ·of the name, Eratosthenes the oligarch was probably
related to the murder victim, but he was not necessarily
from the same deme.
In two instances cases can be made for identifications that
would disprove the revised Loeper hypothesis. The weaker
is that of Erasistratus. \Vho was probably related to Phaeax of
Acharnae, but did not necessarily share his demotic since he
mav have been the son of Phaeax' s sister and her unknown
hu~band. 40 (Cf. Eratosthenes.) The stronger is that of Critias,
whose family was arguably from Aphidna-but the argument
is not so forceful as to disprove the revised Loeper hypothe-
sis bv itself. 41
Theramenes, Chaereleus, Anaetius, Dracontides, Eu-
mathes, and Aristoteles all occur in correct Cleisthenic tribal
order, enough correspondences to satisfy any statistician that
the names were not written down at random. But that does
not prove that three men were chosen from each tribe.
David Whitehead recently pointed out that the Thirty could
have been chosen without reference to tribe and then sub-
sequently listed in tribal order. 42 Three possible further iden-
tifications would fit this theory: 43 (1) Onomacles, who was
general in 412/411, joined the Four Hundred and was later
condemned to death in absentia, 44 could be the treasurer from
"'KirchPA no. 5035.
311Davies, AthPropFam 185.
"'Davies, AtliPropFam no. 13921.
"Davies, AthPropFam 328.
"Whitehead, "Tribes of the Thirty Tyra~ts" 21 ~-12. . , .
~'A fourth possibility is Phcidon of K01le (H1ppothontls, \ III), if we
accept Wcsseling's emendation of Philon of Koile at Isoc., 18.22. But the
emendation remains undcmonstratcd. See Cloche, RestDem 345 n. 2.
44
KirchPA no. 11476.
53
The Thirty at Athens
Perithoidai (Oineis, VI) in 421/420; 4J (2) Cleornedes could be
the son of Lycomedes of Phlya (Kekropis, VII). general in
417/ 416 and possibly 418/417 and 416/415 as well;'" Theo-
genes could be the ambassador sent to Persia in 408, who
might be the signatory of the Peace of Nicias from Oineis
(VI), who in turn is probably the Theogenes of Acharnae
mentioned in Aristophanes' \Vasps 1183.' 7 The sPquence
would then look like this: x, x, x, x, II, x, x, x, IIL x, x, x, V,
V, x, x, x, x, VI, x. x, VI, VII, x, x, IX, IX, X, X, X. There
would be at least ten individuals from Akamantis (V) and
Oineis (VI)--far from an impossibility. 4'
We know something about other members of the Thirtv.
Onomacles and Theogenes could be the men known aft~r
the Sicilian expedition, even if they are not the ones who
were active in 421. Sophocles may be the son of Sostratides,
who was general in 426/425 and 425/424.'IJ Melobius was prob-
ably the man who made a speech in favor of the Four Hun-
dred in 411, 50 and Mnesilochus was probably the epony-
mous archon under the Four Hundred. 51 Aristoteles was a
radical member of the Four Hundred and was with Lvsander
in the Aegean in 404- 52 Chremon was a member of th,e boule
in 4osf 404, when he prosecuted Cleophon. 53 Diodes may be
the man who moved to amend a decree in 410/409 and was
"'lG 13 .472 I. 8.
.. Davies, AthPropFam 347; Charles W. Fornara, The Athenian Board of
Generals from 501 to 404 (Wiesbaden 1971) 63.
"For the ambassador, see Xen. 1.3. 13; for the signatory, sec Thuc.
5. 19.2, 24.1, with A. Andrewes and D. M. Lewis, "Note on the Peace of
Nikias," JHS 77 (1957) 178-79.
'"Ifthe Loeper hypothesis falls, so docs Lcnschau's corollarv that the first
0
column contains those chosen "from those present," the sccond those
nominated by the "ephors," and the third those nominated bv Theramencs
(Th. Lenschau, "Hai Triakonta," RE 6 A 2 [ 1937] 2363-64). ·
"'Thuc. 3. 115.5 and 4.65.3.
"'AthPol 29.1.
"AthPol 33.1, spelled "Mnasilochus."
"'Xen. 2.2. 18, 3.46.
""Lys. 30. 14.
54
The Summer of 404
archon in 4og/ 408. ""'Charicles was an investigator in the affair
of the herms in 415, general in 41~413, probably a member
55
of the Four Hundred in 411, and an exile thereafter. Eratos-
thenes was a trierarch in .p2/ 411, when he cooperated in the
7
overthrow of the democracy. 56 Theognis was a tragic poet. '
Certainty about any particular identification is impossible
v.ithout patronymics and demotics, but even if a few of the
identifications are incorrect, some general conclusions will
still be valid. First. members of the Thirty had been active
in Athenian public life under the democracy: perhaps seven
before the rule of the Four Hundred (Sophocles, Charicles,
Cleomedes, Eucleides, Onomacles, Eratosthenes, Aristot-
eles) and possibly eight after 411 (Critias, Eucleides, Clue-
mon, Theramenes, Diocles, Chaereleus, Anaetius, and Theo-
genes). It would be unfair, then, to portray the Thirty as
politically inexperienced.
Second, the leading members of Theramenes' political
group--Archinus, Anytus, Cleitophon, and Phormisius-are
conspicuously absent. Apparently Theramenes was unable to
bring these influential men along with him; they were un-
willing to work with (or unacceptable to) Critias and the
others. Apparently the moderates among the Thirty were
not strong. Theramenes had to nominate either ten lesser
men or ten more radical oligarchs. He would miss the back-
ing of such powerful men as Archinus .
Third, quite a few members of the Thirty can be identified
with known members of the Four Hundred (Critias, Melo-
bius, ~foesilochus, Theramenes, Charicles, Aristoteles, On-
omacles, and perhaps Eratosthenes); our knowledge is lim-
ited by the lack of a list of the Four Hundred. Lysias exag-
gerated when he claimed that all of the Thirty and all the
"IG 13.102 I. 14 and KirchPA no. 3g84.
"'Davies, AthPropFam 502,
""Lys. 12.42.
"'KirchPA no. 6736.
55
The Thirty at Athens

members'i'lof ~he boule of 40..f140.3had been among the Four

Hundred -1f they had been, the Four Hundred would have
numbered more than 530--but he supports what we would
expect: most of the oligarchs in 404 had been oligarchs in
411. The events of the earlier revolution, therefore, must 3
have had a direct influence on the course taken by the Thirty.
"'Lys. 13.74.
The Thirty in Power

Unlike the Four Hundred, the Thirty initia1ly avoided

committing themselves to a definite constitution. They at-
tempted instead to set up an interim government, to elimi-
nate their strongest opponents, to reform the laws, and only
then to move toward their ultimate goa1s.
The Thirty began by appointing the usua1 administrative
officia1s. Aristotle says that they established the 500 mem-
bers of the boule and the other magistrates out of a pre-
viously selected body of 1,000. 1 He probably means that the
magistrates were chosen by lot from a picked group, as the
archons were chosen in Solon's constitution. The 1,000 were
presumably picked by the Thirty. According to Lysias, a
majority of the bouleutai had belonged to the previous boule;2
we know the names of only three, Epichares, Evandrus, and
Teisias, the brother-in-law of Charicles. 3
'Ek prokriton ek ton chilion, AthPol 35.1. There were 1,000 hippeis, ac-
cording to Philochorus (FGrHist 328 F 39), and John E. Sandys therefore
suggested that "the thousand" referred to the hippeis (Aristotl.e's Constitu-
tion of Athens' [London 1912] 14z); for doubts see Mario A. Levi, Com-
mento storico alla Respublica Atheniensium di Aristotele (Milan 1968)
2.333. I take the sense here as "from those previously selected, that
is from a thousand previously selected ... The figure might be corrupt; but
Aristotle later says that the TI1irty named 2,000 citizens to share in the
government 136.1); those 2,000, added to the 1,000 here, would give the
3,000 familiar from other sources.
'Lys. 13.20.
'Andoc. 1.95, Lys. 26. 10, and Isoc. 16-43, respectively.

57
 The Thirty at Athens
The Thirty in Power
From a varietv of sources r, .. l
list of the · · . "t can ( raw 11P at least a partial tive cities. 10 This could mean that they had both executive
of th ffi mhagl1dstrac1es that \Vere fillr·d and can idt>ntify some and judicial powers, as did the Eleven. One of the Ten was
e o ICe o ers The ep . 1
th h b ·J . onymous arcnon was P\'thodorus 4 Charmides the son of Glaucon, a participant in several Pla-
~ arc tohn ha'lteus probably Pa.trodt>s., and we:can safe]'y tonic dialogues. His guardian was his cousin Critias. 11 Another
'as sume at t e other • ,h
.
t ary arc ons were also named. Of the ·1·- of the Ten, ~folpis, is only a name. 12
commands w I . I . m11
The El, . . , e 1ear on y of the lupparch Lysimachus.6 As for financial officials, inscriptions show that a board of
in thee\e~ seem to I~ave had their usual duties of supervis- ten treasurers of Athena and the Other Gods carried out its
cog c dpnhsc~n,carrymg out executions (including those of normal functions. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum
n1esse t 1eves kidn· . l I .
. ' appers, an( mgands. without trial) 23.81 is an inventory of the Hecatompedon, listing what the
an d h an d mg over cm1f . t d ,
. h isc,.·ie propertv to the p(J/etai who treasurers of 4oy402 received from their predecessors; In-
were m c arge of sal 7 N . ,
t0 b I . es. ' ot surprisingly, tlwv did not prove scriptiones Graecae 1 3 .380 is a small fragment of the record of
e popu ar under the Th· t s .·
as a b f . ir Y· • atyrus of Kephisia who payments made by the treasurers in 404"403. 13 About two of
O th
ho ,mem er e boule in 405 had been one of 'cieo- the three men whose names are preserved (Menecrates of
P n s accusers was de , 'b cl l X
est and mos ' . scn e )Y~' enophon as the bold- Oinoe, Dromoeleides of Prasiai, and Chariades of Agryle)
. . t shameless of the Eleven (for X h , we have no further knowledge. The third, Chariades, had
morahzmg judg t cl . , enop on s
garchy''). ij • men , rea mstead "most faithhil to the oli- served as a hellenotainias in 406/405 and appears as an epi-
states in the Erechtheum building record of 4og/408. 14
Ten men were app · t I I
supervision of the . o1~ ec to ru e Piraeus, under the The Thirty hired 300 whip-bearing (mastigophoroi) atten-
th El Thirty. A letter of Plato links them with dants.15 Their number suggests that they replaced the 300
m:ket:o;et~nd s~i~ that both had responsibilities for the Scythian slaves Athens had been using as a sort of police
er w1 general administration in their respec- force. The whips were intended to intimidate. An interesting
. 'Xe~. 2 ·3- l; Lys. 7.9; AthPol 1'. 4[1. 1•. Brnno Keil,
. parallel is the story told by Herodotus about the Scythians:
tinensis (Strassburg 1902) 6g ;· Anonymus Argen- experiencing difficulty in putting down a rebellion of slaves
Pythodorus who was a friend 77•. Pythod]orus. He was probably the
(Plato Pann. 127d) but th of ~ns~oteles, the member of the Thirty
.
t ion • ' e name 1s fiurly co d c. h 0
' Epist. 7.324c.
1s uncertain. Kirchner mad h ~mon an Hirt er identifica-
12389) that he be identified wit~ tK~rc~~lchve suggestion (KirchPA no. "Xen. 2+ 19; Davies, AthPropFam no. 8792 IX.
Four Hundred who drafted the mo . no. 1~4~2, a member of the "Androtion, FGrHist 324 F 11. Oskar Armbruster cited Athenaeus 2.44
prosecuted Protagoras (AthPol 2 . t~on for their installation and later (Pythermus, FGrHist 8o F 2: "and Pythennus listed Glaucon the drunkard
'Patrocles is attested as h 9.1, J?10g. Laert. 9.54). among the tyrants in the Piraeus") to show that Glaucon was also one of
followed the Thirty (Isoc
replaced the Thirty's
ar; o~ ?as1leus du~ing the rule of the Ten who
.. lt .5), s1~ce there is no evidence that the Ten
the Ten in Piraeus ("Uber die Herrschaft der Dreissig zu Athen 404"3 v.
Chr ... [diss. Freiburg im Breisgau 1913] 42 n. 8). But Pythermus was
the Thirty. magis rates, e probably held the same post under probably referring to the commanders of the Macedonian garrison in the
'Xen. 2-4-8. fourth/third centuries, not to the Ten in 404"403. See Konrad Ziegler,
'A. R. W. Harrison The La if A he "Pythermos," RE 47 (1963) 514.
:Lys. 30.10, 12; Xe~. 2.3 54w o t ns (Oxford 1968-71) 2.17. llPeter Krentz, "SEC XXI,80 and the Rule of the Thirty," Hesperia 48
AthPol 35.1; Xen. 2-4- l~· Plut L (1979) ~-63.
cl-OtaGraeca (Berlin 1814) ' · ysan. 15-5; Immanuel Bekker, Anec- "IC 1 .316 I. 328 and lG 13 .474 l. 2.
1.235.
"AthPol 35. 1.
58
59

The Thirty at Athens
(sons of slaves and Scythian women, to be precise), they
routed their opponents by taking up whips mastigai) instead
of more conventional weapons. 1"
Soon after they came to power, the Thirty brought to trial
the generals, taxiarchs, and others who had opposed the
peace treaty. 17 As former democratic leaders, these men could
be expected to cause trouble in the future. The Thirty pre-
sided over a trial in front of the boule, which condemned the
accused (except Agoratus) for plotting against the people;
they had wanted to refuse the terms brought by Thera-
menes, although many Athenians were starving and des-
perate for peace. The trial was an orderlv one-at least the
official verdict survived in written form 1~_:_andthe deaths of
Dionysodorus, Strombichides, Nicias, Nicomenes, Aristoph-
anes of Cholleidai, Eucrates, Hippias of Thasos, Xenophon
of Kourion, and the others apparently did not arouse dissen-
sion, since no record of unrest survives. The Thirtv did not
confiscate the property of the condemned men, as ·is shown
by Lysias' comment that Dionysodorus disposed of his prop-
erty as he pleased. 19
The Thirty then "declared that the city must be purged of
unjust men and the rest of the citizens inclined to virtue and
justice. "20 They therefore arrested and, after trial before the
boule, executed certain sycophants as well as, Lysias sug-
gests, men who had stolen public funds or taken bribes. The
sources agree that these actions were generally well re-
ceived. 21
After establishing the administrative machinery of the
1 (AthPol 35.2, Schol. Aeschin. 1.33, and Dio Chrys. 21.3) show fdot t at
•Hdt. 4. 1-4.
"See Lys. 13.
"Lys. 13. 50.
"Lys. 13.41.
20
Lys. 12.5. On the propaganda of the Thirty during the early davs of
their rule, see Luciano Gianfrancesco, "Aspetti propagandistici della polit-
ica dei Trenta Tiranni," in Contributi dell' lstituto di storia antica 2 (Milan
1974) 20-35.
21
Xen. 2.3. 12; AthPol 35.3; Diod. 14.4.2; Lys. 25. 19.
60
The Thirty in Power
/1,<:l;;r,, h
government, the Thirty turned to the task
laws. Xenophon censures the Thirty for postponmg the
8~J~~~tr-a
t e
drawing up of laws, a rather unfair criticism since a dem~-
cratic commission had been at work revising the democratic
laws for six vears. Eberhard Ruschenbusch argued from a
half-dozen p;ssages that the Thirty wrote at least some new
laws;23 two are convincing:
{Critias said that] according to the new laws none of the 3,000
can be executed without your [the boule"s] vote.
Critias, when he was one of the Thirty and was lawgiver with
Charicles .... wrote in the laws that the art of words [logon
techne] was not to be taught. 24
The Thirty the democratic laws inscribed on a wall
next to the Royal Stoa, presumably intending to put new
laws in their place. 23
Aristotle supplies some information about changes ~he
Thirty made in the laws. 26 They took down the laws of Eph1al-
tes and Archestratus concerning the Areopagites. The re-
moval of Ephialtes' legislation cleared the way for the ~reo-
pagus to rise once again to be a "bulwark of the land and
a "protector of the city," as it had been in the time of the
Persian Wars. 27
The Thirty also took down whatever laws of Solon they
considered to be ambiguous. Aristotle cites only one exam-
"'Xen. 2.3.11, echoed by Diod. 14-4-2 (and cf. AthPol 35.1).
"'Eberhard Ruschenbusch, "Der Sogenannte Gesetzescode vom Jahre
410 v. Chr.," Hi.~toria 5 (1956) 124-25. Of the other four passages, th ee
11
the Thirty wrote new laws but that they took doWf!or repealed o ones,
while the fourth (Demos. 24.go) proves nothing at all.
24Xen. 2.3.51 and Xen. Mem. 1.2.31. ., .
"'Ann Fingarette, "A New Look at the Wall ofNikomakhos, Hespena 4°
(1971) 330-35.
"'AthPol35.2. .. . f h n1
"Aeschylus Eumen. 701-2; cf. AthPol 25.2: the guardian o t e cons u-
tion."
 The Thirty in Power
The Thirty at Athens
) d .. r the second period. The 31)

pie, that the Thirty made it legal for a man to leave his could have met on the 1 n~·x unn).!, h l l · an important
property to anyone he wished, by abolishing the trouble- new form of the Pnyx differed _from t e o ~ _mout over the
some clause "unless he be of unsound mind, incapacitated by wav While earlier the Athemans could spill d af't, 4
·· f . U . large crow , er 4°
age, or under the influence of a woman." It was commonly entire hill in the even~ o an unl~1st_1ta l) It ·1·sa fair guess that
h tl g was 1m1ec . · ·
believed that complicated and ambi1,?:uouslaws led to fre- the size of t e ga 1enn , l it is this political conse-
quent recourse to the courts and thus to an increase in the access could he controlled. Sure Y . · . ( h h ·t might
power of the people. The repeal of Ephialtes' and (part of) quence that best explains the ~onstruct10n t oug I
Solon' s legislation, perhaps to).?:etherwith some more direct not have been announced publicly). l • , l . The point
l , Thirtv had acted moc erate ) . .
action, ended the system of people's courts: Aristotle says h
So far, t en, t H · d l . that thev were m
the Thirty destroyed the sovereignty of the jurors. The boule deserves stress. The oligarchs coul c a~mt· ani makin~ it
, l " ·ting the conshtu 1011
appears to have substituted as the regular law court during Aristotle s \\'ore s, correc k t that thev were ad-
the oligarchy. unambiguous," and c<~uldev~n. ma_: ~~eramene; used the
Soon after they took office the Thirty began a major re-
building of the assembly meeting place. 211 Excavations have
revealed three distinct structures on the Pnyx. The ceramic
ministering the patnos polttew, a. .
phrase.11 The rule of the Thirty began ma_ m::
fashion from that of the Four Hundred, t
:li
. k dlv different

