Thirty Tyrants

Democratic Athens came under the rule of Spartan-supported tyrants for eight months.

Date: 404-403 b. c.e.

Category: Government and politics; organizations and institutions Locale: Athens

Summary Under the leadership of Critias of Athens, a pro-Spartan oligarchy (known as the Thirty Tyrants) ruled Athens for eight months. Intimidated by Lysander of Sparta, who arrived with the Peloponnesian fleet, the Athenians voted in favor of a proposal to install the Thirty shortly after Athens surrendered to Sparta in 404 b. c.e. At the insistence of Theramenes, a fellow member of the Thirty, they created a list of 3,000 citizens permitted to participate in the oligarchy. Critias suspected Theramenes of disloyalty and had him convicted and executed.

In the winter of403 b. c.e., Thrasybulus with a band of democratic exiles seized Phyle, a fortress on the Boeotian border. In May, 403 b. c.e., the democrats successfully captured the Piraeus, Athens’ major port, and Critias fell in the fighting. The Thirty were then replaced by a board of ten rulers and withdrew to Eleusis. The Ten continued the war against the democratic exiles until Sparta, underpressure from its allies, restored the Athenian democracy. Several years later, the Athenians marched out against the remnant of the Thirty living in Eleusis and killed them.

Significance In less than a year, the Thirty Tyrants executed 1,500 people and confiscated the property of citizens and resident aliens.

Further Reading

Carnes, Mark C., and Josiah Ober. The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B. C. 3d ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2005.

Krentz, Peter. The Thirty at Athens. Ithaca, NY.: Cornell University Press,

1982.

Loraux, Nicole. The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens. Translated by Corinne Ondine Pache. New York: Zone Books,

2001.

Tritle, Lawrence, ed. The Greek World in the Fourth Century: From the Fall of the Athenian Empire to the Successors of Alexander. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Wolpert, Andrew. Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.

Andrew Wolpert

See also: Athens; Critias of Athens; Lysander of Sparta.