Ancient Greece, Late Classical Period Spartan Hegemony (404-386 BC): Thirty Tyrants (September 404 to May 403 BC)

On their return to Athens the exiles, most of them enemies of the democracy, set up a private board of five ‘ephors’ to take charge of propaganda and intimidation with a view to directing votes in the Assembly. The participation of Lysander was essential. After Athens’ surrender he had sailed to Samos and besieged it. When the plotters were ready they sent a message asking him to attend a meeting of the Assembly. There, the oligarch Dracontides proposed electing a board of thirty men who would have the task of revising the laws and in the meantime control the city. There was some opposition, but Lysander said that the Athenians had broken the terms of the treaty by failing to demolish the Walls within the agreed period and on his insistence the Thirty were duly elected. Its two outstanding leaders were the extremist Critias (460-403 BC), a relative of Plato (427-347 BC), and the moderate Theramenes. Critias, banished from Athens after the fall of Alcibiades, had returned from exile in Thessaly.

The Thirty proceeded to secure their hold on power by appointing: new magistrates friendly to their regime; a Council of Five Hundred stacked with their own supporters to function as a court of law; a Board of Eleven in charge of the state prison and the supervision of executions; a Board of Ten to govern the Piraeus; and a corps of three hundred ‘whip bearers’ to carry out arrests and executions, eradicate opposition and raise funds by confiscation. The Thirty also: repealed the laws of Ephialtes that had deposed the Areopagus; annulled the people’s courts; and began a revision of the legal code.

Even so, the Thirty soon felt uneasy and asked for help from Sparta. Seven hundred men under a harmost Callibius were sent and they took control of the Acropolis. The government of the Thirty now became a reign of terror, killing their opponents without the formality of a trial, and became known as the Thirty Tyrants. Rich men, especially metics (=resident aliens) and democrats were the main victims, and the Thirty executed over fifteen hundred and banished over five thousand of their countrymen. Theramenes protested and the people took his side. To pacify them the Thirty drew up a list of Three Thousand who were to have full citizens’ rights; the other citizens were disarmed and denied the right of appeal.

When Theramenes objected that this number was too small, Critias denounced him as a traitor, famously giving him the nickname ‘Buskin’, the name of a boot worn on stage that could fit either foot. Theramenes, he said, was ready to serve either the democratic or oligarchic cause, seeking only to further his own personal interest. Theramenes was condemned to death and forced to drink the fatal hemlock