Listed 100 (total found 427) sub titles with search on: Biographies for destination: "ATHENS Ancient city GREECE".
Aristion, a philosopher either of the Epicurean or Peripatetic school, who made
himself tyrant of Athens, and was besieged there by Sulla, B. C. 87, in the first
Mithridatic war. His early history is preserved by Athenaeus (v. p. 211), on the
authority of Posidonius of Apameia, the instructor of Cicero. By him he is called
Athenion, whereas Pausanias, Appian, and Plutarch agree in giving him the name
of Aristion. Casaubon on Athenaeus (l. c.) conjectures that his true name was
Athenion, but that on enrolling himself as a citizen of Athens, he changed it
to Aristion, a supposition confirmed by the case of one Sosias mentioned by Theophrastus,
whose name was altered to Sosistratus under the same circumstances. Athenion or
Aristion was the illegitimate son of a Peripatetic, also named Athenion, to whose
property he succeeded, and so became an Athenian citizen. He married early, and
began at the same time to teach philosophy, which he did with great success at
Messene and Larissa.
On returning to Athens with a considerable fortune, he was named ambassador
to Mithridates, king of Pontus, then at war with Rome, and became one of the most
intimate friends and counsellors of that monarch. His letters to Athens represented
the power of his patron in such glowing colours, that his countrymen began to
conceive hopes of throwing off the Roman yoke. Mithridates then sent him to Athens,
where he soon contrived, through the king's patronage, to assume the tyranny.
His government seems to have been of the most cruel character, so that he is spoken
of with abhorrence by Plutarch, and classed by him with Nabis and Catiline. He
sent Apellicon of Teos to plunder the sacred treasury of Delos, though Appian
says, that this had already been done for him by Mithridates, and adds, that it
was by means of the money resulting from this robbery that Aristion was enabled
to obtain the supreme power. Meantime Sulla landed in Greece, and immediately
laid siege to Athens and the Peiraeus, the latter of which was occupied by Archelaus,
the general of Mithridates. The sufferings within the city from famine were so
dreadful, that men are said to have even devoured the dead bodies of their companions.
At last Athens was taken by storm, and Sulla gave orders to spare neither sex
nor age. Aristion fled to the Acropolis, having first burnt the Odeum, lest Sulla
should use the wood-work of that building for battering-rams and other instruments
of attack. The Acropolis, however, was soon taken, and Aristion dragged to execution
from the altar of Minerva. To the divine vengeance for this impiety Pausanias
(i. 20.4) attributes the loathsome disease which afterwards terminated Sulla's
life.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
An Athenian, wins Olympic victory, marries daughter of Theagenes, compasses the tyranny, seizes the Acropolis, murdered by the Alcmeonidae for aiming at despotic power.
Cylon (Kulon). An Athenian of noble family who formed the plan of making himself tyrant of Athens (B.C. 612). At the time of the Olympic Games, he seized the Acropolis, where he was soon after closely besieged by the archons. Being at last destitute of food, he and his followers capitulated, after receiving a promise from the archon Megacles, one of the Alcmaeonidae, that their lives would be spared. In violation of this promise, however, they were all put to death, some being even murdered at the altar of the Eumenides. For this sacrilege, the Alcmaeonidae were tried by the nobles and banished (B.C. 596 or 595), at the instigation of Solon. The family retired to Phocis and remained exiles from Athens until the time of Lycurgus (B.C. 560).
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Cylon (Kulon), an Athenian of noble family and commanding presence, won the prize for the double course (diaulos) at the Olympic games, in B. C. 640, and married the daughter of Theagenes, tyrant of Megara. Excited.apparently and encouraged by these advantages, and especially by his powerful alliance, he conceived the design of making himself tyrant of Athens, and having consulted the Delphic oracle on the subject, was enjoined to seize the Acropolis at the principal festival of Zeus. Imagining that this must refer, not to the Athenian Diasia, but to the Olympic games, at which he had so distinguished himself, he made the attempt during the celebration of the latter, and gained possession of the citadel with his partisans, who were very numerous. Here, however, they were closely besieged, the operations against them being conducted, according to Thucydides, by the nine archons; according to Herodotus, by the Prytanes of the Naucrari. At length, pressed by famine, they were driven to take refuge at the altar of Athena, whence they were induced to withdraw by the archon Megacles, the Alcmaeonid, on a promise that their lives should be spared. But their enemies put them to death as soon as they had them in their power, some of them being murdered even at the altar of the Eumenides. Plutarch relates besides that the suppliants, by way of keeping themselves under the protection of Athena, fastened a line to her statue and held it as they passed from her shrine. When they had reached the temple of the Eumenides the line broke, and Megacles and his colleagues seized on the accident as a proof that the goddess had rejected their supplication, and that they might therefore be massacred in full accordance with religion. Thucydides and the Scholiast on Aristophanes (Eq. 443) tell us, that Cylon himself escaped with his brother before the surrender of his adherents. According to Suidas, he was dragged from the altar of the Eumenides, where he had taken refuge, and was murdered. Herodotus also implies that he was slain with the rest. His party is said by Plutarch to have recovered their strength after his death, and to have continued the struggle with the Alcmaeonidae up to the time of Solon. The date of Cylon's attempt is uncertain. Corsini gives, as a conjecture, B. C. 612; while Clinton, also conjecturally, assigns it to 620. (Herod. v. 71; Thucyd. i. 1 26; Suid. s. v. Kuloneion agos; Plut. Sol. 12; Paus. i. 28, 40, vii. 25.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Tyrant of Athens, put down by Demetrius, carries off treasure, murdered at Coronea.
