Aristion of Athens

Aristion held Athens against Sulla and starved its population doing it. He was an Epicurean philosopher who became the city's ruler in 88 BC, in the circumstances of the First Mithridatic War. Mithridates VI of Pontus had overrun the Roman province of Asia and ordered the massacre of Romans and Italians living there. Greek cities under Roman rule, many of them heavily indebted to Roman moneylenders and taxed by publicani, saw him as a liberator. Aristion was sent to Athens as Mithridates' representative, or went and then declared for him — the accounts differ — and took power with popular support, expelling or killing the pro-Roman faction. Sulla arrived in 87 BC with five legions and besieged the city and its port at Piraeus. He had no fleet and no money, and financed the siege by seizing the treasures of Delphi, Olympia and Epidaurus, and cut down the sacred groves of the Academy and the Lyceum for timber. Inside the walls the food ran out. Plutarch describes people eating boiled leather and grass growing round the Acropolis, and Aristion refusing to negotiate while continuing to feast, and mocking Sulla's wife from the walls. Sulla broke in near the Dipylon gate on 1 March 86 BC. The sack was severe; Plutarch says blood ran in the Ceramicus, and Sulla stopped it saying he spared the many for the sake of the few, meaning the city's dead. Aristion held the Acropolis a little longer and was executed. Athens never recovered its independence, and the sack ended its political history as a power.

• Lived: 130 BCE – 86 BCE
• Nationality: Greek
• Roles: ruler