g
·archs had

evidence for the second dates its construction to the end of learned from their past mistakes._ . about who
the fifth century, confirming the evidence of Plutarch: " ... Most of the Thirty (it is impossible to be precte . d' al
and how many; Critias was their leader) wantec more ra ic
the Thirty later turned the platform in the Pnyx, which had
been built so as to look toward the sea, toward the land,
thinking that the naval empire was the origin of democracy,
whereas the farmers were less displeased with oligarchy. "w By
dumping broken rock and earth against a stepped retaining
wall built on the lower part of the hill, the Thirty made a
new floor set against the slope of the hill. At least one and
probably two sets of stairs led up to the floor from the back.
The new meeting place was as big as or slightly bigger than
the old one; insufficient evidence was found for a precise
reconstruction, but scholars agree that well over 6,000 men
(1) and in 404' 403 (11). Draw-
Figure I. The Pnyx in the early fifth centu~ S ·hool of Classical Studies
"'The fact that the structure was much larger than necessary to hold 3,000 ing.s by John Travlos. Courtesy of the American c
suggests that building began before the 3,000 full citizens had been named.
For the excavation reports see K. Kourouniotes and Homer A. Thompson, at Athens.
'The Pnyx in Athens," Hesperia 1 (1932) go-217; Homer A. Thompson , . ("H w \1anv Athenians Attended
and R. L. Scranton, "Stoas and City Walls on the Pnyx," Hesperia 12 "'According to Hansen s calculat1ons_ o .. ·t ~ould have been 6,500
(1943) 269-301. A recent bibliography is given by Mogens H. Hansen, the Ecclesia?".131 ), the m~imum seatm!~af;;: ~roposed by William B.
"How Many Athenians Attended the Ecclesia?," GRBS 17 (1976) 115 n. 1. on Thompson s reconstructl~n o: 8,000 [1 ] 181) and W. A. McDon-
Thompson will publish further comments on the second period of the 1
Dinsmoor (review of H~spepr:'.: m}tf t!reei~Baltimore 1943).
Pnyx in Hesperia suppl. 19. aid, The Political Meetmg wces OJ e
"'Them. 19-4- "AthPol 35.2.
 111c Thirty in Power
The Thirty at Athens
.. l ... ·t· l l, men ,. (Iiot · b e,[tistoi
•· , hoi
changes. !'.\one of our sources explains just what kind of oli- be the "'bt'st mt'n or t wsu_1'.l.) ~ Evidentlv they were
garchy the extremists wantnl in 404- But the chws are there: knloi kai agatlwi. and lwi epietkets). . d t l r~vise the list
the Thirty intended to remake Athens on the model of hand-pickt'd hy tl~e Thirty. :•-:1_0 i~;~1t~~~~ethec numl)er 3,000,
1
as thev saw fit. \\ hy did tlH h · I . d t? Part of the
Sparta, or rather on the model of an idealized Sparta. Helots • TI , . 11es pomte ou •
had proved a mixed blessing for Sparta: better not to copy an arbitra.ry number, as 1t r.imle . , ,d thev could find only
· · \,· tint the\· )e 1ie,e -
the Lacedaemonians in that regard. The Spartan kings were expl anat10n IS sure , , , . I ' loval to the oligarchy. An-
two citizens unequal to all the rest, and had no place in the about 3,000 men who \\ould )e . l. bodv of lwmoioi like
oligarchy being established at Athens. Their absence made other IJart might he that th ey wantec a · · ce that was
.. tl . 11umber 3,000 sm
the ephors-intended as a check on the kings, and com- that in S1)arta, an( l c l10st u . • <) Numbers
\ f f U Sparttates m 4 4 · '
monly thought of as democratic and altogether too powerful 33 the approximate num,)er o .u of all other ancient poleis, are
-unnecessary as well. Evidence can, however, he found to for the population of Sparta, '.1s h l . ttl of Mantinea in 418
. . , fi<rures for t e )a e · .
suggest that the remaining three elements of the Spartan not secure; we h ,n t. n . . l t they can be mter-
and for the battle of Leuctra m 371 ' )Uh l · ')elieve there
state (the gerousia, the lwmoioi, and the perioikoi) were .. . \1ost sc o ars l ,
imitated at Athens in 404"403. 11 Preted in more than onel "ay · ·Spartiates . • i8 (G E M.
m 4 · ·
The Thirty themselves were a body of the same size as the were between 3,ooo all( 4,ooo •th a decline to about
gerousia in Sparta. They wanted to keep their number at de Ste · Croix suggests about 3,700), WI l ld put the
bv 371. A reasona ) e es im
,I{)
ll ·t· ate t 1en wou
' . '
thirty; when Theramenes was executed, his position on the 1,200 . , . . b t 000 m 404.
board was offered to Thrasybulus, and it may actually have count of Spartan homow1 at a ohu 3,. . f Athens the other
l , the omowt o ' .
been given to Satyrus of Kephisia. ,s Furthermore, they in- If the 3,000 were to )e . h sition of perioikoi.
tended to write their powerful position into law, as can be Athenians ought to be placed m. t Fe pb~uarv The excluded
. , l were t'1ken m e •· h
seen by the law that gave them life-and-death power over all Steps towar d t h IS goa ' l d f 0111living in t e
.l l 00 o) were )an ne r ff
Athenians who were not among the 3,000. 36 (those outsIC e. t 1e 3, X l t
h
e exc
l d d were foreed o
u e
citv 41 Accordmg to enop 1011 ' d their. fnen . d.s cou ld have it,
By December (the delay has been exaggerated) the Thirty .. h.
had drawn up a list of 3,000 citizens to share in the govern- their land so that the T irty a1~l l xtrapolated from other
ment." The 3,000 included the cavalry, :is and were claimed to an explanation that was proba) Y ~ t d The Thirty cannot
. h
cases in w h IC proper .
tv was con 61sca e ·
X
.
hon here imp 1ies.
"As elsewhere, I find J. A. R. \funro's ideas ("The Constitution of Dra- po ssiblv. have . taken .as , much land ash' enop
, th t the T irty were
afraid of being
.
eontides, .. CQ 32 [1938] 152-66) highly interesting but not at all per- Justin and D10dorus say d ~ b t ·f the oligarchs were afraid,
suasive.
"Aristot. Pol. 1270b. overthrown by th~ exclu _e ' J t~ throw so many Athenians
they were short-s1ght~d mdee nts· b' this time Thrasybulus
"'Knud Hannestad, De 30 Tt1rmmer (Copenhagen 1950), summary on
222-23 with references to earlier sections. For earlier hints, see Alfi-ed P.
Dorjahn, "The Athenian Senate and the Oligarchy of 404-3 a.c.," PQ 11
into the hands of their opp_on~ Pl ly None of our sources
and his supporters had seize 1y e.
(1932) 64; F. OIiier, Le Mirage Spartiate (Paris 1933-43) 1. 167.
"If Lys. 30. 12 is more than a careless mistake; Lysias there says that "Xen. 2.3. 19; AtliPol 36.2. nesian War 331-32.
Satyrus, well known as one of the Eleven, was one of the Thirty. "'Ste Croix Origins of tlie Pelopon
· ' D' I
J t· 9 12 I am unpersuaded
32.4; us tn 5· · · ,,r
"'Xen. 2.3.51; AthPol. 37.1. "Xcn. 2-4, l; Lys. 25.22; io<. 14. . urces are describing two dmerent
"The list was published by the time Thrasybulus took Phyle, since the bv Cloche's attempt to sho\~ that the s10· en Attique avant la prise de
•
events h ere (Pau I Cloche • Les expu s10ns
3,000 participated in the first counterattack (Xen. 2.4.2).
lllC)oche, RestDem 7-g. Phyle," REG 24 [19u1 63-fo).
65
 T\w Thirty in Power
The Thirty at Athens
. l Thirtv revoked a number
truly understands the Thirty's purpose---perhaps they are fourth century inform us ~hat t w . ~r<."idi'l five sons of
simply not interested in looking at things from the oligarchs' of proxenies: a citizen_ ot C,~p~1ya_m ~an;hi ~ ;us from Ca-
point of view. The decree prohibited the excluded from liv- ,. tus (perhaps from 1 hasos), . II l. 1-
npeman . f.1 0111 Ialvsus in Hhodes, anc a mu
ing in the asty, or city proper, not from Attica generally; meirus in Rhodes, a man . · · · These five abrogations
most of those who fled Attica were refugees by their own tiple proxenv of unknown location. 1· · l , Several
· f • f t}1e tota num Jer.
are probably only a ractl?n °. · ,
42
choice. The me,11ure, then, was intended to turn the ex- . ··ble but since
cluded into perioikoi by forcing them literally to move out of . f tl1 , Thirtv s actwns are poss1 ' .
explanat10ns o e •· .. . ted anv new proxeno1,
Athens. there is no evidence that the: ap~Jom l l . t . vithout an em-
·k l tl . t thev hehevec t 1a , v
The creation of Athenian perioikoi would help to orient it seems most l 1 ·e Y 1 a · . . . d no longer desired
the Athenians toward the land. The connection between de- pire, they no longer need~d- pr:):en::; :~en accompanied a
mocracy and naval power was often noted by oligarchs who to extend the specia.l pnvileges t ·h· legal r1·ghts fits
preferred power to be in the hands of the farmers. •1 It was grant of proxenia • An unwi·11· mgn T ess to s are
· · unwilling-
difficult to deny political power to the poor men who rowed a Spartan ideolo~ · Sparta v~,~s"_"'el~=~:~~;:~r ;!:at contrast
in the fleet when the fleet ruled the Aegean. Now that em- ness to allow foreigner~ to ll1ve mth Thirtv w~nted to keep
pire was lost, however, the Thirtv must have wanted to . Athens 4. Per 1aps e . . .
to d emocra t 1c · · . . . £ heir Athenian homoioi •
lessen the concentration of population in Athens and Pi- Athens, and Athenian pnvileges, or ~ s were revoked, only
raeus, which had been increased by Athenian strategy during This need not mean that all proxeme arently developed
the war. The creation of perioikoi was more than blind imita- that the extensive system that had app 1 t ·1 d
. . was sharp y cur a1 e •
tion of Sparta; it would have had the important effects of throughout the Atheman emp1;e . but it should not sur-
stimulating the agrarian sector of the economy and dispers- All this is ,necessa:ily_ specu a~:f clin high regard by the
ing potential opponents of the oligarchy. 44 The intent was to Prise · Sparta s constitution was . ·t te Sparta is
compel the excluded to live on their farms. Those who did d th • willingness to 1m1a ,,
Athenian oligarchs, an . eir of the S artan term "ephors
not own land would have to buy some, if they could, or neatly illustrated by the~r ui5e to ove!throw the democracy
become hired agricultural laborerS. One could hope that for the organizers of their p ans
agricultural production would substantially increase, and in the summer of 4°4· f h Th"rty
Athenian dependence on imports decline. ·t· that most o t e 1 had as their ulti-
The suppos1 10n l . f the Snarta..n. government
A further series of actions that might reflect Spartan ideals mate ob Jec. t·ive the emu at1on o , . , ....easi·ng
F : .•
discontent. At
relates to foreigners. It is not surprising that the Thirty re- l · Theramenes 16 er
may help to exp am . d fri·endly to Theramenes
scinded the grant of citizenship made to the Samians in 405, .. ed in po11cy an d
first Cntias was agre . ) 48 p h s both admired Sparta an
since the reason for the original decree had been Samian (homognomon and philos ... er ~ and to set up the Thirty
resistance to Sparta. 45 But five further inscriptions from the were willing to limit ~~e c1h~e;~e!menes had different con-
"See Diod. 14.6.1 for the Spartan decree requiring the other Greek
as a gerousia. But Cntias an . B C.
h . n Proxenies of the Fifth Century .
cities to surrender Athenian refugees to the Thirty, obviously not meaning "'See Michael B. Walbank, At ema S ~e are partially restored.
men whom the Thirty had banished. (Toronto 1978) nos. 26, 61, 63, 72, 1; x:nelasia (expulsion of foreign~rs),
"Ps.-Xen. AthPol 1.2; Plut. Them. 19.4. .,For a list of references to Spartal ,f the Athenian Metic (Cambridge
"Cf. Aristotle on Pisistratus, AthPol 16.2-5, perhaps influenced by the see David Whitehead, The Ideo ogy o
more recent events in 404f403. 1977) 5 n. 6.
"'IG 13 . 127 (2 2 . 1). 4'lXen. 2.3. 15.
66
The Thirty at Athens

ceptions of how Sparta worked, or ought to work. \leasures

had to be considered by the gerousi<1before thcv went to the
Spartan assembly, and in theory the genmsia ~ould veto an
unsuitable resolution of the assembly. But in classical Sparta
the assembly seems to have debated and decided important
4
questions, 49 and Theramenes expected to imitate that Spartan
assembly. The size of the rebuilt meeting place on the Pnyx
suggests that in the beginning he W,l'i succeeding, and we
know he was unhappy when, shortly thereafter, only 3,000 Thrasybulus
were named as full citizens. 30 He protested that it was ridicu-
lous to think that the 3,000 included all the good men, and
co~plained that the Thirty were doing two contradictory
Athenians who did not approve of the far-reaching reforms
thm~s by basing their rule on force (as in Sparta} and then
being instituted by the Thirty had several options: to fight
makmg the government weaker than the governed. Critias
the unwanted government with force, to work with it to
and the _majority of the Athenian oligarchs, however, prob-
ameliorate its extremes as much as possible, or-since either
ably believed (or wanted to believe) that the assembly in
resistance or limited compliance was risky-to do nothing or
Sparta had little independent authority. According to Aris-
to run away. It is no surprise that most Athenians did not
tot~e, the Lacedaemonian assembly had no power except to
oppose the government, however much they disliked it, in
ratify the decisions of the gerousia; and in a passage on the
any active way. But scattered references attest to the flight
b~ance of the Spartan constitution, Aristotle says that the
of an unknown number of refugees to Boeotia, Corinth,
demos was kept content by eligibility for the ephorate-not 1

by membership in the assembly, as he would have said if he
thou~ht ~~ assembly played an important decision-making
role. Cnhas and his followers among the Thirty, then, in-
~ended to keep effective control over the government-and
m fact we hear of only one meeting of the 3,000 during their
rule. 52
•~~wis, Sparta and Persia 36-39. For another view, see Ste. Croix,
Ongms of the Peloponnesian War 127-30. The modern disagreement
probably reflects the ancient.
:AthPol 36.2, probably taken from Xen. 2.3. 19.
Pol. 1272a and 1270b.
"Xen. 2.4.9--10.
68
Argos, Chalcis, Megara, and Oropus.
Enter Thrasybulus. The son of Lycus of Steiria, who is
otherwise unknown, Thrasybulus had been prominent in the
last decade of the Peloponnesian War. He was a trierarch
with the navy at Samos during the revolution in 411, when
he advised the recall of Alcibiades and was elected general
by the fleet. Later he campaigned in the Hellespont with
Alcibiades and Theramenes. He continued to serve Athens
after Alcibiades' second fall from favor, and was a trierarch at
Arginusae along with Theramenes in 406. The bizarre polit-
'Boeotia: Xen. 2-4- 1, Diod. 14.6.3, Justin 5.9.4, Orosius 2.17.8, Plut.
Lysan. 27.2 and Pelop. 6.4, Lys. F 24.1 {Gernet/Bizos!, Dinarch. 1.~s;
Corinth: Aeschin. 2.147-48; Argos: Diod. 14.6.2, Justm 5.9.4, Orosms
2.17.8, Demos. 15.22; Chalcis: Lys. 24.25; Megara: Xen. 2.4.1, Lys.
12.17; Oropus: Lys. 31.9,17. Some of these passages may refer to a later
time.
69
 The Thirty at Athens

ical twists that followed that Pyrrhic victory found Thrasybu- /'-----_)
~,....--).,:-,>
lus and Theramenes once more on the same side. W. James
~lcCoy has argued that Thrasybulus and Theramenes should ~£~.,
£...._
be considered "moderates" of similar political views, political l'Al\~ES \
,---i--\_:'.::>
allies even. 2 But the fact that both men fought for Athens ..) eoecelea
proves little about their politics; more telling is the fact that /'-
.)
in the domestic crises of 411 and 404 the so-called allies -..JJ
ACIIAl\!'.:\E
wound up on opposite sides. On both occasions Theramenes
was willing to_1?.<!!H~!J2~.t~-~~1
a.11,
olig<1rchy,.while ThrasybuTus
•
. fo~nt for democracy. In 4..11 he was a leader of the fleet that
.d"tipudiatedt"he government of the Four Hundred at Athens;
in 404 he was not one of those around Theramenes who
wanted a reformed democracy, and he probably departed for
Thebes soon after the installation of the Thirty. Relations
between Thebes and Sparta had recently deteriorated, and if
Thebes was not ready to back Thrasybulus publicly, Isme-
nias nevertheless aided the Athenian refugee with private
resources. 3
From Thebes a small band of Athenians led by Thrasybu-
lus set out on a desperate attempt to overthrow the oli-
garchy. It was about the beginning of winter 404'403, prob-
ably in January. Some thirty men left Thebes together. Their
number had swelled to about seventy by the time they
reached their first objective, a defensible hill commonly
known as Phyle (near the deme Phyle), on the south slope of
Mount Parnes. 4 The site controls the most direct (if not the
easiest) route into Attica from Boeotia, and it has an excel-
2This is the central thesis of McCoy's dissertation, "Theramenes, Thrasy- o s km.
bulus, and the Athenian Moderates" (Yale 1970). '-=l5C:E3

'Privatis viribus, Justin 5.9.8; cf. Plut. Lysan. 27.4.

'Ancient sources give various numbers for the size ofThrasybulus' group:
"not more than thirty," Nepos Thrasyb. 2.1; fifty, Aristot. Rhet. ad Alex.
8; "few more than fifty," Aristides (Lenz/Behr) 1.254; sixty, Paus. 1.29.3;
seventy, Xcn. 2,4,2, Plut. Mor. 345d (Cratippus, FGrHist 64 T 2), Aris- Map _ Attica. Adapted from J. S. Traill. Courtesy of the American School
tides (Dindorf) 43.556 (vol. 1, p. 822). 3
Aeschines 3. 187-go is often discussed in this connection (e.g., Cloche, of Classical Studies at Athens.
RestDem 13; Hannestad, De 30 Tyranner 136), but wrongly, as Acschines
is discussing not those who first took Phyle but those who were besieged
71

The Thirty at Athens
lent view toward the city--one can se<· the Parthenon, some
se\'enteen kilometers distant. Ew•n without the fort later
constructed at the site, Phyle could probably be held by
several hundred men, though perhaps not by scv<'nty: the
west and southwest sides of the hill are so st<·ep that they
were left unwalled when the fort was built, but the other
sides are more accessihle. ·,
Few of the men INl by Thrasybulus can lw identified.
Only one is certain. According to Demosthenes. Archinus of
Koile was most responsible (after the gods) for the retu~-~f
tfie71emos, and Cratippus said specifically that he was among
the seventy from Phyle." Another of the modPrates associated
with Theramenes in the summer of 404, Anytus, the son of
Anthemion of Euonymon, is known to have ·1)een a general
at Phyle, but the date is unclear and he might have arrived
later.' He had been a general in 409. when he failed to
at Phylc by the Thirty and the LacPdal'tnoni,1ns. The siege took place
several months later (see n. 54).
I follow Armbrustcr"s suggestion (Ober die Hcrrschaft dcr Dreissig" 45
n. 28) that Thrasybulus started with thirty and was joined by about forty
more as he went.
'On the hasis of pottery from the fill along the walls and of the architec-
tural style, Walther Wrede concluded that the fort was built at the end of
the fifth or (more probably) the beginning of the fourth century ("'Phvlc "
AthMitt 49 [1~24] 153-224). Josiah Ober has recently argued that W~ede
wa~ close to nght; Ober believes that PhylC' belongs to a SC'rics of forts
buil~ c .. 390-.34°, perhaps after Sphodrias· raid in 378. Apparentlv a date
earlier than 400 can safely be rult>d out ("Athenian Reactions to \tilitarv
Pressure and the Defcnsc of Attka. 404-322 n.c." [diss. ~tichigan 198~)
3 10, 345, 3f8--49 n. 9). Contemporary authors do not refer to Phyle as a
~rt (e:g., ~en. 2-4-2, a "strong place," chorion ischyron). The earliest to
o so 1s 1?m<lorus(to phrourion ochyron, 14-32. 1}.
. Ther_e 1s no conclusive evidence that Thrasybulus seized this particular
h_ill. His stronghold may have been at the demc of Phyle (but "the deme
Sit: ~oes not offer an~ ccmspicu~usly defensible places" [Ober. per litt.l),
or at another of the hills m the vicinity of the dcme. All in all, the location
and adv~ntages of the fort site lead me to believe that Thrasybulus was
there; hi~ success in defending the hill may have encouraged the later
construction of a fort at the spot.
:ne~os. 24-13s; _Cratippus, FGrHist 64 T 2; cf. Aeschin. 3. 187.
Lys. 13.78; Davies, AthPropFam no. 1324-
72
Thrasybulus
prevent the loss of Pylos to the Lacedaemonians; for his
failure he was subsequently put on trial. It was said that he
escaped by bribing the jury; evidently the tannery and s~oe-
maker' s business he inherited were quite profitable. Aesunus
probably played an important role from the beginnin~, as he
led the procession of the men from Piraeus into the city after
the reconciliation in 403. s Thrasybulus of Kollytos was at
Phyle, though it is uncertain whether he had participated in
the original seizure of the fort. 9 He had probably been a
trierarch at Notion; he had then returned to Athens and
procured Alcihiades' dismissal. Ergocles also returned from
Phyle; again it is unknown whether he was with Thrasybulus
from the beginning. 10
The Thirty responded to the news from Phyle by leading
ou! the 3,000, including t)l~.~~~ By t~~ ~p1;ethese forces
amved, the men at Phyle had been reinforced by several
hundred mercenaries hired by Lysias (if Justin's chronology
can be trusted). It Some of the young 'Athenians boldly at-
tacked as soon as they arrived, but accomplished nothing
and had to withdraw after suffering injuries. The oligarchs
then set out to blockade the hill in order to prevent the
arrival of provisions. But during the night a heavy and unex-
pected snowstorm forced them to relocate their camp. W~en
the snow continued to fall on the following day, the Thirty
led their troops back to Athens. The men from Phyle ha-
~r.fassedtheir withdrawal with considerable success, capturing
many of the camp followers. The rebels had survived their
'Lys. 13.8o-82 .
9 Demos. 24- 134; Davies, AthPropFam no. 7305.
'°Lys. 28.12. . . cl o ·
11Lysias supplied 500 mercenaries, accordmg to Jusbn 5.9.9 an rosms
2.17.9; 300 according to Plut. Mor. 83sf (along wi!h z~ shiel~s and 2,000
drachmas). Plutarch's source may have been Lys1as h1mself, if a papyrus
fragment of a Lysias speech has been correctly restored_ (P • Oxy · i6o6 11.
163- 1 = Lys. F 1 Gernet/Bizos). According to Schol. Anstoph. Plut • 1116,
Lysias7 gave 8oo shields. According to Schol. Aeschin. 3.195, he supplied
500 shields and 300 mercenaries from Aegina.
73

The Thirty at Athens
first test, with the aid of the weather (which mav not have
be_en. entirely unanticipated-Thrasybulus was· probablv
thmkmg ahead when he launched the resistance at the b~-
ginning of winter). 12
_The Thirty now had to make an important decision. Faced
~th armed resistance, should they include more Athenians
m their government, or should they continue with their
plans to rem~del the st ~~e} pn the one \land was Thera-
1
menes clamonng for a broadening of the fraticfiise. 11 Thera-
mene~ ""'.anted a government open to those able to serve the
state with horses and with shields," or, in other words a
go~ernment similar to that of the 5,000 (in practice g,o~o)
which Theramenes had supported in 411, Theramenes could
argue that to include all hoplites in the assembly was simply
to adapt the Spartan model to a larger polis; 9,000 could still
be called homoioi.
On the other hand, the extremists' minds were unchanged
by the new threat posed by Thrasybulus. For many of them,
the rule of the 5,000 had led only to banishment and loss of
property. They no doubt feared a reenactment of the earlier
scenario, in which an oligarchy had given way to a moderate
de~ocra:y, ~hich in turn had become a full democracy
agam, Wlth disastrous consequences. Unwilling to counte-
nance another exile (or worse), the extremists would rather
rely on Lysander for help than lose control of Athenian pub-
"There was more fighting in this first encounter than we would gather
from Xenopho~ (2-4-2-3) or from Diodorus (14.32.2-3). Justin refers to an
asp~rom proel1um (5.9. 10), Orosius to an atrox proelium (2.17. 10) and
while ,.these phrases go too far, they arc partially confirmed bv A'thPol
37.1: :h: army that the Thirty led out having been defeated .. '_,, (kak6s
a11_ochore~antes), which ought to mean more than that it snowed a Jot
D1;torus account s~ems incomplete, as he describes only the first night
a~ makes no m~ntJon of the following day. Xenophon gives the impres-
s10~ that the Thirty were thwarted primarily by the snowstorm. Still the
va~ous accounts are _more complementary than contradictory.
Xenophon ~as give? us what I believe to be an accurate summarv
o(f Therarnenes goals m the speech he puts into Theramenes' mouth
2..3.35-49).
74
Thrasybulus
lie affairs-the result they foresaw if the catalogue of citizens
were expanded. They would rather bring in Spartan troops
(as they had seen done elsewhere) than include more Athe-
nians in their government.
To modern eves such thinking seems treasonous. In terms
of Greek value~, it is understandable. As A. W. H. Adkins
summarizes in his insightful Moral Values and Political Be-
haviour in Ancient Greece: "In the law-courts, in internal
politics and in foreign policy, competitive arete prevails over
co-operative excellences." 14 Arete, that is, in the sense of
Plato's :\1eno: ". . . the arete of a man is to be capable of
taking an active part in the affairs of the polis, and thereby to
help one's friends [philoi] and harm one's opponents [ech-
15
throi], while taking care to suffer no harm oneself." For the
oligarchs of 404, such values dictated that they stay in power.
Men exiled bv the democracy did not feel loyalty to demo-
cratic Athens.· As Thucydides has Alcibiades say in 414: "Love
of country [philopoli] I do not feel when I am wronged, but I
felt it when secure in my rights as a citizen. "
15
We know almost nothing of the power struggle that must
have taken place among the Thirty. Aristotle gives one hint
when he lists demagogy among the oligarchs themselves as
one of the causes for revolutions in oligarchies. His two ex-
amples are the men around Charicles who became powerful
among the Thirty by demogogy and those around Phrynichus
who became powerful among the Four Hundred in the same
way. 17 The passage is compressed and not entirely clear.
What had Phrvnichus done that had led to the overthrow of
the Four Hundred? The answer would seem to be that he,
along with others, refused to involve the 5,000 in the gov-
ernment and preferred to negotiate with Sparta for peace,
even to the point where the oligarchs plotted to admit the
••London 1972, 139.
"Meno 71e.
"'rhuc. 6.92+
"Pol. 13056.
75

