The Thirty Tyrants of Athens
The Thirty Tyrants were installed by Sparta as Athens' governing committee in 404 BCE. Their formal mandate was to codify Athenian law. In practice they rapidly became a reign of terror. Their leader was Critias, a ruthless intellectual who had been a member of Socrates' circle and a relative of Plato. Critias and the Thirty initially targeted known democratic leaders and informers. But the purge rapidly expanded to wealthy metics whose property could be confiscated, then to moderate Athenians who criticized the regime. The moderate member Theramenes protested and was forced to drink hemlock — Critias struck his name from the citizen rolls to make the death 'legal.' The Spartan garrison in the Acropolis gave the Thirty their muscle. Approximately 1,500 Athenians were executed within months, and thousands more fled into exile. The philosopher Socrates, who stayed, later claimed he refused an order from the Thirty to help arrest an innocent man. The democratic exile Thrasybulus gathered a force of seventy men at Phyle on the Attic-Boeotian border in winter 404/3. By summer 403 BCE he had hundreds of men; he seized Piraeus and defeated a force led by Critias himself. Critias was killed in the battle. Sparta under King Pausanias mediated: the Thirty were abolished and a general amnesty declared — one of the ancient world's earliest formal amnesties. Democracy was restored in 403 BCE. The amnesty prevented revenge killings, though it may have indirectly enabled the trial of Socrates in 399 BCE when Athenians displaced unresolved grievances onto him.
- Year: 404 BCE
- Category: Political