The Thirty at Athens
Spa}·ta~s _by t{eachery. 1' It was this plan to hetrav the fort
at Ee~10ma that l~rought down the Four Hundred (though by
that time Phrymchus was dead). If Aristotle's paralk·l is ex-
act, then Cl~aricles opposed Theramenes' dream of moderate
dem~cracy m 404 and preferred to appeal to the Spartans
for aid. In a se~se !t
could be said that this appeal brought
on the revo~ut10n m 403, since the subsequent arrival of
L~c~daemoman troops went far to alienate the Athenian pop-
ulation. \Vhether Therarnenes received much support we do
not know; the ~ources say only that "the Thirty" or "Critias
and the rest of the Thirty" decided that he must be elimi-
n~ted be~ore he succeeded in spoiling their plans. Evidently
his nommees could not or would not help him. Two laws
':ere brought before the boule, the first giving the Thirty
hfe-and-death power over those outside the 3,ooo and the
second_ excluding from the 3,000 anyone who had partici-
pated _m the destruction of the wall at Eetionia or who had
acted m any way against the Four Hundred. 20 The latter law
was clearly aimed at Theramenes. When the laws were
pass~d by the boule, Critias struck Theramenes' name from
the hst of the 3,000, and the Thirty condemned him to death.
Theramenes died well. When Critias announced his fate
he leaped to the altar and asked for justice. The Eleve~
dragged him off in sp!te of his pleas to gods and men. Only
lsocrates stood up to mtervene with a few of his friends but
'"Thuc. 8.90. 1-3. ' than many Athenians were, and he was given the nickname
9
' AthPol 37.1; Xcn. 2.3. 18.
,..l1f!IAthPol37. 1; a somewhat different story is told by Xenophon (2 3 2,.,_56
10 owed
boh Diod 14 4 5- 5.4, Jusm5.9.2,an
h bv· ..... t· d Orosms2.17.7),thoughin
. · · "
t t e pomt 1s to have Theramencs removed from the 3 000 A
to -~enophon, the boule was ready to vote in favor of Thera~e:~r
Cntias removed his name f~om the 3,000 and the boule was frighten~d bv
a group of Y?~ths ar~1ed with daggers into watching passively. This sto •
sou~ds susp1c1ously like one circulated by those bouleutai later, in ord7r
to ndh themselves
f of blame for Theramenes' death · At no oth er Juncture
· d 0 "'
~e er o an uncooperative boule. and I therefore prefer the AthPol to
enop on. The boule passed the second law knowing it was the end for
Theramenes.
d'Athe On the boule I find Paul Cloch"- c,
"Les po uv01rs
· d e Ia b ou I'e
n_es en 411 et en 404 avant J.-C.," REG 3 7 (192 ) 11 _ 2
persuasive than Dorjahn, "Athenian Senate," 57-64. 4 4 4, more
76
Thrasybulus
Theramenes told them to stop. He praised their loyalty and
courage, but said that it would be a great grief for him if he
were the cause of his friends' death. 21 As he was being led
away, he continued to protest his treatment. When Satyrus,
one of the Eleven, told him that he would suffer ifhe did not
keep quiet, Theramenes replied, "And if I do keep quiet,
will I not still suffer'?" A final remark is recorded from his last
moments; when he drank the poisonous hemlock, he threw
out the last drops as if playing kottabos, saying, "Here's to
22
that fine fellow, Critias. "
The memory of these sayings (apocryphal or not) attests to
the popular respect in which Theramenes was held. For
many people he became a hero of resistance to oppression, a
patriot who risked his life by remaining in Athens to do what
he could to moderate the oligarchy. Theramenes must have
known that he faced a more serious challenge in 404 than in
411. He might have hoped that Spartan politics would work
to his advantage. If opposition to Lysander had surfaced, as
it well might have, and if the Thirty had learned that they
could not rely on the Spartans for a garrison, the oligarchs
might have been compelled to increase the number of citi-
zens in the government, just as Theramenes wished. But by
the time Lysander found opposition in Sparta, it was too lat~
for Theramenes. As in the peace negotiations, Theramenes
hopes were not fulfilled, yet he again deserves credit for
what he tried to do. Theramenes was more loyal to his city
kothornos (an actor's boot that fitted either foot) by others
' whose primary object of loyalty was a group smaller than the
d'
b:~ city.z;)
The oligarchs had not forgotten Theramenes' complaint
that they were basing their rule on force, although the ruled
"Plut. Mor. 836f. Diod. 1 . 5. 1-3 has "Socrates" instead of"Isoerates," but
4 st
is surely wrong since none of Socrates' apologists mentions the ory.
""Xen. 2.3.56. h d h'15 sonal
23Xen. 2.3.30. I do not wish to deny that Theramenes a per
interests in mind as well.
77
 Thrasybulus
The Thirty at Athens
Thirty began to execute prominent men in much greater
were stronger than the rulers. Their solution was to weaken
numbers. The sources generally agree that they killed about
their subjects rather than to increase their own numbers.
1,500 Athenians, and even if the number is exaggerated and
The excluded were disarmed by a strategem reminiscent of
includes all who died in 404'1403because of the oligarchy, the30
the tyrant Pisistratus. After summoning the 3,000 to appear
Thirty must bear the responsibility for a great many deaths.
in full armor in the agora, and the excluded at other speci-
How manv were killed at this point we cannot know; the
fied locations, the Thirty ordered the people to leave their
execution; probably escalated along with the civil war. .
weapons, which were then collected and stored on the
Onlv a handful of victims are known by name. A certam
Acropolis. 24 (This disarmament doubtless contributed to the
Antipl~on was probably already dead, since he died at least
image of the Thirty as "tyrants.") 31
five months before the fall of the Thirty. It may have been
The Thirty may also have sent some of the excluded
about this time that Alcibiades died (the date and circum-
to serve in Lysander's army. In a papyrus fragment of a
stances of his death are mysterious; according to one tradi-
Lysianic speech, the speaker (Eryximachus) asserts that
tion, he died in Persia at the instigation of the Thirty, who
although he remained in the city <luring the rule of tire 32
feared him as a potential opposition leader). Another former
Thirty, he did not serve in the boule or hold office or bring
general, Leon of Salamis, died in Athens. He had gi~en only
an accusation against anyone or enroll anyone on "the cata-
reluctant support to the Four Hundred and had aided the
logue of those with Lysander. "25 This catalogue is evidently
Samian democrats in their struggle against the oligarchs in
the same as that called "the catalogue of the Athenians" or
1. A fourth victim was N iceratus, son of th~ famous_N icias
"the with-Lysander catalogue. "2u The papyrus fragment indi- 41 33
who died in Sicilv.:J4Niceratus had been a tnerarch m 409·
cates that the old interpretation of this catalogue as a black-
Little else is kno~n of him. His uncle Eucrates had appar-
list drawn up in conjunction with Lysan<ler is wrong; rather
20 1
those on the list were with Lysander himself, presumably as "'More than 1,500, Acschin. 3.235; 1,500, AthPol 35.~, ~soc. 7.67'. • !;
1,4oo, Diog. Lacrt. i · 5; 1,300, Seneca De tranq. amm_t 5. 1. Lys1as s~d
soldiers. 27 The motive for sending troops away from Athens 2,500, according to Schol. Aeschin. 1.39. See Karl Juhus Beloch, Gne-
might have been political, as when the restored democracy chische Gescliiclite 2 (Berlin 1912-27) 3· 1. i n. 2. .
later sent 300 of the Thirty's cavalry to serve under Thibron "Xen. . . ; Plut. Mor. 833a ( = FGrHist 115 F 120). Plutarch me_ntJons
2 3 40
in Asia Minor, hoping they would die abroad. 211 a Lvsianic speech composed on behalf of the daughter of_this Antiphon.
Fo~r papyrns fragments have been identified as part of this speec~, fror;i
Then Aristotle says that "in other respects thev [the Thir- which we learn that one Epistratus pretended to own a farm of Anbph_ons
ty] increased considerably in cruelty and wicked~ess." 29 The for five months after his death, until it was finally confiscated by the Thirty.
Sec H. Gerstinger, H. Oellacher, and K. Vogel, Mitteilungen aus der
Papynmammlung der Osterreichischen Nationalbibliothek in_Wien (Pa-
uxen. 2.3.20; AthP~l 3~.2; Justin 5.9. 11. I follow James W. Halpom, 1
pyrus Erzherzog Rainer), n.s. 1 (Vienna 1932) 97-104 and 3 (Vienna 939)
who suggested corruption m the phrase epi ta hopla, and would substitute
a word such as hypolipesthai for epi ("A Note on Xenophon Historia 2 1
~e various traditions can be found in Diod. 14. 11.1-4; Justin 5.8.1 - 4;
Graeca Il.3.20," RhM 112 [1g6g] 13-16).
Orosius 2.17.6; Plut. Alcib. 37-39; Nepos Alcib. 10. 1
"'C. H. Roberts, Catalogue of the Greek and Latin Papyri in the John "'Xen. 2.3.39, Mem. 4-4-3; PlatoApol. 32c,--d,Epist. 7.324c; Andoc. ·94·
Rylands Library 3 (Manchester 1938) no. 48g II. 116-18. For the identification of Leon \\<ith the general, see W. James McCoy,
16
Lys. 25. 16; Isoc. 18. 16 and 21.2.
"Roberts, Catalogue 3 . 109. 'The Identity of Leon," AJP g6 (1975) 187--99. .
"'Xen. 2.3.39; Diod. 14.5.5; Lys. 18.6, 19.47; Plut. Mor. 998b; Davies,
28Xen. 3.1.4.
Z>AthPol37.2. AthPropFam 405-6.
79
78
 The Thirty at Athens
ently been one of the generals who had opposed the peace in
the spring of 404. Finally, at the urging of Aristo<lemus of
Bate, a former hellenotamias who had been exiled under the
democracy, the Thirty also condemned Lycurgus the son of
Lycomedes of Bouta<lai. Lycurgus was well esteemed by the
people,"' and he might have been involved in an antioligarchic
movement at Eleusis, as he was a member of the Eteobout-
adid family, which supplied priests for the Eleusinian mvs-
teries (see below on the Eleusis affair). · the Thirtv arrested them because they were helping the men
Aristotle
17
gives two motives for the executions: fear and
greed. Xenophon, followed by Diodorns, insists on greed as
1
the primary motive. " Their emphasis on greed is exaggerated.
Of the victims mentioned above, we know that one of Anti-
phon's farms was not confiscated for five months, 19 and a
speech of Lysias reveals that Niceratus' property was not
confiscated at all: "The estate of Nicias was expected to be
not less than a hundred talents, most of it in his house; but
when Niceratus was dying, he said that he was not leaving
any silver or gold, and the property that he left to his son is
worth no more than fourteen talents. "40 Nor must we believe
that greed and only greed led the Thirty to act against the
metics. Lysias' poignant account has made the execution of
certain metics one of the best-known atrocities committed by
the Thirty. The orator describes a meeting at which Theognis
and Peison suggested that they could make money by exe-
cuting wealthy metics who were opposed to the government. 41
The Thirty then decided to seize ten metics (the number has
"Plut. Mor. 84ia-b. I follow Davies· interpretation of the passage (Ath-
PropFam 349-50).
16
He received public honors and burial in the Kcramcikos, according to
Plut. Mor. 843d and 852a.
"'AthPal 35.4.
"Xen. 2.3.21, 4.21; Diod. 14.2.1, 4.4, 5.5.
J(ISeen. 31.
"'Lys. 19.47.
1
12
' Lys. -6ff;_cf.Xen. ~-3.21-~2, 40; Diod. 14.5.6. Xenophon and Diod-
orus also describe the oltgarchs motive as greed.
Bo
Thrasybulus
been exaggerated to thirty in Xenophon and sixty in Dio~-
orus). But Lysias, and the jurors he addressed, pr~bably_ did
not know what happened at this meeting of the Thirty, smce
it was presumably not a public meeting. ~is entir~ story
about the government's eagerness for funds 1s most hkel~ a
fabrication. Even he admits that two of the chosen metics
were poor, and that they all opposed the oligarchy. Perhaps
at Phy le.· Lysias and his brother Polemarchus o":11ed shield!
factorv from which the Thirty confiscated 700 shields. Other
shields' might already have been smuggled out to Phyle; ~y-
sias is known to have helped Thrasybulus with mercenanes,
money and at least 200 shields, probably before even the
first c~unterattack on Phyle made by the Thirty. Perhaps
Lysias' actions (traitorous, from the oligarchs' point of view)
had been discovered. There are certainly grounds here for
skepticism about Lysias' own tale. We should ~eep in mind
the Homeric line applied by Dionysius of Hahcarnassus to
Lysias: "He spoke many falsehoods and made them sound
true." 43 •
Democratic courts were also criticized for condemning
wealthy citizens in order to confiscate their property•« No
doubt the Thirtv needed money (as the democracy did), and
no doubt they ·sometimes confiscated the property ~f ~eh
men (as the democracy did), but to view all their co~v1ctlons
and executions as stemming from personal greed 1s to be
overly gullible. Our sources present a one-sided picture.
Lysias is probably correct, however, when he says th_atthe
Athenians were incensed against the Thirty for executmg ~o
many not for crimes, but for motives of faction. 45 In two dif-
ferent speeches, Demosthenes notes (rather curiously) that
the Thirty did not arrest men at home, but in the agora; no
.,Lys. 12. 19.
"Odyssey 19.203, quoted in Lys. 18. .
.. Lys. 19.11, 27.1, 30.22; Aristoph. Eqmtes 1358-61.
45
Kata stasin, Lys. 30. 13.
 The Thirty at Athens
Thrasybulus
man who could stay at home was unable to save his life. 46
that Socrates' habit of asking difficult questions and his
Th~se comrne~ts hint that only men who spoke out publicly
prickly personality had run him afoul of the oligarchs. ~s it
agam~t the Thirty were arrested. From the democratic per-
true that Socrates said of Critias that he had the feelmgs
spective, opposition to the Thirty was no crime. The Thirty
could reasonably have felt otherwise. of a pig, since he could no more keep away from his lover,
Euthvdemus, than pigs could keep from rubbing themselves
. It w~ not mindless terror, then, t~at led }he oligarchs to
again~t rocks?',(] If so, it is not hard to understand Criti~s·
kill their opponents, but ruthless deferminalion. Although
reaction. It seems reasonable to believe that Socrates dis-
apprehensive about being overthrown, the Thirtv were not
agreed with the Thirty to a certain extent. What is reve~ling
so worried about Thrasybulus that they hesitated to continue
is how this disagreement comes out in his Apology, as wntten
with their plans to remodel the Athenian polis. At about this
by Plato. Socrates \i.:as on trial during the restored democ-
~ime they banned the excluded from living in the eity, turn-
racy and it would have been to his advantage to stress his
~ng them into perioikoi. The decree was put at least partially
diffe,rences with the Thirty. He (or Plato) emphasizes that he
mto effect: lsocrates says that 5,000 Athenians were com-
did not carry out the Thirty's order to arrest a prominent
pelled to move to Piraeus, and Diodorus says that over half
the Athenians fled. ·17 citizen, Leon of Salamis. But he did not try to prevent
others from arresting Leon, nor did he endeavor to warn
The confident attitude of the Thirty was based largely on
Leon himself. He went home. 51
the 3,000. After the oligarchic revolution had failed, the
Socrates must have been unusual in opposing the govern-
3,000 tried to portray themselves as unwilling followers of
ment even this much. Those who were not among the 3,000
the "Thirty Tyrants," but there is little reason to think there
acquiesced for the most part, or ran away. Philon, who was
was any serious division among the 3,000 as regards the
46 banned from the city by the Thirty along with the rest of the
rebels at Phyle. The homoioi stood firm against the ex-
cluded. excluded, lived for a while in the country, then moved
across the border to Oropos, where he remained until the
Socrates is an interesting illustration of the limits of oppo-
civil war was over. 52 Of course the Athenians could not know
sition from the 3,000. Xenophon relates that Socrates had a
that Thrasybulus would be successful; kata to anthropinon,
falling out with Critias (his former student), and that the
most did nothing.
Thirty passed a law forbidding the teaching of the art of
i In/ fact Thrasybulus had considerable difficulty finding
words. The statute was aimed, according to Xenophon, at
49
Socrates. This might be invented apology, but it is possible
m'en/ daring enough to join his cause. By the end of April
there were 700 men at Phyle. sa Only a few more than 100
'"Demos. 22.52, 24.164. were Athenians. 54 Several hundred were mercenaries hired by
"lsoc. 7.67; Diod. 14.5. 7. Lysias from Aegina, probably 300 in all, and another 300
~loche has ~gued persuasively that the 3,000 were essentially agreed
until th~ Ele.?s1s affai~. S~e his RestDem, passim, and his summary of his "'Xen. Mem. 1.2.30.
conc,!usions, Les Tro1s-m11leet la restauration democratique a Athenes en "Apol. 3zc-d.
403,_ REG 9 (1916? 14-28. I would prefer to see the arrival of the foreign
52
2 Lys. 31.8-g.
~~Ison as the maJor catalyst of discontent, however, not the Eleusis "'Xen. 2.4.5. . b h'
i:l.lla.lr. Sl'fbe Athenians were later honored by a decree described Y Aesc 1-
'"Mem. 1.2.31. nes (3 . 1 87-go). Most scholars have assum~d that. A~sch!nes _was re~er~
ring to the Athenians who took Phyle. But his descnphon 1s qmte precise,

83
 The Thirty at Athens
were foreigners. In other words, after three months Athe-
nians made up a relatively small percentage of Thrasybulus'
forces. Part of an inscription honoring these Athenians has
been found. 5.3 Only one of twenty-two men whose demotics
are preserved came from a citv deme, while at least five men
were from the small deme of Phvle. Granted that the size of
the sample is not very large, and that at the end of the fifth
century a demotic was no longer a certain indication of place
of residence, one of twenty-two remains a striking statistic.
It suggests that Thrasybulus' rebellion did not have much
effect on the city, at least initially, and drew little or no
support from the city dwellers sent out to the country.
The one group that had begun to turn against the oli-
garchy in considerable numbers was the metics. Little
wonder that in the autumn of 403 Thrasybulus proposed
giving citizenship to all who came back from Piraeus; 56 the
overwhelming majority of his troops at Phyle were foreign.
While the Thirty seem not to have been greatly worried
by Thrasybulus at first, they did respond to the increased
opposition. Probably at the Thirty's request, the Lacedae-
monians passed decrees that declared that the fugitives
should be surrendered to the Thirty from all over Greece,
he speaks of a provision of Archinus' decree which required the boule to
draw up a list, not of those who first took Phyle, but of those "who were
besieged at Phyle, when the Thirty and the Laeedaemonians attacked
those who had taken Phyle." This description can only refer to the second
force sent out by the Thirty (the first did not include any Lacedaemonians
and went h~me after one night), which was surprised near Acharnae by
Thrasybulus 700. Of those 700, rather more than 100 were Athenians,
since Aeschines says 1,000 drachmas divided among them gave each man
less than 10 drachmas. For the 300 mercenaries, seen. 11. The remaining
300 must have been foreigners.
"'A. E. Raubitschek, "The Heroes of Phylc," Hesperia 10 (1941) 285-87,
where Raubitschek identifies the inscription with the decree of Archinus
described by Aeschines. Raubitschek's restoration has at most fifty-eight
names above the decree; these were presumably the Athenians among the
seventy who took Phyle. There was probably another list below the decree
with
56
the names of the Athenians who joined them there.
AthPol 40.2.
Thrasybulus
and that anyone who attempted to prevent the~: extradi_ti_on
should be subject to a heavy fine of five talents. ' Most cities
complied· Argos and Thebes did not. 58 The Argives bluntly
told the Spartan ambassadors that they would be considered
enemies if they were not gone by sunset. The Th~bans
issued decrees of their own, saying that anyone who did not
help an Athenian exile under arrest would be fined one talent,
that every house and city in Boeotia would be open to Athe-
nians in need, and that Thebans would neither hear nor ~ee
anyone carrying arms through Boeotia against the Atheman
oligarchy.
The oligarchs in Athens must have known that Thrasybu-
lus was receiving help from Thebes, and they could ?ot
foresee how far Theban intervention would go. Best to Im~
up all the assistance they could in case of a Theban_ att_ack;if
Inscriptiones Graecae 2 2 • 16, an alliance with Eretna, 1s co~-
rectly redated from 394"393 to 404"403, it ~elongs to t~s
period and can be interpreted as directed agamst Thebes.
The government at Athens also made some attempt to
anticipate Thrasybulus' next moves. By means of a bloody
57
Dinarch. 1.2s; Diod. 14.6. 1; Justin 5.9.4; Lys. 12•95, 97; Orosius
2.17.8; Plut. Lysan. 27.2. p l 6 .
56
Diod. 14.6.2, 32. 1; Justin 5.9.4-5; Plut. Lysan. 27.2-4, e op. .4,
Dinarch. 1.25; Demos. 15.22, dated to this occasion ~y Armbruster,
"Uber die Herrschaft der Drcissig zu Athen 404'3 v. Chr. 36.
"'Peter Krentz, "Athens' Alliance with Ere~;ia," AJP 100 (1979) 3~4d·
Objections are raised by Denis Knoepfler, Sur une clause du traite e
394 avant J.C. entre Athencs et Eretrie," AJP 101 (1g8o)_46z-63 n. 2. M~
argument for redating the decree is admittedly speculativ~, but I canno
agree with Knoepfler that the grave stele of Dexileus (IG 2 .6217; Mar]cus
N Tod A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions 2 [Oxford 1948. no.
1~5) pr~ves that the battle of Corinth was fought ?Uring _the;rc~on1hip 0;
Eubulides (394'393), rather than during the archonship O Dij. ttu
(3gsf 394), as Diodorus has it (14.82. 1-83. 1). De:°1e~s migh~ have ie 111 ~
later skirmish. Furthermore, I continue to be dissatisfied with tt hf th
esis that a decree that is said to have been passed by th e b I~ e tlias
altema'tive that in 394'393 the Athenians (after the obgarch~f te
actuallv passed by both the boule and the assembly, ~or can I e ieve_ e
permitted 'the boule to make alliances on its own (althou od t ey ;)
~~
have allowed the boule to vote honorary decrees, such as T no. 1 ·
85

The Thirty at Athens
takeover, the Thirty secured control of Eleusis and Salamis,
both potential (if not already actual) centers of opposition. 60
Eleusis in particular was a site with great advantages: it had
a harbor, it was fortified, and it contained considerable tem-
ple treasures that could be used in an emergency. According
to Xenophon, the Thirty wanted to have a place of refuge,
but Thrasybulus could also have had his eve on Eleusis as a
possible second focal point of resistance. It was dangero~s for
the Thirty to leave any fortified place unguarded, and they
may have secured Eleusis solely as a precautionary measure,
or there may already have been some antioligarchic senti-
ment present. Diodorus specifies that the Thirt~ accused the
Eleusinians and the Salaminians of siding with the exiles (no
charge is mentioned in Xenophon). Is it significant that a
priest of the mysteries, Lycurgus, was killed bv the Thirtv
and that a herald of the mysteries, Cleocritus,· appeared i~
the rebel army'?61 Some 300 men were arrested and executed
after condemnation by a single vote of the 3,000 (a fact that
further suggests the serio~~!}ess of the charge). 62
Another idea was to eirfite Thrasybulus to join the oli-
garchy. Since the number of exiles at Phvle was still rela-
tively small, the loss of their leader could have ended the
entire effort. In March or April ambassadors were sent to tell
Thrasybulus that he could have Theramenes' place among
the Thirty and that he could bring back anv ten exiles he
chose. 63 They must also have told Thrasybul~s how hopeless
'"Diod. 14.32.4; Xen. z.4.8-10; Lys. 12.52, 13.44. Lys. 12.40 claims that
the Thirty dismantled the forts around Attica, but no such destructions are
attested in the archaeologicaJ evidence.
1
• Xen. z.4.zo.
02
Both Xenophon and Diodorus exaggerate in saying that "all" the inhab-
itants were killed, since Lysias' 300 is surely the highest possible number.
See Hannestad, De 30 Tyranner 140-41, against Cloche, RestDem 40.
From the terms of the reconciliation agreement (AthPol 39.3), it is obvious
that some Eleusinians survived.
""Diod. 14.32.5; Justin 5.9.13; Orosius z. 17.11.
86
Thrasybulus
his position was. But Thrasybulus refused with heroic-
sounding words to the effect that he would not end tl~e ";ar
until all the exiles returned and the ancestral constitut10n
(patrios politeia) was restored. Actually he ha~ little choice,
for what guarantee did he have that the Thirty would not
dispose of him as they had Theramenes? ,
One would like to know more about the Thirty s plans
between January and April-why had they not attacked Phyle
again? Perhaps they had been hoping that Thrasybulus
would not have the money or the supplies to last through the
winter. Whatever they had been thinking, they must now
have learned from the ambassadors who returned with
Thrasybulus' negative response that the rebels had 700 men.
Most were foreigners, but the Thirty were alarmed. They
decided to send to Sparta for help. Aeschines and Aristoteles
persuaded Lysander to support their request for a garrison,
which they promised to pay for themselves. Lysander was
able, without any known difficulty, to have 700 hoplites sent
with Callibius as harmost. 64 When the garrison arrived, it oc-
cupied the Acropolis,&.,and the final period of the Thirty's rule
began.
The government now needed money to pay for the garri-
son. The dockyards, which Isocrates claims had cost 1,000
talents, were sold as scrap for 3 talents. 66 The oligarchs also
turned to "borrowing" temple properties, as the wartime
democracy had done. On the fragmentary record of pay-
ments made by the treasurers of Athena and the Other Gods
in 404"403 there are references to two gold-plated Nikai,
which were presumably melted down for coinage (the equiv-
..AthPol 37.2; Diod. 14.4.3-4; Xen. 2.3.13-14; Justin 5.8. 11; Orosius
2.17.5. These hoplites were presumably not first-class troops (J. K. Ander-
son, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon [Berkeley 1970]
66).
"'AthPol 37.z; Lys. 12.94, 13.46. . .
"'Lys. 12.99, 13.46; Isoc. 7.66. The date of the saJe is uncertam; 1t could
have happened earlier.
 The Thirty at Athens

alent ?f 36 to 48 silver talents), and to other coins that had

been m the treasury of the Other Gods. "7
In April 403, the odds were heavily against Thrasvbulus
after a garrison ~rrived from Lacedaemon. The best the reb-
el~ could hope for at this point was that the character of the
0~1garchy_~ow being revealed would encourage more Athe- 5
mans to JOm the resistance movement, or that the Spartans
would change their policy.
•7Krentz, "SEC XXI,80 and the Ruic of the Thirtv" 61-63 wh
cepted too eas'I1 t t fr, • ,,
I .
ere ac-
Civil War
f, . . Y a s a cmcnt o •· erguson' s that the Thirtv arc not blamed
or desp01lmg the temples. Sec contra Lvs. , 12.99 a,1d I.·SOC.. 7. 66 .

Soon after the garrison arrived, it was sent out with two
tribal divisions of cavalry to prevent the men of Phyle from
securing provisions. A direct assault on the hill itself had
failed earlier, even when the defenders were fewer; the
Thirty were no doubt confident that the new troops, with
the aid of the cavalry, would keep the rebels penned up and
hungry. They could have sent out the entire 3,000 but did
not, perhaps because it would have been too expensive to do
so.
The leaders of the force were also confident--overconfi-
dent, in the event, for one night, after they had established
their camp in the deme of Acharnae, about fifteen stades
from Phyle, they were surprised by Thrasybulus' 700 and
suffer~d heavy casualties. 1 Thrasybulus led his men out at
'Xen. 2-4-4-7; Diod. 14.32.~33.1. I agree with Cloche that Xenophon
and Diodorus are here describing the same event (RestDem 25-26); for an-
other view see Ursula Hackl, "Die oligarchische Bewegung in Athen am
Ausgang des 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr." (diss. Munich 1g6o) ug-20. Hackl
exaggerates the discrepancies between the two accounts. Diodorus, for
example, says that Thrasybulus headed for Piraeus immediately (euthys)
after the battle, while Xenophon says the exiles returned to Phyle and
went to Piraeus four days later. Is this really a disagreement, or could
euthys encompass four days in contrast to the four months Thrasybulus
had been at Phyle? Xenophon says the troops from the city pitched their
camp fifteen stades from Phyle, while Diodorus says the camp was near
Achamae, which is forty stades distant. But might not Diodorus have
88
89

The Thirty at Athens
night and waited until just before dawn, when the grooms
were busy taking care of the horses and some of the soldiers
were still sleeping, while others were away from their weap-
ons. Then, at a run, the rebels attacked, routed their ene-
mies, and chased them for six or seven stades, killing 120 of
the Lacedaemonians and 3 of the cavalry, including a certain
Nicostratus. After setting up a trophy and collecting the
weapons and provisions brought by the oligarchs, thev re-
turned to Phyle. By the time cavalry reinforcements a~ived
from the city, the rebels were nowhere to be seen.
~hrasybul~s and his colleagues considered their next step.
This latest victory was impressive, and within a few davs
their forces had grown by 300. But if they had won the
battle, they had by no means won the war. Thev were still
heavily outnumbered, and the deaths of 120 Lacedaemo-
nians were not likely to encourage the Spartans to withdraw
from Athenian affairs. Characteristically the rebels decided
on a bold step: they would move from Phyle to the bustling
center of Athenian commercial activity, the harbor town,
Piraeus. There they would find the hill of M unichia, which
had been fortified by the tyrant Hippias, and above all they
would become more visible. If they could take Piraeus, they
could expect many more metics and Athenians to join their
side. 2
Again the rebels moved by night. Leaving a force at Phyle
(where he might be forced to return if things went badly),
Thrasybulus led his troops south, around Athens, down to
Piraeus, and up onto the hill of Munichia. He left Phyle with
meant the dcmc of Achamac, which extended all the wav to ~fount
Parnes? When Diodorus says the camp was in the open count;v (en hypai-
th~oi!:.is h~-~-ontr~dicting_Xenophon, who says it was in a busl;y place (en
chono1 laswt),or 1s he thinking of an overgrown field in comparison to a
heavy forest or a rugged mountain? As Cloche pointed out it is difficult to
believe that Thrasybulus could have managed two surpris~ attacks in five
days.
'Cloche, RestDem 48.
90
Civil War
ooo men and reached ~1unichia with 1,200; the move was
1 1
already paying dividends.
The Thirty attacked as soon as they learn<:d what had
happened, probably the next day, with all their forces \the
Lacedaemonian troops, the hoplites, and the cavalry-the
4
last probably fought as hoplites in this battle). When they
reached the Hippodamian agora, they stopped ~nd drew up
in battle formation. Their line filled the width of the road up
to the sanctuaries of ~tunichian Artemis and of Bendis, and
was fiftv men deep. They then began to ascend the hill. At
the top, Thrasybulus drew up his hoplites ten deep, in order
to equal the width of the enemy line. He also had 500 or so
light-armed troops, javelin throwers, and stone throwers,
who were numerous because they came from the nearby
area. 5 The democrats had a better position since the oligarchs
had to advance uphill. Thrasybulus planned to wait until the
opponents were well up on the hill, until his own light-
armed troops could be most effective. Victory depended on
the ability of those light-armed troops to compensate for a
5-to-1 disadvantage in hoplites.
The plan worked as well as Thrasybulus could have hoped.
The fight was long and hard, but finally Critias fell, and the
troops of the Thirty retreated to level ground. At first Thrasy-
bulus hesitated to follow, but when additional men joined
his forces, he attacked suddenly and defeated the oligarchs
'This is an easy reconciliation of Xenophon, who says that Thrasybulus
led 1,000 men out of Phyk (2.4. 10), with Diodorus, who says Thrasybu!us
led 1,200 exiles (14.33.1). Another possibility is that 200 were left behmd
at Phyle as a guard (Diodorus mentions a hikane phyla~e; Xenophon says
nothing of any troops left at Phyle) and 1,000 went to Piraeus. .
'On the battle of \lunichia, see Xen. 2-4- 10-22; Diod. 14.33.2-4; JuShn
5.9.14-10.3; Orosius 2.17.11-12; AthPol 38.1; Nepos _Thrasyb._2.5-7;
Cloche's detailed analvsis in RestDem 47-6o. Cloche reJected Diodorus
two phases of the battle on the weak grounds that if the democrats had
had the superiority shown in the second phase, they would not have
hesitated to attack the city walls of Athens.
'Xen. 2.4.12.
91
 The Thirty at Athens
soundly, becoming master of Piraeus. In addition to Critias
about seventy others died, including another member of th;
6
T~irty, Hippomachus, and one of the Ten in Piraeus, Char-
m1des. The losses on the democratic sidt• are unknown- thev
were surely much smaller. ' ·
The next day, while the Thirty met in the Council Cham-
ber, the 3,000 gathered here and there and discussed what
should be done. Some wanted to depose the Thirty some
insisted that they should not yield to the men in Piraeus.
The final decision was to send the Thirty to Eleusis and to
elect ten men, one from each tribe, to rule the citv.7 There
were ~ood reas~ns for changing the government. The Thirty
had faded, particularly as military leaders. (Is it significant
that the new board had as many members as the democratic
board. of ?enerals ?) The Thirty could also serve a purpose at
Eleusis, m the westernmost part of Attica, the part nearest
to Sparta. There they could make early connections with the
Spartan army the oli~ar~hs hoped would soon be on the way.
Exactly what the Thirty s position was in Eleusis is unclear-
the fact that they could later send embassies suggests bu;
does not prove they were the ruling bodv.
'":'e know the names of only four m~mbers of the Ten:
Phe1don, Epichares of Lamptra, Hippocles, and Rhinon the
son of ~haricles of Paiania. 8 Of Hippocles we hear nothing
else. Ep1chares was probably not the man who served on the
?oule under the Thirty, since Andocides does not specifically
mclude. membership in the Ten among his charges against
9
that Ep1ch_ares. Rhmon received money from the treasurers
of Athena m 417/416, but is otherwise unknown before .
403 10
:so Xen. 2.4. 19. Justin 5.9.15 has Hippolochus."
0
,xe~. 2+23; AthPol 38.1; Diod. 14.33.5; Justin 5 . io. -s; Lys. . _ .
Lys. 12.55; Isoc. 18.6. 4 12 54 55
"Andoc. 1.95.
'~R~sscll Meiggs and David Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical ln-
scnpt1ons to the End of the Fifth Century B .C. (Oxford =) II
26-27. 19= no. 77 .
92
Civil War
Pheidon had been a member of the Thirty; other than that
his past is unknown. Since he remained in the city w?en the
Thirty went to Eleusis, he is sometimes seen as a 'Thera-
menist," or moderate, but his subsequent actions do not
make him appear at all well disposed toward the democrats.
Xenophon does not mention any instructions or mandate
for the Ten. Justin says only that they were elected to gov-
ern the state. But Diodorus and Aristotle both say that the
Ten were elected to put an end to the fighting, and Lysias
seems to confirm their version when he says that those most
hostile to the Thirtv were chosen as members of the Ten.
Nevertheless, it is· difficult to believe that the Ten were
given such a mandate to end the war. Something is wro~g
with the picture presented by Lysias, Aristotle, and D10-
dorus:1 if the Ten were in fact opposed to the extremists
among the Thirty, why did they fail to negotiate? Some
scholars have therefore invented negotiations, for which
there is no evidence. n The alternative is preferable; since
there were no negotiations, we should assume that the Ten
were never inclined or instructed to negotiate. 12 One of the
Thirty, Pheidon, was even elected to the new board, a fact
that supports the suggestion that there was no weakening of
will within the city.
The Ten did not make significant changes in the adminis-
tration. Lysimachus continued as hipparch, 13 and Pythodorus
evidently remained eponymous archon, since Aristotle says
the democracy was restored during his archonship. 14 Alexan-
der Fuks hypothesized that the Ten enlarged the citizen
body to include all who could afford hoplite armor, but no
evidence supports this theory. 15 On the contrary, Xenophon
I .,
"Alexander Fuks, "Notes on the J1ule of the Ten at Athens in 403 B.C .•
Mnemosyne, 4th ser., 6 (1953) 205-7.
12
Cloche, RestDem 71-76.
nxen. 2.4.26.
"AthPol 41. 1.
0
"Fuks, Notes on the Ruic of the Ten" 202-5.
93
 The Thirty at Athens
says an embassy was sent to Sparta bv those "in the cata-
logue," that is, the 3,000. 16 •
The Ten continued the policy of the Thirty by taking a
h~sh line on dissidents both within and without. They
qmckly demonstrated their firm grip on affairs by executing
Demaretus, a prominent citizen. 1' The external threat was
more serious, as Thrasybulus' forces continued to grow in
16
Piraeus. His ragtag troops made themselves shields of wood
or wickerwork, which they painted white. Promises were
given that everyone who fought would receive isoteleia with
the Athenians, and thereafter many hoplites and many un-
armed joined the exiles, including some 900 foreigners. 19
Thrasybulus' men were certainly "heterogeneous. "20 He could
even count about seventy cavalry on his side. With these
troops the men of Piraeus controlled the countrvside for the
most part. The conversation that Xenophon r~cord~ in his
Menwrabilia between Socrates and Aristarchus must have
taken place (dramatically, if not historically) at this time.
Aristarchus complained that he could not support all his de-
pendents because, with the enemy controlling rural Attica,
he could get no produce from his farm. 21
The men of the city counterattacked as best they could,
which under the circumstances meant that cavalry detach-
ments roamed the countryside and killed any stragglers they
found. At least one of their own, Callistratus, was killed in
22
the process. The cavalry also guarded the walls day and
night, afraid that the exiles might attack the city proper, as
16
Xen. 2-4-28.
7
AthPol 38.2.
' der's Athenian policy would not have been pleasing to
"Xen. 2.4.25; Oiod. 14.33.4; AthPol 38.3.
'"Se~ Peter Krentz, "Foreigners against the Thirty: IG 22 .10 Again,"
Phoenix 34 (1g8o) 305-tbere were about 1,200 foreigners at Piraeus and
300 had been at Phyle.
"'Pantodapoi, Xen. 2. 4 .25.
"Mem. 2.7.2.
22
Xen. 2.4.27.
94
Civil War
they soon did. z:i When the democrats began to bring machines
up against the city walls, an embassy was dispatched to Lac-
edaemon with representatives (including Pheidon) from the
3,000 in the city and others from the Thirty at Eleusis. 24
The ambassadors attempted to persuade the Spartans to
send out an army, on the grounds that the derrwswas revolt-
ing against Sparta and that Athens might fall under Boeotian
control. These were pmverful arguments. The exiles were
rebelling against a government more or less imposed by
Sparta, and the Thebans had veiled their support of the
rebels thinly, if at all. Spartans must have remembered their
debates of a year earlier, when they had decided not to
destroy Athens in order to use it as a check against Thebes.
No doubt Pheidon and his colleagues reminded the Spartans
that their prestige would suffer if the garrison sent to Athens
were driven out by a motley army of exiles, and the Athe-
nians surely emphasized again that they 'were trying to
model their state on Sparta, and that only with the oligarchs
in control could the Lacedaemonians count on a friendly
Athens.
The Spartans responded by sending out Lysander as har-
most with 100 talents to pay mercenary troops, and his
brother Libys as navarch with forty ships to blockade Pi-
raeus. 25 Lysias hints that the Spartans offered a specious reli-
gious excuse for not sending out a regular army. A campaign
would have been expensive, and would have aroused the
suspicions and hostility of the other Greeks. But internal
politics at Sparta probably played the decisive role. Lysan-
all Spartans. Many men (such as the ephors of 4osf404)
must have disapproved of his actions in breaking the peace
' treaty and installing the Thirty. Others, in particular the
"'Xen. 2-4-27; Diod. 14.33.4; Isoc. 16.13, 18.49.
"Xen. 2-4-28; Lys. 12.58-59.
"'Xen. 2-4-28; Diod. 14.33.s; Lys. 12.59--00; Plut. Lysan. 21.2.
95
 The Thirty at Athens
kings, were jealous of Lysander personally, 2" and questioned
whether Sparta should continue to support his puppets in
Athens, especially now that _the Thirtv had aroused such
opposition. Was it really fea~}bl~to ke~•p them in control?
Lysander still had enough backers to secure a command for
himself, but he received only limited support. One hundred
talents would support the 1,000 mercenaries he raised and
the 8,000 sailors (200 men to a ship on 40 ships) for about
27
four months. Larger forces could of course not have been
maintained that long. Agis and Pausanias might have hoped
that without Spartan troops Lysander would not be able to
win a significant victory. He would have to come to some
agreement with the men of Piraeus, and would come home a
half-conqueror, at best.
There must have been disappointment in Athens over the
failure of the embassy to get still greater support from Lac-
edaemon. The oligarchs were now dependent entirely on
Sparta. They surely had expected more from their Pelopon-
nesian allies, and may well have blamed the individual am-
bassadors for failing to secure the immediate dispatch of the
. "'The kings' jealousy of Lysandcr once he appeared likely to win in Attica
1s_amply attested (Xen. 2-4-29; Diod. 14.33.6; Plut. Lysan. 21.3); it seems
fair to assu_me _that the consequences of Lysander's winning again had
crossed their mmds earlier, when he was first sent out.
Charles D. Hamilton has argued that there were three factions in
!
Sparta: ( 1). that of ysander, imperialistic, innovative, and aggressive; (2)
4
that of A?1s, also 1m~~rialist~~· hut anti-Lysandcr; (3) that of Pausanias,
conservative and traditional ( Spartan Politics and Policy, 405-401 B.c.,"
A]~ 91 [~970] 294-314, repeated in his Sparta's Bitter Victories 82-g8).
This theSIS has be~n attacked by Wesley E. Thompson, whose criticisms
seem to me val_id~ Obsei:vations on Spartan Politics," RivStorAnt 3 [ 1973]
47-58). Th~re 1s little evidence to suggest that Agis was imperialistic, nor
was Pausamas conservative from the start. The kings were more jealous of
Ly;a~der and of cac? other than in favor of any positive policy.
D1~d. 14.~3.5, with Hannestad, De 30 Tyranner 157. Cloche (RestDem
198) did not melude the sailors among the men to he paid out of the 100
~alents; he suggested that Diodorus' figure of 1,000 mercenaries was
mcorrect and should be much larger. I would not emend Diodorus on
the basi~ of,phra5es i!.1Xenophon ("many Pcloponnesian hoplites," 2-4-29)
and Lysias ( all men, 12.6o) which are not specific and might he exagger-
ated.
96
Civil War
Spartan army. Such a supposition would explain an event
recorded only by Aristotle and often doubted by scholars:
the replacement of the first Ten with a second Ten and the
beginning of negotiations with the men in Piraeus. 28 The date
is indicated by Aristotle's statements that the men in Piraeus
were winning the war and that the second Ten negotiated
with those in Piraeus before the arrival of Pausanias. The
only suitable time is the period between the return of the
embassv to Sparta and the time when Lysander's interven-
tion (which is not mentioned by Aristotle) turned the tide
again. At least one member of the first Ten, Rhinon, was
elected to the second Ten as well. Perhaps the election of
another board amounted to the replacement of those, includ-
ing Pheidon, who were seen as having failed on their mis-
sion to Sparta. The men in the city could hope that it was
an auspicious occasion to reach a settlement. They could
threaten the upcoming arrival of Lysander's mercenaries and
Libys' ships. Evidently the men in Piraeus were not im-
pressed; their reactions to the overtures from the city we can
only guess. Perhaps they believed themselves a match for
Lysander.
Both sides underestimated the victor of Aegospotami.
Lysander believed that a joint blockade by land and sea
would soon take effect, and his calculations proved correct.
He collected mercenaries at Eleusis, and in a short time the
men in Piraeus were short of supplies, while the men in the
"'AthPol 38.3. For bibliography on the question of wheth:r the second
Ten really existed, see Fuks, "Notes on the Rule of the Ten 198 n. 2,. to
which add Levi's suggestion that Aristotle confused the second Ten with
the diallaktai sent out from Sparta (Commento storico, 2.341). Some who
believe Aristotle point to a statement of Harpocration, in which he says
that Androtion told "about the Ten elected at Athens after the fall of the
Thirty and those thereafter" (ton hexes, Androtion FGrHist 324 F 10). Ton
hexes could refer to things or events rather than to another Ten, so the
passage is inconclusive. For the suggestion that the election of the second
Ten was in effect the replacement of some of the first Ten, see A. P.
Dorjahn, "On Aristotle, Ath. Pol. XX.XVIII,3" PQ 23 (1944) zB~;--97;Josef-
Hans Kuhn, "Die Amnestie von 403 v. Chr. im Reflex der 18. Isokrates-
Rede," WS 8o (1g67) 38--39.
97
The Thirty at Athens
- Civil War
city regained confidence. Some now deserted the democratic
cause, as did Callimachus. Zll
Fortunately for Thrasybulus and his men, Pausanias now
led out a regular army and took over the chief command
from Lysander. Lysander had succeeded beyond the expec-
tations of the men in Sparta as well as those in Athens and
Piraeus. Agis and Pausanias were far from eager to see Lvs-
ander win greater glory, and they persuaded a majoritv. of
the ephors that a change of strategy was necessary. The
ephors of 4041'403 were not Lysander' s puppets; they had re-
called him from the Hellespont. 30 It might not have taken
much to convince three of them that Lysander already had
more power than was right for a Spartan citizen to have.
What were the kings' intentions? According to Xenophon
Pausanias was well disrfoted (eumenes) toward the men i~
~Jr~~1:\sfrom the beginning; although he pretended to be
liosti1e, he secretly set about arranging a reconciliation and
the withdrawal of Spartan troops from Attica. 31 The king's
actions, however, do not fit this analysis of his motives very
well. The Boeotians and Corinthians refused to join his army
because they thought the Spartans were planning to annex
the Athenians' land; 32 Pausanias probably did not intend to go
that far, but he did not begin as if he intended to restore the
democracy. He ordered the rebels to disperse, he made
preparations for a siege of Piraeus, and he fought a battle in
which about 180 of the exiles died. 33 Is it believable that
Pausanias killed 180 of the men whom he favored just to
hide his real intentions? Whom was he trying to deceive?
A simpler explanation is that he changed his mind while
he was in Attica. Agis was not satisfied with the solution
achieved by Pausanias, a reconciliation that left Sparta's
""lsoc. 18.49.
30
Plut. Lysan. 19.4.
1
' Xen. 2.4.31.
32)(en.2.4.30.
33
Xen. 2-4-32-34.
98
strongest supporters at Eleusis, excluded from participati~n
in Athtµiian politics. 14 While the kings did not necessarily
have the same goals when Pausanias set out, they probably
agreed that a narrow oligarchy run by Lysander' s partisans
was out of the question, and that a return to the old democ-
racv was also undesirable. What Agis and Pausanias may
ha~e had in mind (if they had a clear policy at all) was some
kind of moderate oligarchy, including all the oligarchs and
eliminating the most anti-Spartan of the Athenians.
Pausanias set out for Attica in August 403. We do not
know the size of his army; all the allies except the Boeotians
and Corinthians sent contingents. Pausanias made his camp
in the Halipedon plain, north of Piraeus. He commanded
the right wing, while Lysander and his mercenaries had the
left. Initially Pausanias made no attempt to negotiate with
the men in Piraeus. Instead he sent ambassadors to order
them to disperse to their homes. He may have believed that
they would obey, faced with the power of a Spartan army.
When they did not, he advanced to attack, but then decided
instead to retreat and prepare to besiege Piraeus. Reports of
Lysander' s success had perhaps been exaggerated. Lysander
had not attempted to wall off Piraeus and had depended on
the naval blockade, which may not have been large or effec-
tive enough to force the capitulation of the men in Piraeus.
Pausanias determined that a wall was necessary, and on the
next day he set out with two divisions (nwrai) of the Lace-
daemonians and three tribal contingents of the Athenian cav-
alry to see how best it could be built. ,
He seems to have been surprised when Thrasybulus men
attacked him, rather than passively watch him cut off their
food supply. The fight started off as a small skirmish, but
quickly escalated until the full hoplite forces on both sides
were involved. Pausanias was pushed back four or five stades
at first, but after calling in all his troops he broke the Athe-
"He voted against Pausanias when his fellow king was put on trial after
his return to Sparta in the autumn of 403 (Paus. 3.5.2).
99
 The Thirty at Athens
- Civil War
nian line and killed about 150 of Thrasybulus' men, in addi-
tion to some 30 light-armed who had fallen earlier. The Lac-
edaemonian losses are unknown. Xenophon says only, "There
died Chaeron and Thibrachus, both polemarchs, and Lacrates
the Olympic victor, and the other Lacedaemonians buried in
front of the gates of the Kerameikos. "» Some of these burials
have been found, with a monumental inscription written in
the Lacedaemonian alphabet from right to left, which men-
tions both Chaeron and Thibrachus.31, At least eleven others
were buried with them, and the total number of allied dead
probably exceeded that number considerablv. Two of the
~keletons provide an illustration of the exile/ style of fight-
mg: one was found with an iron lancehead between its ribs
while the other had two bronze arrowheads in its right leg'.
Archers and light-armed troops were an important compo-
nent of the rebel army.
This "victory" probably led Pausanias to reconsider his
goals. It was not going to be easy to defeat the numerous and
spirited Athenian exiles. Moreover, by leading out the Spar-
tan army, Pausanias had not improved Sparta's reputation.
Only the Boeotians and Corinthians had been powerful and
courageous enough to refuse to join the expedition, but
there must have been others who served reluctantly, and
their grumbling may have reached the king's ears. A final
consideration was the appeal of Athenian citizens who had
lived under the oligarchy and found it excessively repressive;
such a man was Diognetus, who took the son of Nicias'
"'Xen. 2.4.33.
30
See Franz Willemsen, "Zu den Lakediimoniergriibern im Kerameikos "
AthMitt 92 (1977) 117-57; LaRue Van Hook, "On the Lacedaemonia~s
Buried in the Kerameikos," AJA 36 (1932) 29o-g2. Willemsen suggested
that _a stretch of 50 meters in the Kerameikos was filled with Lacedae-
mo~ian dead from this battle (Spartans and allies). On one end is the
burial of ~haeron and Thibrachus, near horos 2, and Willemsen identified
an Athenian ~thl~te buried near horos 3 with the Olympic victor Lacrates.
The weak pomt 1s this last; I think it unlikely that "Lacedaemonians" can
be stretched to cover an Athenian.
100
brother Niceratus (who had been executed earlier by the
Thirty),' and made an emotional appeal to Pausanias l~y plac-
ing the boy on the king's knees. 37 Lysander may stil~ have
been willing to do whatever was necessary to establish an
oligarchy. Pausanias was not.
His experiences on the campaign in Attica, then,, led
Pausanias to change his mind. Once the oligarchs lost Spar-
tan support, a settlement came quickly. A trnce was declared
while representatives of the men of Piraeus went to Sparta.
Some private individuals from the city who favored a reco~-
ciliation, Cephisophon and ~1eletus, went with them. Official
representatives from the city government also went to Lac-
edaemon. These men said that they handed over the walls
they possessed to the Spartans to do with as they pleased;
they proposed that the men in Piraeus should hand over
Piraeus and Munichia, if they really wanted to be friends of
the Spartans. These proposals seem to have been a bid for a
settlement dictated by Sparta, and to that extent they were
successful. The Spartan assembly sent fifteen representatives
to reconcile the Athenians, in conjunction with Pausanias, in
the best way possible.:)/;Their mission accomplished, Pausa-
nias disbanded his army, and the Athenian exiles returned
and sacrificed to Athena on the Acropolis, now free from
Spartan occupation.
T,'Lys.18.10.
"'Xen. 2.4.38. AthPol 38.4 mentions only ten represent~tives: Perhaps
the five ephors were sent (that is, the three not already m Attica) along
with ten other Spartiates; all five ephors voted for Pausanias' acquittal at
his trial in 403.
101

6 ing full use of their possessions.
The Settlement of 403
What arrangement did the Spartan negotiators work out
between the men in the city and the men in Piraeus? 1 Xen-
ophon gives us an outline ~>fthe reconciliation agreement:
"They reconciled on the condition that there be peace be-
tween the two sides, and that each man return to his own
possessions, except for the Thirty and the Eleven and the
Ten who ruled in Piraeus. If any of those from the city were
afraid, they could move to Eleusis." 2 Somewhat later, after
recording the breakup of the virtually autonomous state at
Eleusis, Xenophon adds that "oaths were sworn not to re-
member past wrongs [me mnesikakesein], and even now thev
live together as citizens and the people are faithful to th~
oaths. "3
Aristotle's version is more detailed and, for the most part,
complementary rather than contradictory:
The reconciliation took place in the archonship of Eucleides
[403!402] on the following terms:
'Important discu~sions of _t~e settlement include Cloche, RestDem 251 _
476; Alfred P. DorJahn, Political Forgiveness in Old Athens: The Amnesty
of 403 B.C. (Evanston 1946); Josef-Hans Kuhn, "Die Amnestie von 403 v.
Chr. im Reflex der 18. Isokrates-Rede," WS 80 (1967) 31-73; Thomas C.
Loening, "The Reconciliation Agreement of 403i402 B.c. in Athens: Its
Content and Application" (diss. Brown 1g81).
'Xen. 2.4.38. · menoi.
'Xen. 2.4.43.
102
The Settlement of 403
Those of the Athenians who had remained in the city and
wished to leave were to have Eleusis, being in full possession
of their civic rights. independent, self-governing, and enjoy-
The temple [at Eleusis] was to be common to both sides,
and to be under the care of the Ceryces and Eumolpidae,
according to the ancestral custom. Those from Eleusis were
not to enter the city. or those from the city to go to Eleusis,
except that both sides could do so for the celebration of the
Mysteries [the Greater were celebrated at Eleusis, the Lesser
at Athens].
Those from Eleusis were to contribute to the alliance [sym-
machikon, i.e .. the Spartan Alliance] from their income in the
same way as the other Athenians.
If some of the emigres wished to buy a house in Eleusis,
they were to persuade the owner Ito accept the price they
offered}; if the two could not agree, each was to choose three
appraisers, and the owner was to accept the price they ftxed.
Of the [original] Elcusinians, whomever they [the emigres]
wished were to live with them [in Eleusis].
Registration for those at home who wished to move was to
take place for ten days from the time they swore the oaths,
and the emigration itself for twenty days; those away from
home were to have the same number of days after they re-
turned.
A man living at Eleusis could not hold any magistracy in the
city until he registered to live in the city again.
Homicide trials were to take place according to the ances-
tral custom, if someone had killed or wounded someone else
with his own hands [autocheir].
Of past events no one was to remember past wrongs [mnesi-
kakein] against anyone except against the Thirty and the Ten
and the Eleven and those who ruled the Piraeus, and not
against them if they gave euthynai fthat is, submitted to an
investigation of their conduct in office]. Those who ruled in
Piraeus were to give euthynai before those in Piraeus, those
[who ruled] in the citv before those ta timemata parecho-
On this basis those who wished could leave.
The Thirty at Athens
- The Settlement of 403
Each side was to repay separately the m011ev it had bor-
rowed for the war.• ·
Aristotle and Xenophon appear to contradict each other in
two particulars. First, did the settlement in 40,3 include an
amnesty, or was the amnesty established only in 401? Xen-
ophon implies the latter, but Aristotle explicitly includes an
amnesty among the terms of the 403 agreement. Andocides
and Dionysius of Halicarnassus support Aristotle in that they
refer to the amnesty before the reestablishment of the de-
mocracy. 5 On the other hand, Justin agrees with Xenophon,
and Diodorus, though he does not mention either the am-
nesty or the fall of Eleusis, places the entire story of the
return of the exiles in 401/400. 6 Perhaps Ephorns, the source
of Diodorus and Justin, here-as elsewhere at times-fol-
lowed Xenophon himself. On balance it is difficult to disre-
gard Aristotle's clear testimony, supported as it is by the
contemporary Andocides. Xenophon certainly did not try to
give the full details of the settlement of 403, and the am-
nesty, placed in 401, forms a neat conclusion to his story of
the stasis in Athens. He is probably accurate to the extent
that an amnesty was passed in 401, though it was simply a
reaffirmation of the earlier pledge. 7
Second, were the Ten excluded from the amnesty? Aris-
totle says yes, and Nepos agrees, but Andocides mentions
only the Thirty and the Eleven, and Xenophon does not
mention the Ten among those who could not return to their
own possessions. 8 There exists no real contradiction between
Aristotle and Xenophon, however, for Xenophon is not
referring to the amnesty. Since at least some of the Ten were
still in Athens and still in possession of their property when
'At~Pol 39· Against Cloche's view that Aristotle and Xenophon describe
two d1ffere~t agreements (RestDem 239-44), see Loening, "Reconciliation
Agreement 13-18.
'Andoc. 1.81; Diony. Halic. Lys. 32.
:Justin 5. 10.11; Diod. 14.32-33.
·Dorjahn, Political Forgiveness in Old Athens 22-23
"Nepos Thrasyb. 3.1; Andoc. 1.go. ·
104
the peace was negotiated (unlike the Thirty, the Eleven, and
the Ten who ruled in Piraeus, who were in Eleusis), the pro-
vision regarding property did not apply to them. They could
move to Eleusis, or, if they wished to remain in Athens,
they could give their euthyrwi. As Aristotle makes clear,
only if they passed their euthynai did they come under the
amnesty. 9 As for Andocides, he might be forgetful or car~le~s
or might not mention the Ten because by the time ~f lus
speech they had passed their euthynai. In any case Aristotle
should be preferred.
Some uncertainties remain. Aristotle unfortunately does
not discuss the regulations on property; Xenophon says sim-
ply that each was to return to his own possessions. But after
the turmoil of 404"403, such a provision was far from straight-
forward. After the confiscations and sales carried out by the
oligarchy, what belonged to whom? The only other evidence
for what must have been the far more detailed clauses deal-
ing with property comes from a fragmenta': papyrus fo~nd
at Oxyrhynchus, containing part of Lysias speech Against
Hippotherses .10 Lines 34-4i read:
When, however, Lysias went into exile with you and returned
with your people, although the agreement said that things
that had been sold were to remain in the possession of the
buyers, while the returning men were to recover unsold
things, he, having acquired neither land nor house, which
even the agreement gave back to the returning men, provided
that they pay . . .
J)eh<,
Movable proI?~~ty th~5'~~d been confi_scated but remained
unsold, z~r? 1
,fJvertea to the owner. If 1t had been sold, the
buyer refa1ried possession. We do not know whether the
1
original owners were compensated, or how. The exiles did
recover their immovable property (land and houses), but had
to pay something for it; what or how much is unknown.
•Kuhn, "Amnestie von 403 v. Chr." 35-36.
'°F 1.2 Gernet/Bizos (P.Oxy. 16o6).
105
The Thirty at Athens
.T?5 .P7operty regulations must 9c1:ye.contained many in-
equities. They seem designed to facilitate the quick reunifi-
cation of the citizens; whether resentment stemming from
financial losses would be strong enough to sabotage the
amnesty remained to be seen. To oversee this part of the
agreement a group of magistrates known as syndikoi was
established. Their job was to decide, in disputed cases, what
property had been confiscated by the oligarchs. ll
The other major uncertainty concerns the composition of
the juries before which the oligarchic magistrates were to
give their euthynai, if they wished. F. G. Kenyon held that
the text of the Athenaion Politeia was corrupted and wanted
to insert "in the city" into the phrase "those ta timemata
parechomenoi"; the Ten who ruled Piraeus would then give
their euthynai in front of those they governed, and the
Thirty, the Eleven, and the Ten (who never controlled Pi-
raeus) would give theirs in front of those they governed in
the city. 12 Such emendation is risky, when the text makes
sense as it stands. One would expect the Thirty and the
Eleven to be judged by men from all parts of Attica, since
they exercised authority over all Attica. The Ten, if they did
not control Piraeus, had nominal jurisdiction over Attica,
and presumably wielded effective power over more than the
asty proper.
Who were the ta timemata parechomenoi? Probably we
should translate the term as "those who owned ratable prop-
erty. " 13 To own "ratable property" need not mean that one
"Harrison, Law of Athens 2.34-35. See Harpocration, s. v. syndikoi: "Is-
aeus in his speech Against Elpagoras and Demophanes says, after the
events from the Piraeus, these were syndikoi, as I hear, to whom confis-
cated property was reported [Isaeus F 11 Roussel] ... it was an office
established after the return from the Piraeus." Cf. Photius, s.v. syndikoi.
The syndikoi are also mentioned at Lys. 16. 7, 17. 10, 18.26, 19.32.
12
Kenyon is defended by Cloche, RestDem 268-71, and Loening, "Recon-
ciliation Agreement" 4~50.
"A parallel would be the phrase hopla parechomenoi, used in IC 13 .21 I.
11, in Thuc. 8.97, and twice in AthPol 4.2. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-
Moellendorff suggested that ta timemata parechomenoi be equated with
106
The Settlement of 403
could afford hoplite armor. All but 5,000 of the Athenians
possessed some land, 14 and of those 5,000 some surely owned
other ratable property. Still, the inclusion of this clause in
the regulations for euthynai meant that indigent Athenians
could not serve on the juries that would judge the conduct of
the oligarchic magistrates (except, apparently, the Ten who
ruled in Piraeus), and to that extent it was a concession to
the oligarchs.
The reconciliation agreement of 403 was a remarkable set-
tlement. It was not one-sided, thanks surely to Pausanias.
The amnesty, by far its most famous provision, excluded
only the highest of the oligarchic magistrates (and even these
were to be included if they could pass their euthynai before
juries set up in a manner advantageous to the oligarchs). In
addition the clauses on property stipulated that the oligarchs
keep whatever they had purchased during the past year, or
be compensated by the original owners. On the other hand,
the Spartan troops withdrew, and the democratic exiles re-
turned. The only guarantee of the settlement was the oath
sworn by the entire city, as Andocides says before he quotes
part of it: " ... and I will not remember past wrongs [ou
mnesikakeso] against any citizen except the Thirty and the
Eleven, and not against any of these who should wish to give
euthynai for the magistracy he held. " 15
In spite of late sources that refer to the settlement as a law
or a decree, the contemporary or near-contemporary au-
thors, such as Xenophon, Lysias, Isocrates, and Aristotle,
hopla parechomenoi, meaning those in the first three Solonian property
classes or those able to afford hoplite armor (Aristoteles und Athen [Berlin
1893] 2.217-18). But if the terms are equivalent, why does Aristotle not
use hopla parechomenoi here? Timema in the legal sense means "penalty"
or "punishment," so we might translate: "those who would assess penalties"
(so Loening, "Reconciliation Agreement" 51-52). But juries "as a rule" set
the penalty at euthynai (Harrison, Law of Athens 2.8o-82), so the phrase
would then do no more than confinn traditional practice.
"Diony. Halic. Lys. 32.
"Andoc. 1.go.
107
The Thirty at Athens

simply say "reconciliation" (dialyseis), "oaths" (horkoi), or

"terms of the agreement" (synthekai). 1" The settlement, then,
was never passed by an official meeting of the assembly. But
it was written down in some form, and could be consulted
and quoted by Athenian orators. 17 7
Law: l\cpos Thrasyb. 3. 2: decree: Schol. Aristoph. Plrttus 1146, Plut.
16

Mor. 814b, Val. \fax. + 1.4, Vcll. Pat. 2.58-4, Diony. Halic. Lys. 32.
"E.g., Isoc. 18. 19.
Aftermath

Pausanias' departure left the Athenians on their own, to

carry out or to disregard the recent agreement. How well
did they do?
Firs~, the political situation. Phormisius soon brought for-
ward a scheme for reuniting the Athenian state. His plan is
known only from the remarks with which Dionysius of Hali-
carnassus prefaces his quotation of part of the speech that
Lysias wrote against the proposal. 1 Phormisius suggested that
the exiles (that is, the oligarchs at Eleusis) be recalled and
that citizenship be restricted to landowners; this proposal
would have meant the disfranchisement of almost 5,000 Athe-
nians, according to Dionysius. Yet the suggestion had a
good deal to be said for it. By offering the exiles terms they
could live ,vith, Phormisius could hope to strengthen Ath-
ens' finances and manpower, while keeping a broadly based
democracy. The addition of citizens on the extreme right of
the political spectrum and the removal of some from the left
would have shifted Athenian politics significantly to the
right. Dionysius says that the Lacedaemonians favored Phor-
misius' proposal. Their support would have been a strong
argument in its behalf; there must have been apprehension
about whether the Spartans would abide by Pausanias' set-

108 109
The Thirty at Athens
tlement. The Spartan king had been put on trial when he
had come home, and had narrowly escaped conviction. 2
That anyone could make such a suggestion after the events
of 4041'403 attests to the enduring strength of the antidemo-
cratic opinion that had helped to overthrow the democracy
earlier. Phormisius was associated with Theramenes in the
spring of 404, it will he recalled; evidently his moderate
sentiments were not reversed by his experiences in the civil
war, in which he fought with the exiles. We do not know
how many Athenians supported him now, only that his plan
was obviously defeated. Athens was to have a democracy.
Twenty men were chosen to govern the city until the laws
could be drawn up again. In the interim the laws of Solon
and the statutes of Draco were to be in force.'
Another proposal would have had an opposite effect on
Athenian politics. The hero of Phyle, Thrasybulus, made a
motion to confer citizenship on all who came back from Pi-
raeus, some of whom, according to Aristotle, were clearly
slaves.4 About 1,200 foreigners would have received citizen-
ship, all men who had joined the rebellion against the oli-
garchy (see below for the figure). Again we do not know how
many Athenians supported the bill, but a narrower view
prevailed. Archinus successfully brought a graphe para-
nomon against Thrasybulus on the grounds that the motion
'Paus. 3.5.2.
'Andoc. 1.81. It has sometimes been suggested, without evidence, that
ten of these men were from those in Piraeus and that the other ten were
the second Ten in the city. See, e.g., Lenschau, "Triakonta" 2375.
•AthPol 40.2. For bibliography on Tbrasybulus' proposal, see Teresa
Alfieri, "Sulla proposta di Trasibulo per la concessione dclla cittadinanza
ateniese," RendlstLomb 104 (1970) 154--61. I have assumed that the
motion described at AthPol 40.2 was the same as Tbrasybulus' proposal to
enfranchise Lysias, on which see Aeschin. 3.195 with schol., Plut. Mor.
835f-836a; Maximus Planudes, Schol. Hermogenes, Staseis = Christian
Walz, Rhetores Graeci 5 (Stuttgart 18o3) 343. It is possible that the Lysias
proposal was a separate decree; if so, both laws were overturned by suc-
cessful graphai paranomon.
110
-
Aftermath
had not gone through the boule, which had not yet been
established, and the proposal was blocked.
The foreigners who had aided the democratic exiles were
soon honored with lesser rewards, however, as we know
from a fragmentary inscription:
[Lysiades --- was secretary
[Eucleides of--]os was archon
[Resolved by the boule and the people, ..JL] held the prytany,
Lvsiades was secretary, Demophilus presided,
[..R..• made the motion: Since they are good men toward the]
people, whoever came back together from Phyle or to those
coming back together
[from Phyle gave aid by giving money or provisions], to have
been voted bv the Athenians: that they and their descendants
[have isoteleia · and the right of owning land and houses at
Athens], and that the magistrates use the same laws for them
[as they do for the other Athenians; and whoever did not come
back together], but fought the battle at Munichia and
[took] the [Piraeus, or remained with the people [demos] in
Piraeus] when the reconciliation took place and carried out
their orders,
[that they and their descendants at Athens have isoteleia and]
engyesis just as the Athenians ... 5
The foreigners were rewarded in two different ways, but
precisely how is of course conjecture. Rebel leaders had prom-
ised isoteleia to all who were at Piraeus, so it is reasonable
to assume that the foreigners received this much. Those who
had joined or aided the resisters at Phyle were rewarded
more than those who joined later; if my suggested restora-
tions are correct, the former received equal taxation status,
the right to own land and houses, and equal judicial status-
'JG 22 • 10, with additions published by Daphne Hereward, "New Frag-
ments of JG II 2 10," BSA 47 (1952) 102-17. For the restorations, see
Krentz, "Foreigners against the Thirty" 302-4.
111
The Thirty at Athens
all the rights of citizenship, in sum, except the rights to vote
and hold office. Only a fraction of the complete list of bene-
ficiaries is preserved, but a rough approximation based on the
size of the restored stele suggests that about 1,200 (or even
more) names \Vere once recorded.
Citizen resisters were also h<mored. Those who had been
at Phyle ,vhen it was besi<•ged bv the Thirtv and the Lacedae-
monians, somewhat more than· a hundnxi, were t·ach given
a crown of olive, and they divided 1,000 drachmas to be
used for a sacrifice and an offering." Their names were in-
scribed with an honorary decree on a stcle set up in the
Metroon, part of which has been found; it also contained the
following epigram: "The ancient people of Athens rewarded
these men with crowns for excellence, because thev first
began to stop those ruling the city with unjust statute;, risk-
ing bodily danger.",
A final measure regarding the democratic exiles deserves
notice. An inscription recentlv discovered in the Athenian
agora records a decree of Th~ozotides which granted state
maintenance for the sons of Athenians who died fighting the
oligarchy:
Resolved by the boule [and the] people, Antiochis was in
prytany, ...~ ...s was secretary, Callisthenes presided, [Theo]zo-
tides made the motion: However manv Athenians died bv a
violent death during the oligarchy whil; aiding the democra'cv
to the sons of all these because of the good deeds of th;i;
fathers to the Athenian people and (because) of braverv, ...
to the sons . . . of all maintenance of an obol per day .' 8
The rest of the decree is too fragmentarv to translate. A few
names are listed on the left side of th~ stone (there were
"Aeschin. 3. 187-go.
'Raubitschek, "Heroes of Phvle ...
'Ronal~. S. Stro~1d, "Greek inscriptions, Theozotides and the Athenian
Orphans, Hespena 40 (1971) 28o-301.
112
Aftermath
presumably more below the decree): Cleobulus and Andro-
cles, sons of Androcles of Aphidna; Lysanias and Hippon,
sons of Olympichus of Kydathenaion; Athenaeus the son of
Philonautus of Alopeke; and Charicles and Charedemus,
sons of Chaemedemus of Kollytos or Kolonai. Theozotides
expressly limited the grant of state support to Athenian
orphans; from a fragmentary speech of Lysias against Theoz-
otides, it appears that nothoi (bastards and sons of non-
Athenian women) were excluded. 9
These actions form a coherent picture of the_ political cli-
mate in the Athenian assembly. In response to important
questions regarding the form of Athenian government and
the nature of Attic citizenship, the Athenians gave conserva-
tive answers. Democratic resisters to the oligarchy were rec-
ognized and honored, but in a restrained manner. Foreign-
ers whose fathers died in the struggle did not receive state
support, as Athenian orphans did; foreigners who survived
the fighting received (important?) new legal rights, but not
citizenship itself. In fact, Pericles' law restricting citizenship
to children of two Athenian parents was reconfirmed in
4oy 402, 10 a change from the more liberal policy Athens had
followed near the end of the Peloponnesian War, when citi-
zenship had been granted, for example, to the slaves and
foreigners who fought at Arginusae in 4o6. Finally, the Athe-
nians refused to try the new restriction on citizenship pro-
posed by Phormisius. The democracy was to be restored as
of old, and the agreement of 403 was not to be abrogated. All
in all, a picture of moderation.
The test of the new establishment lay in the threat of civil
strife. Struggles between oligarchs and democrats had tom
apart numerous Greek poleis. Corcyra is one well-known
"Lysias F 6. 1-2 Gemet/Bizos ( = P. Hibeh 1. 14), with the discussion of
Stroud, "Greek Inscriptions, Theozotides and the Athenian Orphans" 297-
301.
10
Athenaeus 13.577b; Schol. Aeschin. 1.39 ( = Eumelus, FGrHist 77 F 2);
Demos. 43.51, 57.30; Isaeus 6.47, 8. 19,43.
113
The Thirty at Athens
example, Samos another. In the summer of 403 Athens ap-
peared little different. The oligarchs in 411 had killed some
of their opponents; in the years after 410 the democrats in
turn took reprisals. In 404,f403 the oligarchs had set out on a
more determined and ruthless course, to which the demo-
crats had responded, ultimately successfully. with force.
Would the democrats now take revenge'?
The settlement of 403 offered two paths to peace: the
oligarchs were to have their own home and government at
Eleusis, and there was to be a full amnesty at Athens. The
Athenians soon violated the provisions for migration to Eleu-
sis, according to Aristotle:
After the reconciliation was made on these terms, those who
fought with the Thirty were afraid, and many intended to
migrate [to Eleusis] but put off their registration until the final
days, as all men are accustomed to do. Archinus, seeing their
number and wishing to restrain them, canceled the remaining
days of registration, so that many were unwillingly compelled
to stay until they regained their confidence. Archinus seems
to have acted as a good citizen in this instance .... "
Aristotle's approval is somewhat surprising, but that no other
source mentions the story at all is still more so. Apparently
Archinus' action caused no significant outcry. (Of course, our
sources might simply be one-sided.) Otherwise the move to
Eleusis took place without incident, and for a time Eleusis
and Athens coexisted peacefully.
As for the amnesty, we hear that some did wish to violate
their oaths. Nepos reports that Thrasybulus restrained some
of the returned exiles who wanted to execute their enemies. 12
Archinus took more drastic action when he persuaded the
boule to kill an unnamed man without trial after the man
11
AthPol 40. 1.
12
Thrasyb. 3.3.
114
-
Aftermath
began to break the amnesty. 13 Aristotle concludes this story by
saying that no one ever violated the amnesty again, but Isoc-
rates' speech Against Callimachus shows otherwise. Callima-
chus had filed charges against Patrocles and later against
Lvsimachus in connection with the confiscation of an unspec-
ified amount of money during the rule of the Ten. Both
men, probably fearing to trust the jury to stand by the am-
nesty, had settled out of court. Instances such as these (not
necessarily actual court decisions) had led Archinus to in-
troduce a law intended to strengthen the amnesty. Isocrates
summarizes as follows:
You passed a law on the motion of Archinus, that if someone
should bring a lawsuit in violation of the oaths, the defendant
can enter a plea of paragraphe, and the magistrates are to
bring up this plea first; the defendant is to speak first, and
whoever is defeated shall pay a fine of one-sixth the value of
the claim, in order that those who dare to break the amnesty
[mnesikakein] should not only be convicted of violating their
oaths and should not await vengeance from the gods, but also
should pay a penalty on the spot. 14
Following this procedure, the accused was bringing a charge
of paragraphe against Callimachus (who had now brought
suit against the defendant), claiming that Callimachus was in
violation of the amnestv. Callimachus must have been argu-
ing that his suit was permissible since it did not directly
involve actions of the oligarchic government. 15 Unfortunately
we do not know with whom the Athenian jury agreed.
Some litigants tried to get around the amnesty by specious
13
Mnesikakein, AthPol 40.z.
u1soc. 18.3. discussed by Harrison, Law of Athens, z. 1o6-7.
1'Since the amnesty is not mentioned in Isoc. 21, civil suits resulting
from actions not directly involving the oligarchic govemmt;?t were evi-
dently permissible. See Loening, "Reconciliation Agreement 175-76.
115
The Thirty at Athens
arguments, such as that the reconciliation agreement did not
apply between members of the same side or to one who had
joined neither side, or (perhaps more successfully) by bring-
ing charges of apagoge instead of murder autocheiria, the
only murder charge allowed by the settlement. 10 The proce-
dure of apagoge, as described by Demosthenes, was to
charge a murderer with entering holy places and the agora,
instead of with the killing itself. The penalty was death.
Lysias' Against Agoratus was written in support of a certain
Dionysius, who was proceding against Agoratus for apagoge .17
Agoratus had given information against men, including
Dionysius' brother, who had been condemned to death
under the Thirty. Apparently a murderer arraigned under
apagoge had to be "clearly" (ep' autoph<koi) guilty; Lysias
argued that Agoratus' deposition amounted to murder as
surely as if he had struck down the victim himself with a
dagger. We do not know whether the prosecution in this
case was successful. Dionysius presumably chose the proce-
dure of apagoge because "clearly" would, he thought, be
easier to prove than "by his own hands." If Lysias can be
believed, the procedure worked against another informer,
Menestratus, who died by the tympanon, the normal penalty
for homicide. 18
There were limits to the amnesty. In 399 a force of 300
hippeis who had served under the Thirty was sent to Asia
with Thibron because, according to Xenophon, it was thought
that the demos would benefit if they died away from home. 19
The hippeis had been particularly active supporters of the
1
•Lys. 13.Sg-go and 6.3~39. On apagoge, see Demos. 23.80.
11
Lys. 13.85-87, with Douglas M. MacDowell, Athenian Homicide Law
in the Age of the Orators (Manchester 1g63) 131-33. Mogens H. Hansen
(Apagoge, Endeixis and Ephegesis against Kakourgoi, Atinwi and Pheu-
gontes: A Study in the Athenian Administration of Justice in the Fourth
Century B.C. [Odense 1976] 102) errs in equating ep' autophon}i with
autocheria; the former is certainly more elastic.
"Lys. 13.56, with MacDowell, Athenian Homicide Law 137-38.
'"Xen. 3.1.4.
116
Aftermath
Thirty. Strong resentment against them is also known from
Lysias' Against Theozotides, in which Lysias attacks Theo-
zotides for reducing the pay of the cavalry from six to four
obols per day while raising the pay of the hippotoxotai
(mounted archers) from two to eight obols per day. 20 But
neither of these actio?s /an be said, strictly speaking, to
have violated the oaths.
The settlement guaranteed political rights to the former
3,000. We have references to them serving on juries for
euthynai, 21 for dokimasiai, 22 and probably for regular cases too. 23
They attended the assembly. 24 Some served as generals, hip-
parchs, and ambassadors. 25 Even former hippeis became
members of the boule, generals, and hipparchs. 26
But the reconciliation agreement did not mean that the
former 3,000 would necessarily be chosen for office, or pass
their dokimasiai if they were, and the amnesty was not so
literally interpreted as to rule out all public references to the
events of 4041'403. Five speeches of Lysias written for doki-
masiai illustrate the sort of thing that was said. Lysias 31 re-
proaches Philon, a prospective bouleutes, for nothing more
than failing to join the democratic rebellion after he was
banned from the city by the Thirty. Two speakers, Eryxima-
chus (P. Ryl. 489) and the anonymous speaker of Lysias 24,
"'Hostility to the hippeis is a more likely explanation for this measure
than a desire to save money. Since the stipend of the hippotoxotai was
quadrupled, the overall savings would have been small. See Stroud,
"Greek Inscriptions, Theozotides and the Athenian Orphans"' 29½9.
"Lys. 12.92; AthPol 39.6. Thomas Loening argues that since Lysias was
not an Athenian citizen in 40Jf 402, he could not have spoken at Eratos-
thenes' euthynai (''The Autobiographical Speeches of Lysias and the Bio-
graphical Tradition," Hermes 1og [1981] 286). But see Whitehead, Ideol-
ogy of the Athenian Metic 91.
"Lys. 26. 16.
ZILys. 26.2.
24
Lys. 26.2; Xen. 3.5.9.
"'Lys. 26.20.
"'Lys. 16.8, which disproves Douglas M. MacDowell's assertion that
those who served in the cavalry for the Thirty were forbidden to be
members of the boule (The Law in Classical Athens [Ithaca 1978] 75).
117
 The Thirty at Athens
candidates for unknown offices, \vere charged with remain-
ing in the city. Neither denied membership in the 3,000,
but each maintained he had done nothing wrong: he had not
served on the boule or held a magistracy, had not arrested
anyone or placed anyone's name on the catalogue of those to
serve with Lysander, or enriched himself in anv wav. Man-
titheus, a candidate for membership in the h;mle ·or (less
likely) an archonship, tried to deny that he served among the
hippeis under the Thirty (Lys. 16). Finally, Lysias 26 charges
Evandrns, the second choice for eponymous archon for 382/
381, with membership in the houle and service in the cav-
alry under the Thirty. Only in this last case do we know the
result. Perhaps because he had lived a quiet life since 403,
Evandrus passed his dokimasia .27
In the speech against Evandrus, Lvsias savs that the law
concerning dokimasiai was "not least~' inten~led to prevent
the magistrates of the oligarchy from regaining office. 28 This
assertion is no doubt exaggerated. But against the general
statements cited above to the effect that former members of
the 3,000 gained positions of importance must be set the fact
that we know of few who did so. In addition to Evandrus,
Rhinon of Paiania, one of the Ten, was elected general soon
after the reconciliation, and mav have been a treasurer of
Athena in 4021401.29 Cephisoph~n, who had been sent to
Sparta as a private individual (idiotes) to represent the men
in the city who wanted peace, was secretary in 4oy402 and
treasurer of Athena and the Other Gods in 398/397. 30 Since
"'Interestingly enough, there is reason to believe that Leodamas, the first
choice, who had been rejected after opposition from Thrasybulus of Kol-
lytos, had also been accused of pro-oligarchic sympathies. Aristotle says
that Thrasybulus accused Leodamas of having had his name recorded as a
traitor on a stele in the Acropolis, and of having removed it during the
rule of the Thirty (Rhet. 1400a).
""Lys. 26.9.
29
General, AthPol 38.4; treasurer, if IC 2 2 . 1371 II. 3-4 are correctly re-
stored Rhi[non of Paiania].
30
Secretary, IG 2 2 • 1 II. 1, 56; treasurer, IG 2 2 • 1388 I. 3.
118
Aftermath
these two had helped to negotiate the return of the demo-
cratic rebels, it is not surprising to find them holding further
office.
Since we have few names of supporters of the oligarchy,
perhaps not too much stress should be placed on the paucity
of democratic magistrates known to have belonged to the
3,000. They may indeed have been numerous. One would
like to know whether Philon, the speaker of Lysias 25, Eryxi-
machus, and ~lantitheus passed their dokimasiai; evidence
is utterly lacking. But one conclusion emerges safely: the
accusers at all those dokimasiai, even twenty years after the
restoration of the democracy, felt it worthwhile to recount
the events of 404/403 again. A history of support for the
Thirty was a mark against anyone; even a faint suspicion
tying an individual to the oligarchs would be mentioned by
an enemy who wanted to take advantage of popular opinion.
Perhaps the extreme example comes from a speech of Isoc-
rates, in which the speaker, a poor man who had been struck
by a young aristocrat named Lochites, berates Lochites'
character as follows:
We ourselves have twice seen the democracy overthrown and
have twice been deprived of freedom, not by those who were
guilty of other crimes, but by those who looked down on the
laws and wanted to be slaves of the enemy while ravaging
their fellow citizens. He is one of these men. For although he
is younger than those men, still he has the same character as
that government. For these are the natures that surrendered
our power to the enemy, tore down the walls of the father-
land, and executed 1,500 citizens without trial. 31
Overall, the Athenians earned the congratulatory words of
Aristotle referred to above, to the effect that after the sum-
mary execution of an anonymous man for violating the am-
"Isoc. 20. 10-11.
119
 The Thirty at Athens
nesty, no one violated it again. The spirit of the agreement
12
was often broken (men could not erase the past from their
memories) and some questionable cases reached court (hence
the institution of the paragraphe), but since no prosecutors
are known to have violated the amnesty successfully, it must
be judged a triumph-a brilliant one, for a Greek polis.
The partition of the government, however, did not survive
long. We know virtually nothing about the oligarchic com-
munity at Eleusis, 11 except that in 401/400 fighting broke out
once more. '.J4 Xenophon gives the following synopsis of the
events:
Some time later [hysteroi de chronoi, that is, some time after
the reestablishment of the democracy], hearing that those
in Eleusis were hiring mercenaries, they [the Athenians]
marched out against them en masse and killed their generals
who came out for a conference; then by sending friends and
relatives to the others they persuaded them to reconcile. Oaths
were sworn not to remember past wrongs, and even now they
live together as citizens and the de11wsis faithful to the oaths. 35
Justin's summary is more explicit:
Some days [interiectis diebus] after peace had been con-
cluded, the tyrants were suddenly enraged not less that the
[democratic] exiles had returned than that thev themselves
had been driven into exile, as if the libertv of otl1ers amount-
ed to slavery for them, and they waged w;r on the Athenians
[helium Atheniensibus inferunt]. But, having gone out for a
"AtliPol 40.2; cf. Xen. 2.4.43.
:uu.Kahrstedt has restored a fragmentary inscription to give an ordi-
nance of_the government at Eleusis, but the restorations are extremely
hypothetical. If they are correct, the inscription supplies some information
on ho'": those at Ele~sis carried out the settlement. See Hermann Bengt-
son, Die Staatsvertrage des Altertums 2 (Munich 1g62) no. 213.
"The date is known from AthPol 40.4.
"Xen. 2.4.43.
120
Aftermath
conference as if they were about to recover the rule [of the
city], they were caught and slaughtered, as sacrificial victims
to peace. The people whom they had ordered to emigrate
were recalled into the city. And so the state was reassembled
from manv limbs into one body, and lest dissension should
arise from· past aetions, all swore an oath to forget their dis-
cords. 36
Here the responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities falls on
the men in Eleusis. It is tempting to believe that the ulti-
mate source of Justin's account is Xenophon. If so, we need
to ask whether this interpretation of Xenophon has resulted
in an accurate story. In part, at least, it has not, since inter-
iectis diebus cannot encompass two years, though hysteroi de
chronoi can. Xenophon stops well short of saying that the
men in Eleusis made war on the city. He does not even
vouch for the fact that they were hiring mercenaries, only
that the men in the city heard that they were. Is there a hint
here that the democrats used rumor as a pretext? 37 One would
otherwise have to assume that the oligarchs were making a
desperate bid to regain power, since they had (apparently)
no support from Sparta and since their own numbers were
limited , after Archinus had restrained some men from ~
leav-
ing Athens and after others had returned to the city.
Regardless of where the blame lies, the democrats were
clearly on the offensive: they besieged Eleusis. 39 And it was
by treachery that the generals from Eleusis were killed
(whether or not this act is considered a breach of the recon-
ciliation agreement depends on whether one believes the
oligarchs had broken the agreement first; but it was hardly
honorable either way). Still the murders were limited to
"those most responsible for the [past] evils," and Plato could
36
Justin 5.10.8-11.
37
Kiihn, "Amnestie von 403 v. Chr." 45-
'"Lys. 25.9.
"'Lys. 25.9.
121
The Thirty at Athens
accurately describe the war with those in Eleusis as "moder-
ately concluded," since all the rest were reconciled. ,I()
The fate of the Thirty themselves is uncertain. The mur-
dered "generals" presumably did not include all twenty-
seven of the surviving Thirty. If the board was based on the
Athenian democratic model, it had ten members, and all of
them need not have been from the Thirtv. In fact, since the
Thirty had been abysmal failures as military leaders in the
past, some new generals were probably chosen. Neverthe-
less, Justin does say the tyranni were killed, and Isocrates
"those most responsible for the evils," so a fair conclusion
would be that some of the Thirty perished in 401/ 400.
At least one, Erathosthenes, attempted to pass his euthynai,
apparently because he wanted to live in Athens. We do not
know whether he succeeded. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moel-
lendorff argued that sections of Lysias' Against Eratos-
thenes suggest that other members of the Thirty as well as
Eratosthenes were on trial. 41 But other sections indicate a
single defendant, 42 and the plural references can be under-
stood as Lysias' attempt to condemn by association. The only
other individual who has been suggested as possibly remain-
ing in the city is Pheidon. He had stayed behind when the
Thirty moved to Eleusis, becoming one of the Ten, but what
he did after being deposed following his embassy to Sparta is
unknown. 43 We cannot, therefore, name a single member of
the Thirty who lived in Athens. But we do know that a
murder charge was brought against one or more of the Thirty
in 39g/398. 44 So at least one had passed his euthynai and re-
mained in the city, presumably living a quiet life (as much as
40
1soc. 7.67; Plato Menex. 243e.
"For example, 12.21-22, 37-40, 79, 81. See Wilamowitz, Aristoteles und
Athen 2.218-zo.
42
For example, 3, 50, 62.
.,Petrus Wesseling's suggestion that Isoc. 18.22 be emended from Philon
of Koile to Pheidon of Koile remains undemonstrated (Cloche, RestDem
345 n. 2).
«Lys. 10.31, with MacDowell, Athenian Homicide Law 66--67.
122
Aftermath
possible) apart from politics, at least until 399. (Lesser offi-
cials of the oligarchy may have had more success at euthynai:
those associated with Rhinon passed, and the speaker of Isoc-
rates' Against Callimachus calls on Rhinon and his synar-
chontes to witness part of his testimony, so that presumably
a number of the Ten were able to live in the city.) 45
The rest of the survivors, if any, were in exile. They had
been banned from some of the cities of Greece, but no doubt
found a welcome in others. 46 Other supporters of the oli-
garchy felt it more prudent not to return to Athens as well.
Lysias mentions oligarchic exiles sometime after 401/400,
probably soon thereafter. 47
Philochorus said that the Athenians made processional
implements from the property of the Thirty. 4ll From a late
lexicon we learn that magistrates known as syllogeis were
established to oversee these confiscations: "Syllogeis: magis-
trates elected by the people who drew up a list of the prop-
erty of the oligarchs. "49 A fragmentary inscription that has
been identified as a record of the sale of property of the
Thirty and the Eleven was inscribed in the archonship of
Micon, 402/401. 50 The stele lists only immovable property;
probabilities are that the sale of movable property had been
completed earlier. The restored democracy had taken action
quite quickly. Less than two years elapsed before the state
decided which of the oligarchic magistrates would pass their
euthynai. All the property of the rest was confiscated and
sold, even while many were still living at Eleusis. 51
"'AthPol 38.4: Isoc. 18.8.
"'Lys. 12.35.
"Lys. 25.24.
"FGrHist 328 F 181.
'"Immanuel Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 1 (Berlin 1814) 304.
50
See Chapter 2, n. 30.
"Loening's argument to the contrary ("Reconciliation Agreement" 76) is
based on his late date for Lys. 12.83, which I do not accept. His sugges-
tion (78-79) that this confiscation of property may have caused a border
dispute that led to the Athens-Eleusis war in 401/400 could be correct,
though one would expect the fighting to have broken out sooner.
123
The Thirty at Athens
-
After the move to Eleusis the group known as the Thirty
disappears from the historical record. The democracy de-
clared all actions and court decisions from the period of their
rule invalid. 52 Their sons were not banished from the city, but
we hear nothing of them.'.-1As time passed, the city healed its
wounds by blaming the disastrous events of 404/403 on the
leaders of the oligarchy. Even, or rather especially, their
former supporters found it useful to fend off criticisms for
what had happened by accusing the Thirty of "tyrannical" Conclusion: Was Failure Inevitable?
rule. Their legacy was bitter.
"Demos. 24.56.
"Demos. 40.32.
The sight of Thrasybulus' tomb in the Kerameikos in the
second century of the Christian era led the traveler Pausa-
nias to write a eulogy of the democratic hero that is all the
more striking by contrast with the scant notice given to the
more well-known Pericles. Thrasybulus was, according to
Pausanias,

in all respects the best of all famous Athenians, both before

and after. I shall omit the greater number of his achieve-
ments, but these actions will prove my judgment correct: he
put down the tyranny of the so-called Thirty, setting out from
Thebes with at first sixty men; he also persuaded the Athe-
nians, who were torn by civil war, to be reconciled and to
uphold their settlement. His grave is first, and after it come
those of Pericles, Chabrias, and Phormio. 1

What thoughts Thrasybulus had as he planned his upris-

ing we can only guess. One is likely to have been that
he ought to act as soon as possible, since the Thirty were
strengthening their position in the city and people were be-
coming accustomed to the new government. Better not to let
the oligarchy have an opportunity to work. Perhaps he hoped

'Paus. 1.29.3.
124 125
The Thirty at Athens
that the winter season would be to his advantage. A major
counterattack might have to wait until spring, and in any
case the Spartans might put off sending assistance to the
Thirty until the normal campaigning season. And he may
have hoped that the Lacedaemonians \Votild not help the
oligarchs at all. Not everyone in Sparta approved of the
power and influence wielded by Lysander, the man respon-
sible for the installation of the Thirty and (it seems) their
major booster in Sparta. Jealousy could lead to a change in
Spartan policy. But above all Thrasvbulus must have ex-
pected that Athenians in great numl;ers would flock to his
side. · too convenient.
They did not. In April 403, three months after he had
taken Phyle, Thrasybulus' forces numbered onlv 100 Athe-
nians (plus 300 foreigners and 300 mercenaries). While there
is little doubt that most Athenians wanted a democracy (as
shown by the oligarchs' inability to change the government
in the summer of 404 without Lysander's help), once the
Thirty were in power few were eager to take up arms against
them. The roots of Athenian democracy were perhaps shal-
lower than is often thought.
The Thirty's initial response to the news of the seizure of
Phyle was to lead out the 3,000 and to begin a siege. But a
heavy snowstorm helped to end the "campaign," if it can be
so dignified, by the second day. From January to April, the
oligarchs (so far as we know) took no action against Thrasybu-
lus. Why? Were they afraid to trust the 3,000? They had
not hesitated to use them at first, and the 3,000 later fought
(unsuccessfully, but there is no indication of lack of effort)
with the oligarchs at Munichia. On the other hand, the snow
led to a hasty retreat, and the presence of Spartan troops at
Munichia no doubt encouraged the 3,000, if encouragement
was necessary. It is also true that the Thirty did not allow
the 3,000 a very active role in the government. When they
felt the approval of a larger group necessary, they went to
the boule. But there was at least one meeting of the 3,000
126
Conclusion
(that which condemned the Eleusinians), and there might
have been others; and if the boule was active in the transi-
tional period, it presumably would have been phased out
eventually. The 3,000 were chosen with some care, we may
believe, and the figure 3,000 was probably chosen in part
because the oligarchs felt they could find that many trust-
worthy men. Even after the 3,000 deposed the Thirty, they
continued to fight the rebels without any attempt at negotia-
tion. One strongly suspects that the 3,000 were loyal oli-
garchs all along. Later assertions that the 3,000 were tyran-
nized by the Thirty cannot carry much weight; the excuse is
Another explanation would be that the Thirty were over-
confident. Nepos, a late source, says that Thrasybulus was at
first an object of contempt to the oligarchs. 2 He could be
correct. Thrasybulus might not survive the winter, the
Thirty could have reasoned-they must have been aware of
roughly how many men he had, and intended to prevent
further defections as much as possible-and a costly siege
might not be necessary. In addition they must have dis-
cussed with Lysander earlier the possibility of a future need
for Spartan military aid, and they presumably knew a request
for help would have Lysander' s support. They decided to
wait. It was probably an error.
Meanwhile they had to deal with Theramenes and his
suggested alternative, increasing the number of full citizens.
Theramenes seems to have gone along with the idea of re-
structuring Athenian government along Spartan lines, but he
wanted, as he had in 411, to include all hoplites. He could
marshal some strong arguments. His proposals, however,
would have meant a limited role for the gerousia (the Thirty)
and a major role for the assembly. Things may actually have
worked that way in Sparta, but such a system was not one
that most of the Thirty were prepared to accept.
'Thrasyb. 2.2.
127
The Thirty at Athens
In April the Thirty learned that Thrasybulus' forces were
growing, and that hundreds of foreigners had gone to Phyle
(including 300 mercenaries hired by Lysias). The oligarchs
decided to bring in mercenaries on their own side. (The civil
war in Attica in 403, with mercenaries fighting on both sides,
was in this respect an interesting precedent for the use of
mercenaries in fourth-century Greek warfare.) In tenns of
military strategy, the decision was sound. Callibius and his
700 Lacedaemonian hoplites ought to have been a match for
the 700 at Phyle. It was poor generalship in the field at
Acharnae (where the oligarchs were routed by a surprise
attack) and at Munichia (where they were defeated despite a
5-to-1 numerical advantage in hoplites) which prevented the
destruction of Thrasybulus.
Thrasybulus' success, then, was by no means inevitable;
Pausanias' admiration was well earned. Had Thrasybulus and
his forces been annihilated, what would have happened? Did
the Athenian oligarchy then have a realistic chance to suc-
ceed? One can only speculate. If the Thirty were compelled
to rely permanently on a Spartan garrison on the Acropolis,
they would no doubt have been overthrown eventually by a
plot like that which later brought down the Theban Leon-
tiades and the Spartan garrison on the Cadmea. But suppose
that Callibius came in, fought and killed Thrasybulus, and
then led his forces home (because of the expense, the Thirty
would surely have kept them as short a time as possible).
Would other rebellions have arisen? There is room for doubt.
If the Spartans had intervened quickly and effectively, their
action would have been an impressive deterrent to poten-
tial rebels. Presumably those Athenians most inclined to
fight the oligarchy had joined Thrasybulus, and the Thirty
had executed many other potential opposition leaders. If
Thrasybulus had failed, how many would have been left?
Even if another rebellion had started, would not the Spartans
have been ready to send troops in again? Pausanias did not
wish to put an end to oligarchy in Athens until he personally
128
Conclusion
had witnessed the extent of the Athenian opposition under
Thrasybulus in Piraeus. There is no reason to think that
Pausanias had objected to the original installation of the
Thirty or the dispatch of Callibius: he had good reason to
curb his jealousy of Lysander if the latter's policy secured, at
little cost, a friendly Athens. The more Spartan soldiers re-
quired to prop up the Thirty, of course, the more likely
Pausanias would have objected.
Given the Athenian situation in 4041'403,it is not too much
to believe that the Thirty might have succeeded, and that
Thrasybulus might have faded out of Athenian memory, as
had Isagoras and his 300 friends who fled to Eleusis in
508/507. We do not know their fate, only the death sentence
passed by the democracy. 3 So it might have been with Thrasy-
bulus and his men. Defeated, they would have been killed,
or exiled, or perhaps a1lowed to return to Attica stripped of
their property, and finally forgotten.
In a curious way it was foreigners that enabled Thrasybu-
lus to succeed. Men who did not have the vote fought to
preserve Athenian democracy, not because they expected to
become voting citizens, but because the radical restructuring
of society intended by the oligarchs would have meant either
their complete exclusion from Attica or their reduction to a
subservient role. For the Athenians, on the other hand, the
reforms might have had several beneficial effects. The strug-
gle for hegemony in Greece continued during the fourth
century in a debilitating series of wars significant primarily
for their costly inconclusiveness, leading to Macedonian con-
quest. Some Athenians may have foreseen in 404 the poten-
tial price of continued bickering among Greeks; the Pelopon-
nesian War set a clear enough example. Though the sources
are too hostile to be sure, the Thirty may have had some
insight here. At least their reforms would have alleviated or
ended some of the problems. Their Athens would have ac-
'Even that thanks only to Schol. Aristoph. Lysis. z73.
129
The Thirty at Athens
cepted the leadership of Sparta; their Athens would have
encouraged Athenians to go back to the land, making Attica
more self-sufficient; their Athens would have had a trained
regular army of 3,000 hoplites, ready to fight alongside
Sparta and the other allies of Sparta.
To say that the Thirty could have succeeded and that their
success could have had its positive side for Athens is not, of
course, to approve the means they were willing to use to
reach their goal. The fact that 1,500 people died as a result
of their rule, wherever and whatever the specific circum-
stances of each death, eloquently bespeaks their brutality.
But there was another side. The democrats, if by and large
they did Jive by the amnesty of 403, did not have entirely
dean hands. They had taken revenge on some of the Four
Hundred after the failure of the oligarchic revolution in 411,
and they treacherously murdered the leaders of the oli-
garchic remnant at Eleusis in 401. And Thrasybulus and
other democratic exiles began the civil war and precipitated
a harsher policy within the city. If Thrasybulus had not
acted, one suspects that far, far fewer than 1,500 would have
died. Nothing can justify unjust executions. But we ought to
remember-to balance the Chaucer quotation with which
we began-the monument erected to Critias, leader of the
Thirty, in an unknown city. A personified Oligarchy was
shown setting fire with a torch to Democracy. The epigram
read: "This memorial is for the good men who for a short
time restrained the accursed Athenian people from arro-
gance [hybris]. "◄
'FVorsokr 88 T 13. This might have been the earliest representation of
Demokratia as well as Oligarchia; see A. E. Raubitschek, "Demokratia,"
Hesperia 31 (1962) 238-43.
130
Appendix: Chronology
THE ORDER OF EVE:'\TS
At the heart of any interpretation of the Thirty is the
sequence of events in 404/ 403. The chronological chart on
the following two pages will aid the comparison of the four
major sources: Xenophon, Aristotle, Diodorus (first centu:)'
B.C.), and Justin (who wrote an epitome of the Augustan his-
torian Pompeius Trogus). As is readily apparent, there are
irreconcilable differences benveen the hvo oldest accounts.
According to Xenophon's Hellenica, soon after the oliga~ch_s
took power they asked Sparta for troops to help suppress dissi-
dents. Theramenes, one of the Thirty, was executed when he
protested against their restrictive, violent rule; Thrasybulus,
in exile at Thebes, started an armed resistance movement
that ultimately led to the restoration of the democracy. Aris-
totle's Athenaion Politeia follows an entirely different chro-
nology. Here the democratic exiles' rebellion began before
the Thirty executed Theramenes and brought in the Spa~an
garrison. The timing of the arrival o~ the La~edaemon_ian
hoplites, then, is the major point of dispute: did th~ Thirty
attempt to establish a working government on their own,
being forced to turn to Sparta for support only b~ the out-
break of civil war, or was the oligarchy in Athens, bke decar-
chies established by Lysander in other parts of the Aegean,
buttressed and sustained nearly from the start by a garrison
of foreign troops?
131
 Thrasyhulus invited to join oligarchy
Figure 2. Chronology of events according to four major sources 14.32.5 5.9. 13
Laconian The Thirty request help from Sparta
Aristotle Xenophon Diodorus Justin (Trogus) 14.32.6 5.9.14
garrison
Boule and other magistrates appointed arrives
35.1 2.3.11 14-4-2 37• 2
The Thirty defeated at Acharnae
Sycophants executed 2,4,4-7 14.33.1
.35-3 2.3.12 14+2 Eleusinians
Laconian garrison arrives
executed
z.3. 13-14 q-4-3-4 5.8.11
2,4,6-10
The excluded The Thirty defeated at Munichia
disarmed 2+ 10--19 14.33.2-3
2.3.20 l11e Thirty deposed
Metks executed 2,4,23 14.33.5
2.3.21-22
Niceratus and
others t'Xecuted
2.3.39-40 Though several studies favor Aristotle, 1 the current text-
Alcibiades dies
book view follows Xenophon on the grounds that he was a
.' .. TI1eramenes executed
14·5·3
5.8.12-14
contemporary and that Aristotle is biased in favor of Ther-
2.3.56 5·9- 2
TI1e excluded Niceratus and amenes. 2 The publication of the Florentine fragments of the
expelled others executed Oxyrhynchus historian (P) has led to a third argument: Diod-
from city 14.5.5-7
2+1
orus and Justin (Trogus) used Ephorus, whose account of
Metics executed mainland history for 411-386 depended on P; thus we have
14-5.6 an independent early-fourth-century tradition that confirms
Sparta commands allies to
surrender Athenian exiles Xenophon against the Athenaion Politeia .3
14.61. 5.9.4 This last argument against Aristotle, if correct, would cer-
Alcibiades dies
14.11.1-4
I tainly close the case; it merits close examination. Studies
Thrasybulus seizes Phyle have indeed shown that Diodorus and Justin (Trogus) both
37• 1 2.4.2 14.32.1 5.9.6
0

The TI1irty s army defeated in snowstorm 1Gaston Colin, Xenophon historien d'apres le livre II des Helleniques
37.1 2+3 14.32.2-,3 5.9. 10-11
Theramenes (hiver 40615 a 401/0) (Paris 1933) 41-43; Armbruster, "Uber die Herr-
executed schaft der Dreissig" 14-22; and above all Georg Busolt, "Aristoteles oder
37.2 Xenophon?," Hennes 33 (18g8) 71-86.
The excluded The excluded 'Hermann Bengtson, Griechische Geschichte5 (Munich 1977) 25g-6o;
disarmed disarmed Raphael Sealey, A History of the Greek City States ea. 700-338 B .C.
4
37- 2 5.9.11 (Berkeley 1976) 38o-85; Meiggs in his revision of Bury. History of Greece
Further brutal 539 n. 28 (Bury followed Aristotle); Edouard Will, Le monde grec et
measures [Orient (Paris 1972) 396--gS; N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Greece2
taken
(Oxford 1g67) 444 and 446 n. 3; Hannestad, De 30 Tyranner 202-11. For
37.2
The excluded expelled from city the case in favor of Xenophon, see Hignett, History of the Athenian
14.32.3 5.9.12 Constitution 384-8g.
3Adeleye, ''Theramenes: The End of a Controversial Career" 17; Lanzil-
Eleusinians
and Salaminians lotta, "Ricerche sulla guerra dvile ateniese" 135-40; Paul A. Rahe, "Ly-
executed sander and the Spartan Settlement, 407-403 B.C." (diss. Yale 1977) 255-56
1 4·32·4
n. 78.

132 133

Appendix: Chronology
followed Ephorns almost exclusively for this period. 4 As for
Ephorns' sources, let I. A. F. Bruce state the present com-
munis opinio: 5 In his study of Ephorus, G. L. Barber concluded that "it is
... the history of Diodorus, whose main source for the events
covered by both the Florence and London papyri was without
question the Oxyrhynchus historian, albeit with Ephoros as
intermediary, has been demonstrated to rest on such a source
for the whole period 411-386, and the assumption may fairly
be made that that source for the whole period, entirely inde-
pendent of the tradition preserved by Xenophon, was the
work of P.
Silvio Accame, whom Bruce cites in support of this asser-
tion, makes the suggestion but cannot be said to demon-
strate its validity. 6 All we can really say is that P appears to
have been the main source for Ephorus' account of the years
410-407 and 396-395 (the years to which the Oxyrhynchus
fragments refer),; and that it has been argued that P was
Ephorus' source for certain other events in this period, such
as the Arginusae trial and the battles of Cyzicus, Mytilene,
'On Diodorus, see E. Schwartz, "Diodoros," RE 5 (1905) 679; F. Jacoby,
FGrHist 2C (1926) 33-34; Catherine Reid (Rubincam), "Diodoros and His
Sources" (diss. Harvard 1g6g, summarized in HSCP 75 [1971] 205-7); H.
R. Breitenbach, "Hellenika Oxyrhynchia," RE suppl. 12 (1970) 413.
On Jnstin, see Maria Gabriella Bertinelli Angeli and Marta Giacchero,
Atene e Sparta nella storiografia trogiana (415-400 a .C.), Pubblicazione
dell' Istituto di Storia antica, Universita di Genova 12 (Genoa 1974) 300-
302, where Giacchero concluded that Ephorus was the primary source for
404-400, although Theopompus was used as well.
'I. A. F. Bruce, An Historical Commentary on the 'Hellenica Oxyrhyn-
chia' (Cambridge 1g67) 4.
6
Silvio Accame, Ricerche intorno al/a guerra corinzia (Naples 1951)
5-20.
'A new fragment of the Oxyrhynchus historian further supports this
judgment (see Ludwig Koenen, "Papyrology in the Federal Republic of
Germany and Fieldwork of the International Photographic Archive in
Cairo," Studia Papyrologica 15 [1976] 3s-79); Diod. 13.64.1 on Thrasyllus'
expedition to Ionia in 409 derives from P.
134
Appendix: Chronology
and Aegospotami: 8 a far cry from specific proof that Ephorus'
source for events at Athens in 404 was P.
evident that he [Ephorus] was not satisfied with a single
account for a given period, but that he appears on occasions
to have enlarged, or altered, the information of this chief
authority by the adoption of at least one secondary and
minor source." 9 Can Ephorus have used Xenophon to sup-
plement or replace P for his account of the Thirty?
A comparison of Diodorus 14.4 with Xenophon 2.3.11-14
shows that for the beginning of the Thirty's rule Ephorus
followed Xenophon. 10
Xenop/1011 Diodorns
The Thirty were elected as soon as It was the duty of those elected [the
Thirty] to establish a boule and the
the long walls and the walls around
Piraeus were taken down; and being other magistrates [boulen te kai tas
elected for the purpose of writing alias archas katastesai] and to v.Tite
laws according to which they would laws according to which they would
govern [syngrapsai nomous kath' govern [kai nomous syngrapsai kath'
houstinas politeusointo] they put off hous emellon politeuesthai]. They
writing and publishing the laws, but kept postponing the drawing up of
laws, always giving fine-sounding
they established the boule and the
8Cyzicus: Robert J. Littmann, 'The Strategy of the Battle of Cyzicus,"
TAPA 99 (1g68) 265-72; Arginusac trial: Andrewes, "Arginousai Trial" 120;
Aegospotamoi: Christopher Ehrhardt, "Xenophon and Diodorus on Aeg-
ospotami," Phoenix 24 (1970) 225-28; \tytilenc (and Cyzicus): Paul Pcd-
ech, "Batailles navales clans les historiens grecs," REG 82 (1g6g) 43-55.
•G. L. Barber, The Historian Ephorns (Cambridge 1935) 156. For exam-
ple, Ephorus had at least two sources for 396--395; in the preliminaries to
the battle of Sardis, Diodorus (14.Bo.2) mentions the ravaging of the plain
of Sardis and the park of Tissaphcrncs, which are not found in the Hell.
Oxy. (clearly the main authority). Bruce, following Ch. Dugas, suggested
a transposition of later plundering to this point in the story, an idea I find
unpersuasive (Historical Commentary 79).
'°For other suggestions that Ephorus used Xenophon, at least as a sup-
plementary source, see G. A. Lehmann, "Ein neues Fragment der Hell.
Oxy.: Einige Bemerkungcn zu P. Cairo (temp. inv. no.) 26/6/27'1-35," ZPE
26 (1977) 181-g1; V. J. Gray, 'The Years 375 to 371 BC: A Case Study in
the Reliability of Diodorus Siculus and Xenophon," CQ 74 (1g8o) 325-26.
1 35
 Appendix: Chronology Appendix: Chronology
other magistrates as it seemed best excuses. but they established the ous].and they promised to maintain oppose them on behalf of the com-
to them [boulen de kai tas alias houlc and the other magistrates from the troops at their own expense. mon security [tes koines asphaleias].
archas katestesan hus edokei autois]. their 1wrnmal friends [boulen de kai
tas alias archas ek tcin idion phi/on Diodorus omits the names of Aeschines and Aristotles, and
katcs/('.1·1111].
so that these were
the fact that the Thirty offered to pay for the garrison. The
called magistrates but were actuallv
the scr\ants of the Thirty. · tone of the last sentence, particularly in the contrast between
phonoi and asphaleia, is again strongly antioligarchical.
The wording here shows some striking similarities. Diod-
orus adds the note that the Thirty gave excuses for not pub- Lysander was persuaded and worked When the Lacedaemonians sent a
lishing the laws (which need be no more than a guess, possi- with them to have tr()(>ps sent and garrison and a commander, Cal-
bly even incorrect, on his or Ephorus' part). He expands Callibius as harmost. When they re- libius, the Thirty flattered the com-
ceived the garrison, they flattered mander excessively [exetherapeusanl
Xenophon's hos edokei autois into a more negative assess- Callibius in every way [etherapeuon with gifts and other favors, and,
ment of the Thirty's selection of magistrates. pasei therapeiai], so that he would selecting the capable men [tous
approve whatever they did, and epitedeious] from the rich men,
Then first they arrested and put on At first, bringing to trial the worst he sent troops to accompany them they arrested them on the grounds
trial for their lives those men whom men [tous por1erotatousJin the city, as they arrested whomever they that they were revolutionaries, put
all knew had made their living un- they condemned them to death; and wished, no longer the bad men [t0tis them to death, and confiscated their
der the democracy from sycophancy so far their actions pleased the most ponerous] and those worth little, property.
[apo sykophantias] and had been of- able [tois epieikestatoisJ of the citi- but now those whom they thought
fensive to the aristocrats [tois kalois zens. would least submit to being pushed
kagathois]; and the boule gladly aside, and would have the most sup-
condemned them, and the others-- porters if they attempted any op-
at least those who knew thev were position.
not like the convieted me;1--did
not object. Again Diodorus narrates the same events that appear in Xen-
ophon, and once again he adds an anti-Thirty twist. His
Here Diodorus does little more than summarize Xenophon, phrasing suggests that the Thirty falsely accused their vic-
though he does take the sycophants to be, in perhaps a more tims of being revolutionaries in order to take their posses-
general sense, the ponerotatoi. sions. But Xenophon elsewhere gives more than a hint of
this view of the Thirty: 'They put many people to death out
But when they began to consider But after this, wishing to do more
how they might be able to do with of personal enmity, and many also for the sake of securing
violent and illegal things, they asked
the city as they pleased, thev first their property." 11
the Lacedaemonians for a garrison
sent Aeschincs and Aristoteics to [phrouran], saying that they were Diodorus then continues with a brief account of the split
Lacedacmon and persuaded Lysan- establishing a government advanta- between Theramenes and Critias, and of the trial of Ther-
der to help them get garrison troops geous to the Lacedaemonians. For amenes, all of which-from the accusation brought by Critias
[phrourous]. until they could estab- they knew that they could not com-
lish their government firmly by re- (betrayal of the oligarchy) and the assertion that the boule
mit murders [phonous] without for-
moving the bad men [tous poner- eign troops, since all men would "Xen. 2.3.21.
136
137
Appendix: Chronology
sided with Theramenes to the latter's dramatic leap to the
altar, claiming sanctuary--could have been condensed from
Xenophon. In 14-1-4, then, Diodorus follows the facts of
Xenophon's narrative closely. Both authors describe, in pre-
cisely the same order: ( 1) the delay in drawing up laws; (2)
the appointment of magistrates; (3) the execution of certain
persons, which met with general approval; (4) the request for
and arrival of the Spartan garrison; (5) the attention paid
to Callibius, so that he aided the Thirty in arresting more
prominent citizens; (6) the split between Critias and Thera-
menes; (7) the trial of Theramenes. In fact, Diodorus follows
Xenophon more closely here than he does P in, for example,
the battle at "the Homs" or the battle of Notion. 12
Strict verbal parallels between Diodorus and Xenophon
are few. But how many could fairly be expected? Jonas
Palm's study of Diodorus' style concludes that "despite his
complete dependence in regard to content, he paraphrased
and modernized the language according to his own taste." 13
Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt's words about Diodorus
and P in the original publication of the H ellenica Oxyrhyn-
chia could be applied to Diodorus and Xenophon here: " ...
though the general agreement between them is very close,
the verbal coincidences are not on the whole very striking. "14
If the lack of verbal coincidences between Diodorus and P is
not an obstacle to the belief that Ephorus followed P for
1
2Cf. Diod. 13.65.1-2 with Hell. Oxy. 1.1, and Diod. 13.71.2-4 with Hell.
Oxy. 4.
13
]onas Palm, Ober Sprache und Stil des Diodoros von Sizilien (Lund
1955) 63 (my translation). P. Oxy. 1610, ascribed to Ephorus, has been
thought to show that Diodorus "was a writer of very slight originality"
(Bernhard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 13
[London 1919] 111), but Catherine Reid Rubincam has recently argued
that the similarities have been exaggerated and depend partly on faulty
restorations ("A Note on Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1610," Phoenix 28 [1976]
357-66; see also her earlier article, "Ephoros Fragment 76 and Diodoros
on the Cypriote War," Phoenix 28 [1974] 123-43).
1
•Bernhard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 5
(London 1908) 137.
138
Appendix: Chronology
396-395, neither should the lack of verbal coincidences be-
tween Diodorus and Xenophon hinder us from maintaining
that Ephorus followed Xenophon for 404.
Admittedly there is material in 14.4.1, 3 and 4 without
parallel in Xenophon, usually motives ascribed to the Thirty.
Diodorus (or Ephorus) was certainly willing on occasion to
expand on his source. A comparison of Diodorus with the
Florentine papyrus of P, for example, reveals three instances
in which Diodorus (or Ephorus) has added a motive of some
kind: in 13.65.2 Diodorus adds an explanation of the Athe-
nians' pursuit of the Megarians rather than the Spartans
(they were angered by the Megarians' seizure of Nisaea); in
13.71.2 he states that Antiochus was "eager to accomplish
some brilliant deed on his own account," an assertion that
has no parallel in P; and in 13. 71.3 he says that Lysander
"decided that the favorable time had come for him to strike a
blow worthy of Sparta," again without parallel in P. The
particular character of the additions in 14. 4 can be explained
by Ephorus' liking for moral lessons in history, made strik-
ingly clear here by the preface to Book 14:
Probably all men dislike hearing slanders against themselves.
Even those whose wickedness is so plain in every respect that
it cannot be denied are nevertheless indignant when they are
censured and try to respond to the accusation. Therefore all
men must guard in every way against doing anything wrong,
particularly those who strive for leadership or who have re-
ceived some remarkable good luck; for the life of these men,
since in all respects it is conspicuous because of their distinc-
tion, is unable to hide personal incapacity. Therefore let no
one who has achieved some preeminence hope that, if he
commits great wrongs, he will permanently escape notice and
go uncensured. For even if he escapes censure during his
lifetime, let him expect that the truth will find him later and
will openly proclaim what had long been kept secret. It is
difficult, then, for wicked men to leave to posterity an immor-
tal image, as it were, of their entire life. For even if what
139
Appendix: Chronology
happens after death nwans nothing to us. as some of the phi-
losophers keep repeating, the preceding lifo becomes far
worse for all time. being remembered for evil. Readers will
find clear examples of this detailed in this hook.
At Athens, for example, thirty men \vho became tyrants out
of their own greed involved their native land in great misfor-
tunes, soon lost power themselves, and have left behind
undying disgrace. 1'
This preface leads us quite plainly to expect pointed remarks
such as the additions to Xenophon's basic narrative we find
in Diodorus 14-4- The Thirty are to he held up as an exam-
ple of evil rulers whose reputation lived on long after their
deaths. Here, then, is the reason for Ephorus' choice of
Xenophon as his source at this point: Xenophon's treatment
of the Thirty emphasized those tyrannical, greedy actions
that Ephorus wanted to stress. If Ephorus used Xenophon
for that part of the story which included the arrival of the
Spartan garrison, he obviously cannot be claimed as an inde-
pendent authority who can confirm Xenophon.
Elsewhere Ephorus obviously followed another source,
since he included material not found in Xenophon; this other
source, Georg Busolt suggested, was the main authority for
the account of the Thirty in the Athenaion Politeia. 16 In 14-3
Diodorus gives an account of the installation of the Thirty
which mentions only two groups in Athens, the oligarchs and
the democrats (cf. Aristotle's three), and which portrays
Theramenes as opposing the overthrow of the democracy.
This might be, as A. Andrewes has variously described it,
15
Diodorus' prefaces arc commonly believed to go back to Ephorus, on
the basis of Polyb. 12. 18.10 ( = FG,-Hist 70 T 23): "Ephorus ... is most
eloquent in his digressions and in the expression of his personal judg-
ment." See Barber, Historian Ephoms 6g, and Jacoby's commentary in
FG,-Hist. For another view, see Robert Drews, "Diodorus and his Sources,"
AJP 83 (1962) 383--92.
16
8usolt, "Aristoteles oder Xenophon?"
Appendix: Chronology
"sentimental nonsense" or "mere perversion of history. " 17 But
two points suggest that Diodorus (Ephorus) and Aristotle are
following the same source here: (1) Diodorus agrees with
Aristotle that the peace treaty of 404 stipulated that Athens
have the patrios politeia; (2) a striking verbal coincidence
occurs between Diodorus 14.3.7, "therefore Theramenes
and the people, being terrified, were compelled to over-
throw the democracy by a vote" (ho demos kataplageis
enagkazeto xeirotoniai katalysai ten demokratian), and the
Athenaion Politeia 34.3, "being terrified, the people were
compelled to vote the oligarchy" (kataplageis ho demos enag-
kasthe cheirotonein ten oligarchian). Diodorus (Ephorus) has
probably condensed three parties into two. His account of
Theramenes' actions could be correct, if incomplete and
one-sided.
Diodorus, Justin, and Aristotle largely agree on the se-
quence of events after Theramenes' death (though some in-
cidents are not mentioned by all three writers), and their
chronology differs from Xenophon' s at several important
points. The execution of Niceratus (Diodorus), the execution
of the metics (Diodorus), and the disarming of the excluded
(the Athenaion Politeia and Justin) all occur after the death of
Theramenes, contrary to Xenophon. The expulsion of th~
excluded, which Xenophon places between Theramenes
death and the occupation of Phyle, occurs in Diodorus and
Justin after Phyle. Finally-and this point is crucial-Dio?-
orus (14.32.6) and Justin (5.9. 14) record a request for aid
from Sparta which is not easy to explain on the basis of their
chronology, since the Lacedaemonian garrison is already
present and has not yet been defeated at Acharn~e. B~t this
request parallels the initial appeal for the garrison m th_e
Athenaion Politeia, and could be explained by the hypothesis
that the source being followed here originally followed the
1%e first phrase in "Lysias and the Theramenes Papyrus" 37; the second
in "Arginousai Trial" l 19.
 Appendix: Chronology
chronology of the Atluhwi{>n Politeia. and was revised by
Ephorus to fit with (or at least not blatantly to contradict) the
portion of Xenophon he had followed earlier. 16
Busolt suggested Androtion as the source shared by Ephor-
us and Aristotle. l1nknown to Busolt was the Oxyrhynchus
historian, now agreed to ht• Ephorus· main authority for this
period, and therefore the most prominent candidate for the
source of Athenaion Politeia 34-,3-40 as well. That Aristotle
knew and used P seems to me a plausible and suggestive
hypothesis. In 1893 Wilarnowitz observed that the character
of Athenaion Politeia 34-3-40 is unlike that of the rest of the
treatise; the section forms a cohesive unit with a detailed and
convincing narrative. Wilamowitz suggested that here Aris-
totle really did the job of a historian, that here he did his
own research rather than follow another author. 19 But it is
more likely that he followed another writer here as he most
often did elsewhere. The character of this part of the Athe-
naion Politeia can be better explained by the theory that
Aristotle was following P. Note Aristotle's unusual descrip-
tion of three factions in Athens after the peace of 404; Aris-
totle normally thought in terms of only two factions, as his
list of leaders in Athenai6n Politeia 28 shows (the three
parties at the time of Pisistratus are a notable exception). P
described three factions in Athens just before the outbreak
of the Corinthian War: 00 did he customarily use a tripartite
division to describe Athenian politics? Is this a further clue
that Aristotle followed P? I suggest, then, the relationship
shown in Figure 3.
The hypothesis that the Athenaion Politeia's main source
was P puts the chronological debate in a different perspec-
tive. P is generally agreed to have been "a contemporary
18
• 1 would see anoth~r change in the narrative of the source being foliowed
m 14.32.4, where D1odorus (or Ephorus) added "and with foreign troops
they controlled the city" on the basis of Xenophon.
'"Aristoteles und Athen 1.121-23.
"'See, 6(1(2-3, with Bruce, Historical Commentary 52-54, and Hamilton,
Sparta s Bitter Victories 171-73.
Appendix: Chronology
Hellenica
Xeno~ /IP)~ Oxyrhynchia
/ho~ A~:;:::•
Trogus Diodorus
I
Justin
Figure 3. Proposed relationship of the main sources
source of high objectivity and good understanding of histor-
ical causalitv. "21 Bruce states flatly that he believes the Oxy-
rhynchus h·istorian "is a more reliable source than Xeno-
phon. "22 At the least, his chronology for the rule of the Thirty
deserves equal consideration with that of Xenophon. Can we
choose between the two?
Aristotle (P) is more satisfactory in one important respect:
he provides a good explanation of the need for the Spartan
garrison. The Thirty, he says, were threatened by armed
rebels in Attica. Reflection suggests that Aristotle's sequence
of events makes more sense in the context. Compare the
situation of the Thirty to that of the Four Hundred in 411.
Theramenes was again a moderate member of the oligarchy,
and Thrasybulus again led armed opposition. But instead of
"H. R. Breitenbach, "Hellenika Oxyrhynchia," RE suppl. 12 (1970) 423
(my translation).
nHistorical Commentary 21. See also the articles mentioned in n. 8. On
the other hand, J. K. Anderson ('The Battle of Sardis," CSCA 7 [1975]
27-53) preferred Xenophon; Lotze (LysanPelopKr 31-37, on Aegospotami)
refused to choose between Xenophon and P; and Hans R. Breitenbach
("Die Seeschlacht bei Notion (407fo6)," Historia 20 [ 1971] 152-71) main-
tained that Xenophon and P must be combined.
Appendix: Chronology
leading a successful internal revolt, Theramenes was exe-
cuted; instead of having the major part of the Athenian war
fleet, Thrasybulus had only seventy men when he began his
rebellion against the Thirty; instead of trying to lead a war
against the Lacedaemonians, the Thirty counted the Spar-
tans among their strongest supporters and firmest friends.
The year 404 was not 411. This time the oligarchs had a
much better opportunity to establish the government they
wanted. Were they satisfied to he only another of Lysander's
decarchies, propped up by a garrison with a Spartan har-
most? Or were they men with plans for permanent, viable
change in Athenian government, who were-as they saw
it-compelled to bring in foreign troops to face an armed
threat at Phyle? Other evidence (the accounts of the trea-
surers of Athena, for example) indicates at least that the
Thirty's rule was more regular than Xenophon would have us
believe. Moreover, if the Athenian oligarchs were trying to
imitate the Spartan system, they saw themselves as some-
thing other than a decarchv.
C. Hignett found Aristotie's account inferior to Xenophon's
in internal probability. z.1According to Hignett, the course of
events in the Athenaion Politeia is "unintelligible," since the
Athenians allowed themselves to be "slaughtered like sheep"
and did not help Theramenes, before the garrison arrived
and when they were still armed. But there is no need to
interpret the Athenaion Politeia as saying the Athenians were
"slaughtered like sheep" before the arrival of the garrison;
the figure 1,500 given at 35.4 was probably the total number
of Athenians killed during the revolution. Nor is the garrison
needed to explain the death of Theramenes, since the Thirty
provided a number of young men armed with daggers for the
purpose of whatever intimidation was necessary. It is rather
naive to think that the fact that the excluded were still armed
"'History of the Athenian Constitution 387.
144
Appendix: Chronology
made any difference. Armed or unarmed, the Athenians
could have resisted had they wanted to, with knives, axes,
sickles, anything (cf. Cinadon's plans for revolt in Sparta).
Xenophon' s entire narrative (though more subtly than
Diodoms') stresses the tyrannical nature of the Thirty. The
Thirty acquire a mercenary bodyguard (cf. Pisistratus, Diony-
sius of Syracuse, and other tyrants), execute the best of
their potential opponents (remember Thrasybulus' famous
parable of the ears of corn), 24 and disarm the excluded (dis-
arming the people was characteristic of oligarchies and tyran-
nies, according to Aristotle). 25 Xenophon uses the verb tyr-
annein and he makes Critias compare the Thirty's rule to a
tyranny. 00 On the other hand, Xenophon presents Thera-
menes as the voice of reason and moderation, particularly in
the pair of speeches he gives to Theramenes and Critias,
here representing the radicals. 27 These speeches (which take
up a disproportionate amount of space) and the execution of
Theramenes, which follows, bring out the oppressive nature
of the oligarchy. If Aristotle's chronology is correct, this
memorable picture of the contrast between Critias and Ther-
amenes is in part a creation of the artist rather than a mirror
image of events. Critias was not the only extremist leader,
and Theramenes was not alive to witness some of the events
he mentions in the speech Xenophon has put into his mouth
(e.g., the arrival of the garrison, the disarmament of the
excluded, and the execution of the metics).
For Xenophon, who had probably served in the cavalry I /
that supported the Thirty, this representation might have I
2-<Hdt.5.92.
""Pol.1311a.
"'Xen. 2.4.1 and 2.3. 16, respectively.
27
All the speeches in Book 2 are best seen as compositions of Xenophon,
rather than "'transcriptions" of what was actually said (so Colin, Xenophon
historien 44-57). For another view, see S. Usher, "Xenophon, Critias,
and Theramenes," JHS 88 (1g68) 1z8..-3s; A. P. Dorjahn and W. D. Fair-
child, "On Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.24-49," CB 51 (1975) 6o-62.
1 45
Appendix: Chronology
had certain practical advantages. By claiming they had been
forced to submit to a cruel and oppressive government, men
who had remained in Athens during the oligarchy rid them-
selves of blame and condemnation for events in 404"403,
even if they had supported the Thirty wholeheartedly at the
time. Lysias' Against Eratosthenes appeals to such men by
exonerating them in precisely this way:
... all you from the city, consider that you were ruled so
oppressively by these men [the Thirty] that you were e,-om-
pelled to fight a war against your brothers and your sons and
your fellow citizens, a war in which defeat has given you equal
rights with the victors, whereas victory would have made you
the slaves of these men. They have enriched themselves
greatly by their conduct, while you have less because of the
civil war. They did not sec fit to share their advantages with
you, though they compelled you to be slandered with them;
and they became so disdainful that they expcct<"d to gain your
support by having you share their disgrace, instead of gaining
your loyalty by sharing their benefits. In return, now that you
are secure, punish them as much as you can, both on your
own behalf and on behalf of the men from Piraeus. Reflect
that you were ruled by these most wicked men; reflect that
you now have the best men with you as fellow citizens both in
fighting the enemy and in deliberating on politics; and re-
member the mercenaries whom these men stationed in the
Acropolis as guards of their rule and of your slavery. Vi
Was Xenophon doing the same thing? Exiled from Athens,
possibly in part for his connections with the oligarchs of 404, 29
he may have hoped that his Hellenica would facilitate his
return to his native city. 3()
To sum up: Ephorus conflated Xenophon and P for his
"'Lys. 12.92-94.
"'W. E. Higgins, Xenophon the Athenian (Albany 1977) 22-24.
"'One could further speculate that we have here the reason for the change
in Xenophon's attitude toward Theramenes which Andrewes has noted
("Arginousai Trial" 114), from a negative attitude in 1.7 and 2.2.16 to a
146
Appendix: Chronology
account of the Thirty, with some resulting confusion. Aris-
totle, though he knew Xenophon (Athenaion Politeia 35.1
and 36. 1-2 look borrowed from Xenophon), followed ex-
clusively the chronology of P. No matter how persuasively
the case against Xenophon may be argued, final proof will be
lacking; but it seems to me that if we weigh Xenophon against
Aristotle (P) without prejudice, the scales of probability
come down in Aristotle's favor. I therefore follow P's order
of events, as reconstructed from Aristotle, Diodorus, and
Justin.
JULIA~ DATES
Three dates continue to be advocated for the election of
the Thirty: April, shortly after Athens' surrender; 31 June/July,
about the end of the normal prytany year/ 2 September, just
before Lysander' s return to Sparta at the end of the summer. :i-1
positive treatment in 2.3. On stylistic grounds there seems to be a break
at 2.3. 10 (sec Malcolm MacLaren, Jr., "On the Composition of Xenophon' s
Hellenica, .. AJP 55 [1934] 121-39, 24g--62, with bibliographical references).
Without adopting Edouard Delebecque's speculation that Xenophon was
Thucydidcs' apprentice (Essai sur la vie de Xenophon (Paris 1957] 39-54),
we might still believe that the criticism of Theramenes was written early,
and reflects Xenophon' s resentment of Theramcnes' failure to support the
Thirty fully in 404/403; some years later Xcnophon saw the advantage of
bringing out the oppressive side of the oligarchy. My major point can
stand even if the Hellenica was composed as a unit at a late date, as is now
argued hy some scholars, e.g., Higgins, Xenophon the Athenian 101. An-
other solution would be to ascribe Xenophon's portrayal of the Thirty
more generally to his interest in moral judgments, as emphasized by
Christopher Grayson, "Did Xenophon Intend to Write History?," in The
Ancient Historian and His Materials: Essays in Honour of C. E. Stevens
(Westmead 1975) 31-43.
"Lotze, LysanPelopKr g6-g7; Will, Monde grec 1.3g6.
"Hanncstad, De 30 Tyranner 202-8; Hignett, History of the Athenian
Constitution 378-83; Lehmann, "Rcvolutioniire ~fachtergreifung der
'Dreissig'" 213.
"Gabriel Adeleye, "Studies in the Oligarchy of the Thirty" (diss. Prince-
ton 1971) 194-205; Bury and ~1eiggs, History of Greece 4 318; Hackl,
"Oligarchische Bewegung in Athen" 81-95.
147
Appendix: Chronology
I omit discussion of attempts to deduce the date of the be-
ginning of the Thirty's rule from the date of their fall, all of
which are inconclusive. 14 The later date is uncertain and many
other estimations are involved as well.
.
Lvsias and Andocides mention the Thirtv. directlv, after
the surrender and the dismantling of the walls, without any
suggestion of a time lapse.'' The orators linked these events,
however, because they saw a causal connection between the
peace and the oligarchy, not because the events took place
within a few days. In fact the dismantling of the walls took
some time (see below). Plutarch does say unequivocally that
Lysander, after taking the city, changed the constitution im-
mediately (euthys). 36 But because Plutarch has compressed
many events together here-he also says that Lysander in-
stalled a garrison under Callibius at that time-he should be
disregarded.
The strongest argument for an April date comes from Xen-
ophon, who mentions the installation in two places. 37 The first
states that after the selection of the Thirty, Lysander sailed
off to Samos and Agis led the Spartan army home from De-
celea. This sequence of events is contradicted by Diodorus,
who says that Lysander was summoned back to Athens by
the oligarchs after he took Samos. 31! Lysias also reports that
Lysander was called back to Athens from Samos. 39 To get
around this difficulty, scholars have bracketed portions of
Xenophon's text as interpolated; 2.3. 1-2 probably belongs to
a series of interpolated passages in the first two books of the
Hellenica. 40 'When 2.3. 1-2 is excised, 2.3. 11 becomes the
"E.g., Lenschau, «Triakonta" 2357-61.
"'Lys. 13.34; Andoc. 1.8o.
:v,Lysan. 15.5.
"'Xen. 2.3.1-2, 11.
38Diod. 14.3.4-5.
39
Lys. 12. 71.
"'Beloch, Griechische Geschichte 2 3.2.204-7. This view has been chal-
lenged by Antony E. Raubitschek, "Die sogenannten Interpolationen in
den ersten beiden Biichem von Xenophons 'Griechische Geschichte,'"
Akten des VI Internationalen Kongresses fur Griechische und Lateinische
Epigraphik (Munich 1973) 315-25, but see the defense of Detlef Lotze,
148
Appendix: Chronology
first mention of the Thirty in Xenophon, and the expurgated
version, like Diodorus', puts the installation of the Thirty
after the fall of Samos.
The case for an April election, then, is thin. Other evi-
dence outweighs it convincingly. The election was held after
the time agreed upon for the destruction of the walls had
elapsed. •1 The allotted time for dismantling the long walls and
the Piraeus fortifications must have been fairly long-more,
at least, than several weeks. More specifically, Aristotle says
the Thirty were installed in the archonship of Pythodorus,
which would normally have begun in late June or early July. 42
Since Pythodorus was chosen during the oligarchy, 43 the year
404"403 apparently began without a designated archon, and
Pythodorus' name was later used to refer to the entire year
(as was the case with Eucleides in 403"402). Th. Lenschau
tried to argue that Pythodorus was the regularly chosen
archon for 404"403 and that the only irregularity was that he
and the Thirty took office before the regular end of 4osf404
(cf. the Four Hundred in 411).44 But "during the oligarchy"
can refer only to the period after the Thirty began their rule.
In 404 the oligarchs did not control Athenian politics before
they officially took power, as they had done in 411.
To reach an undisputed decision between the middle and
the end of the summer is not possible. We know that Lysan-
der returned to Sparta at the end of the summer. 45 Presuma-
bly he sailed from Athens, taking with him the surrendered
Athenian ships, after the Thirty were installed. The Thirty,
"War Xenophon selbst der lnterpolator seiner Hellenika I-II?," Philologus
118 (1974) 215-17. IfRaubitschek is correct, the statements in 2.3.1-2 can
be taken as a preview of the coming year, and touton de prachthenton in
2.3.3 can be interpreted as referring back to .the events in 2.2.23 rather
than to the installation of the Thirty; see Oskar Blank, "Die Einsetzung
der Dreissig zu Athen im Jahre 404 v. Chr." (diss. Freiburg im Breisgau
1911) 2.
"Diod. 14.3.6; Plut. Lysan. 15.
"AthPol 35. 1.
43
Xen. 2.3. l.
«Lenschau, "Triakonta" 2361-62; cf. Lotze, LysanPelopKr 97.
0
Xen. 2.3.9.
149
Appendix: Chronology
then, were most likely elected near the end of the summer,
perhaps in early September; but they could have been
chosen earlier if Lysander delayed his departure for home. 46
According to Cleocritus' speech in Xenophon 2.4.21, the
rule of the Thirty lasted eight months, so that it ended in
~fay 403 if we date the installation to September 404. A few
days later the democrats were collecting wood and fruit (op-
ora). 47 When were opora available? Scholars have argued for a
variety of dates from December to :Mav,4h but the onlv real
evidence is from Polybius; it suggests the first half of sum-
mer: "Philip . . . dismissed all the Mace<lonians for the
harvest of the opora, and he himself, returning to Thessaly,
spent the rest of the summer in Larissa. "49 Approximately the
same time is indicated by Isocrates, who savs that the men of
Piraeus destroyed the grain in the field, ob~·iouslv before the
arrival of Lysander. 50 • from attacking Phyle immediately.
"'Colin (Xenophon historien 34 n. 1) notes an "indirect confirmation'" of
the September date in the eclipse that Xcnophon indicates took place
"about this time'" (kata de touton ton kairon, 2.3.4). The eclipse was on 3
September 404. hut Xenophon is too vague about its temporal relation to
the events in Athens for us to consider it eonclusivc evidence.
Any date for the installation between July and Oetober mles out the
chronology advocated by Luciano Gianfrancesco, "Su alcuni problemi
cronologici della guerra civile Ateniese nel 404-403 a. C .. " RendlstLomb
106 (1972) 397-406.
''Xen. 2.4.25.
"Beloch (Griechische Geschichte 2 3.2.209) argued that opora meant olives
and apples, which were available in late autumn, perhaps December;
Lehmann ("Revolutioniire Machtergreifung der 'Dreissig"' 219 n. 47) sug-
gested that the opora could have been stored in cellars and so been
ai:ound yet in ,\:larch/April; Colin (Xenoplwn historie11 66), citing the Poly-
b1us passage, argued for June. Busolt even suggested that oporan be
emended to ospria (Gcorg Busolt and Heinrich Swoboda, Griechische
Staatskunde 2 (,Munich 1926] 912-13 n. 7).
"Polyb. 4.66. 7.
'°lsoc. 16.13, with Beloch. Griechische Geschichte2 3.2. 210 .
Judeich tried to put Critias' death five months before the reconciliation
(that is, in May, five months before October) by emending a mangled
fragment of Philochoms, but a number of other emendations are possible.
See Philochorus, FGrHist 328 F 143.
150
Appendix: Chronology
The rule of the Thirty, then, lasted from September 404 to
:May 403. Within those limits events can be dated roughly.
According to Aristotle, winter had already begun when the
Thirty made their first unsuccessful attack on Phyle,; 1 so
Thrasybulus took Phyle in, say, January 404. There followed
the defeat of the Thirty" s army, which led to the execution of
Theramenes and others, the disarming of the excluded, and
the request for a garrison from Sparta. Isocrates 4- 113 may
indicate that the most brutal period of the oligarchy (after
Theramenes' death) lasted about three months, so that Ther-
amenes would have died about February 403. 52 The garrison
should have arrived from Sparta shortly before the fight at
Acharnae, which preceded the battle of Munichia by only
four days. The garrison arrived in April 403, then, or it
might have come earlier and been prevented by bad weather
The festival that celebrated the return of the men from
Piraeus took place on 12 Boedromion, or about the begin-
ning of October. 53 Aristotle's apparently conflicting statements
that the reconciliation took place during the archonship of
Eucleides and that the democracy was restored during the
archonship of Pythodorus are to be explained by the sup-
position that Eucleides' name was sometimes used to desig-
nate the entire official year 403"402, although he did not take
Another indecisive argument is that put forward by Lehmann, '"Rcvolu-
tioniirc \lachtcrgrcifung der 'Dreissig"" 219 n. 48. Lehmann argues that
since \lantithcos sailed from the Pontus and arrived at Athens five davs
before the men from Phyle returned to Piraeus (Lys. 16.4-5), the retu~
(i.e., the battle of \luniehia) must be dated to mid-Mareh, when the
sailing season began. But \1antitheus need not have begun to sail as soon
as it was possible to do so; the incident shows only that the battle of
\lunichia cannot have taken place before \1arch.
11
AthPol 37. 1.
"'Thev killed more men in three months without a trial than the citv
judged during the entire period of empire." 'They" refers to those wh~
participated in decarchies throughout the Aegean, but the Thirty may
have been uppermost in Isocrates' mind.
s,Plut. .\for . .349f.
 Appendix: Chronology

office until October. 'H Between .\fay and October fell the two
Spartan interventions, first of Lysander, then of Pausanias.
Each must have taken considerable tinH'; as a reasonable
guess, Lysander began to blockade the men of Piraeus about
June/July 403, and Pausanias arrived in Attica sometime in
August.
The reconstructed chronology of <'V<·nts is set forth in
Table 2.

Table 2. Reconstructed chronology of events

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158 159
 Index

Acharnae, 89-90, 128, 133, 151-52 Bodyguard, 5g--6o, 145

Aegospotami, 28, 37 Boeotia and Boeotians, 6g, g8
Aeschines, 51, 87, 136 Boule, 57, 127, 132, 135; convicts
Aesimus, 73 Theramenes, ]6; court under the
Agis, 30, 32-33, 96, 98-gg, 148 Thirty, 6o-62; votes alliance with
Agoratus, 42-43, 60, 116 Eretria, 85
Alcibiades, 23-25, 28, 46, 6g; death
of, 79, 132, 152 Callibius, 87, 128, 137-38, 148
Amnesty, 102-4 Callimachus, g8, 115
Anaetius, 51-53, .55 Callisthenes, 112
Androcles, 113 Callistratus, 94
Antiphon, 79 Catalogue of those serving with Ly-
Anytus, 44, 46--47, 55, 72-73 sander, 78
Apagoge, 116
Cavalry (hippeis), 570, 89-91, 94-
Archestratus, 34, 36 95, 99, 116--18, 145. See also Ly-
Archinus: opposes Thrasybulus' cit- simachus
izenship proposal, 110-11; at Cephisophon, 101, 118-19
Phyle, 72; supports amnesty, Chaeredemus, 113
114-1s; supports Theramenes in Chaereleus, 51-53, 55
404, 44, 46--47, 55 Chaeron, 100
Aresias, 51 Chalcis, 6g
Arginusae, 37, 113 Chariades, 59
Argos, 18, 6g, 85
Charicles, 51, 55, 57, 75-]6
Aristarchus, 94 Charicles, son ofChaeredemus, 113
Aristodemus, 80 Charmides, 59, 92
Aristophanes of Cholleidai, 6o Chaucer, Geoffrey, 15
Aristoteles, 41, 44, 58n; elected Chremon, 51, 54, 55
one of the Thirty, 51-55; goes to Cleitophon, 44, 46, 55
Sparta to ask for garrison, 87, 136 Cleobulus, 113
Artaxerxes, 38 Cleoeritus, 86, 150
Athenaeus, 113 Cleomedes, 51, 54, 55
Index Index
Cleophon, 33, 36n, 42, 54 Epicharcs, 5;- Inscriptions (cont.) Megara, 6g
3
Conon, 28, 39 Epiehares of Lamptra, 92 404i403 (IC 1 .380), 59, 87-88; ~feletus, 101
Corinth and Corinthians, 18, ;30, Epistratus, ;-911 alliance with Eretria (IC 2 2 . 16), Melobius, 51, 54, 55
41, 6g, g8 Erasistratus, 5 L 53 85; decree providing mainte- Menccrates, 59
Critias, 21, 48, 145; possihl(' author Eratosthenes. 46. 51, 53, 55, 122 nance for orphans whose fathers Mencstratus, 116
of Peri politeias, 2011;background Eretria, •'>5 died fighting the oligarchy (Hes- Metics: execution of, 8o-81, 132,
of, 45-46; death of. 91, 15011;dis- Ergodc~. ;-3 peria 40 [1971] 280 no. 7), 112- 141, 145, 152; oppose the Thirty,
agreement with Socrates, 82-83; Ervximadrns. 1 1 ;- 13; decree rewarding foreigners 73, 81, 83-84, 128; rewarded,
elected one of the Thirty, 51, 53, Eu.boea, 2(1 who fought against the Thirty 110-11
55; leader of radical oligarchs, Eudcides, 51-.52. SS (JG 2 2. 10), 94, 111-12; decree Metroon, 112
.59, 61, 63-64; Ill0llllll1('1ll to, Euclcides of ----<JS, 111, 149, 151 rewarding men from Phyle (Hes- Micon, 123
130; split with Theramencs, 67- Eucrates, 60, :-irlio peria 10 [19.p] 287 no. 78), 84, Miltiades, 48
68, 74-77, 137 Eumathes, 51-5:l 112 Mnesilochus, 51, 54, 55
Cyrus, 37-,39 E11thy11ai,10:), JOh--7, 117 Isagoras, 19, 129 Mnesitheides, 51
Evandrus, 57. 11H lsmenias, 17, 70 Molpis, 59
Darius II, 37-41 Executions, fio, -6-82, 94, 132, lsocrates, 25, 76-77 ~funichia, battle of, 91-92, 111,
Dates: for events in 404f403 (Julian 136-,38, 145, 151-52 Isoteleia, 94, 111 126, 128, 133, 151-52
calendar), 147-52; for pcaee nP- Expulsion of the excluded, 65-66,
gotiations, 32n; ordc•r of events 82, 1:32, 141, 152 Kerameikos, Son, 100, 125 Niceratus, 15n, 7g-8o, 101, 132,
during rule of the Thirty, 131-47 141, 152
Demaretus, 94 Five Thousand, the, 24-27, 36, Lacedaemon and Laccdaemonians, Nicias, 6o
Demophilus, 111 47, 74 See Sparta and Spartans Nicomenes, 6o
Diodes, 51, .54, .55 Four Hundred, the, 24-26, 36, 46, Lacrates, 100 Nicostratus, go
Diognetus, 100 53-57, 63, 143-44 Lcodamas, 118n
Dionvsius, 116 Leon, 79, 83 Olympichus, 113
Dion}·sodorus, 42, 6o Garrison, Spartan, 87-91, 141, 145, Libys, 95, 97 Onomacles, 51, 53-55
Disarmament of the excluded, 77- 151-52 Lochites, 119 Opora, 150
Gerousia (at Athens), 64, 67-68, Loeper hypothesis, 51-54
78, 132, 141, 145, 151-52 Oropus, 6g, 83
Dokimasiai, 3711, 117-19 127 Lycurgus of Boutadai, 80, 86
Dracontides, 4g-.53 Glaucon, 59 Lysander, 28,30,33-34,42,44, 77, Paragraphe, 115
Dromocleides, 59 llellenica Oxyrhynchia, as source 126-29, 131, 144, 148-50, 152; Patrias 11oliteia,42, 44, 47, 49-
compels election of the Thirty, 50, 63, 87, 141
for Ephorus and Aristotle, 133-42
Eetionia, 26-27 48-49; envied by kings, 98; har- Patrocles, 58, 115
Hetaireiai, 24, 44-45
Eleusis, 80; inhabited by the most in 403, 9.5-101; negotiates Pausanias, 30, g6, 128-29, 152;
Hieron, 51
Thirty, 92; Lysander' s merce- with Theramcncs, 35-41; sup- campaign in Attica, 98-101; ne-
Hippeis. See Cm·alry
naries gather at, 97; secured by ports request for garrison, 87, gotiates settlement, 101, 107;
Hippias of Thasos, 6o
the Thirty, 85-86, 132-33; in set- 136-37; takes Athenian soldiers, trial of, 1og-10
Hippocles, 92
tlement of 403, 102-3, 114; war 78 Pcisander, 23-24
Hippolodms. 51, 9211
and reconciliation with Athens, Lysanias, 113 Peison, ;;1, 80
Hippomachus, 51, 92
120-23 Lysiades, 1 11 Pericles, 21-23, 113, 125
Hippon, 113
Eleven, the, .58, 76-77, 102-7 Lysias: aids Thrasybulus, 73, 81, Perioikoi (at Athens), 64-66, 82
Hippotherses, Lysias' speech
Ephialtes, 19, 61-62 128; trustworthiness of, 8o-81 Persia, 23-26
against, 105
Ephors (at Athens), 45-46, 67 Lysimachus, 58, 93, 115 Phaeax, 53
Homoioi (at Athens), 64-65, 74, 82.
Ephorus: liking for moral lessons, See also Three Thousand, the Phaedrias, 51
139-40; source of Diodorus and ~fagistrates, 57-00, 93, 135-36, 152 Pheidon, 51, 92-93, 95, 122
Justin, 133-34; used P, 140-42; Inscriptions: accounts of treasurers ~tantitheus, 118, 15111 Philochares, 48
used Xenophon, 135-40 of Athena and the Other Gods for Megabyzus, 22 Philon, 83, 117
Index
Philonautus, 113
Phormisius, 44, 46, 55; proposes
limitation of citizenship, 109-10,
113
Phrynichus, 75-76
Phyle: analysis of troops at, 83-84;
attacked by the Thirty, 74-75;
besieged by Spartan garrison, 89;
seized by Thrasybulus, 70-74,
126, 141, 151-52
Piraeus: besieged by Lysander in
403, 97; besieged by Pausanias,
99; blockaded by Lysandcr in
405"404, 30; occupied by Thrasy-
bulus, go-g2, 111
Pisistratus, 6611, 78
Plato, 16, 18
Pnyx, 62-63
Polemarchus, 81
Polychares, 51
Prodicus, 25
Protagoras, 58n
Proxenies revoked, 66--67
Pythodorus, 58, 93, 149, 151
Rhinon, 92, 97, 118-19, 123
Salamis, 85-86, 132
Samos and Samians, 23, 25-26, 28-
30, 44, 114, 148-49; Athenian
citizenship revoked, 66
Satyrus, 58, 64, 77
Socrates, 21, 45, 82-83, 94
Solon, 61-62
Sophocles, 51, 54, 55
Sparta and Spartans (Lacedaemon
and Lacedaemonians), 15-18, 28;
admired by oligarchs, 21; de-
mand extradition of Athenian fu-
gitives, 84-85, 132; model for the
Thirty, 63-68; negotiate peace in
Attica, 101; send garrison to
Athens, 87, 131-33, 136-37, 144,
152; send Lysander to Attica, 95,
152; send Pausanias to Attica, g8,
152; views of, 67-68
Strombichides, 42, 6o
Sycophants, 6o, 132, 136, 152
S yllogeis, 12;3
Syndikoi, 106
Teisias, 57
Ten, the: elected, 92-g3;
policy of, 93-gs; in settlement of
403, 102-7; some members re-
placed. 97
Thebes and Thchans, 17-18, 30,
40-41, 70, 85, 95, 131. See also
Boeotia and Boeotians The Thirty at Athens
Thcogcnes. 51. 54, 55
Theognis, 51, 55, 8o
Thcozotidcs, 112-13 Designed by Richard E. Rosenbaum.
Thcramenes: assessment of, 77; Composed by Eastern Graphics
background of, 25-26, 69-70; in 10 point Linotron 202 Caledonia, 2 points leaded,
disagrees with Critias, 67-68, with display lines in Caledonia.
74-76, 127; elected one of the Printed offaet by Thomson/Shore, Inc. on
Thirty, 50-53, 55; negotiates for
Warren's Number 66 Antique Offset, 50 pound basis.
peace, 34-4,3; position in sum-
Bound by John H. Dekker & Sons, Inc.
mer 404, 44-50; tried and exe-
in Joanna book cloth
cuted, 76-77, 131-32, 137-38,
141, 143-45, 151-52 and stamped in Kurz-Hastings foil.
Theramenes papyrus, 34-35
TI1ibrachus, 100
Thrasybulus of Kollytos, 73, 11811
Thrasybulus of Steiria, 125-33,
143-44, 151-52;atAcharnae, 89-
go; asked to join the TI1irty, 64,
86-87; background of, 25, 69-70;
at Munichia, 91-g2; proposes
citizenship for foreigners, 84,
no-11; supports amnesty, 114
Three Thousand, the: condemn
Elcusinians and Salaminians, 86;
continue opposition to Thrasy-
bulus, 93; in politics after 403,
117-19; selected, 64-65, 152;
send embassy to Sparta, 95; send
Thirty to Eleusis, 92; support
Thirty, 82-83, 126-27
Tissaphernes, 23-25, 38-39
Xenophon: motives behind his ac-
count, 145-47; as source for
Diodorus and Justin, through
Ephorus, 121, 133-40
Xenophon of Kourion, 6o