Lachares, an Athenian, was one of the most influential demagogues in his native city, after the democracy had been re-established by Demetrius Poliorcetes. He was afterwards secretly gained over by Cassander, who incited him to aim at the acquisition of the tyranny, hoping to be able through his means to rule Athens (Paus. i. 25.7). He does not seem, however, to have been able to effect this purpose until Athens was besieged by Demetrius (B. C. 296), when he took advantage of the excitement of the popular mind to expel Demochares, the leader of the opposite party, and establish himself as undisputed master of the city. We know but little either of the intrigues by which he raised himself to power or of his proceedings afterwards; but he is described in general terms by Pausanias, as "of all tyrants the most inhuman towards men, and the most sacrilegious towards the gods." He plundered the temples, and especially the Parthenon, of all their most valuable treasures, stripping even the statue of Athena of her sacred ornaments. At the beginning of his rule he had procured a decree to be passed, forbidding, under pain of death, even the mention of treating with Demetrius; and he succeeded in inducing, or compelling, the Athenians to hold out until they were reduced to the last extremities of famine. At length, however, he despaired of doing so any longer, and, stealing out of the city in disguise, made his escape to Thebes (Paus. i. 25.7, 29.10; Plut. Demetr. 33, 34, De Is. et Osir. 71, Adv. Epicur.; Polyaen. iv. 7.5; Athen. ix). A story is told of him by Polyaenus (iii. 7.1), that being pursued by some horsemen of Demetrius, he escaped from them by dropping gold pieces along the road as he fled. According to the same author, he remained at Thebes until it was taken by Demetrius, when he fled from thence to Delphi, and afterwards to Thrace. Here he was again in danger of falling into the hands of his enemy, Demetrius having invaded Thrace during the captivity of Lysimachus, and besieged the town of Sestos, in which Lachares then happened to be; but he once more succeeded in making his escape to Lysimachia. (Polyaen. iii. 7.2, 3). We again hear of him at Cassandrea as late as B. C. 279, when he was expelled from that city by Apollodorus, on a charge of having conspired to betray it into the hands of Antiochus. (Id. vi. 7.2). Hence it appears clear that Pausanias is mistaken when he states that Lachares was murdered soon after his escape from Athens, for the sake of the wealth he was supposed to have accumulated (Paus. i. 25.7).
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Aristoteles, was one of the thirty tyrants established at Athens in B. C. 404
(Xen. Hell. ii. 3.2). From an allusion in the speech of Theramenes before his
condemnation (Xen. Hell. ii. 3.46), Aristoteles appears to have been also one
of the Four Hundred, and to have taken an active part in the scheme of fortifying
Eetionia and admitting the Spartans into the Peiraeeus, B. C. 411 (Thuc. viii.
90). In B. C. 405 he was living in banishment, and is mentioned by Xenophon as
being with Lysander during the siege of Athens (Hell. ii. 2.18). Plato introduces
him as one of the persons in the "Parmenides," and as a very young man at the
time of the dialogue.
Critias, son of Callaeschrus. He was one of the pupils of Socrates, by whose instructions
he profited but little in a moral point of view, and, together with Alcibiades,
gave a colour by his life to the charge against the philosopher of corrupting
the youth. Xenophon says, that he sought the company of Socrates, not from any
desire of real improvement, but because he wished, for political purposes, to
gain skill in confounding an adversary. We learn, however, from the same authority,
that he lived a temperate life as long as his connexion with his great master
lasted (Xen. Mem. i. 2.12--18, 39). From a fragment of Critias himself (ap. Plut.
Ale. 33) it appears that he was mainly instrumental in procuring the recall of
Alcibiades from banishment. At the time of the murder of the generals who had
been victorious at Arginusae, B. C. 406, we find him in Thessaly fomenting a sedition
of the Penestae against their lords, and endeavouring to set up democracy in conjunction
with one Prometheus, which has been supposed by some to be a surname of Jason
of Pherae. According to Xenophon, he had been banished by a sentence of the people,
and this it was which afterwards made him so rancorous in his tyranny (Xen. Mem.
i. 2.24, Hell. ii. 3.15, 36; Schn. ad loc.) On his return to Athens he became
leader of the oligarchical party, and was chosen to be one of the body called
Ephori, probably not a public and legal office, but one instituted among themselves
by the oligarchs for the better promotion of their ends (Lys. c. Erat.). He was
one of the 30 tyrants established in B. C. 404, was conspicuous above all his
colleagues for rapacity and cruelty, sparing not even Socrates himself, and took
the lead in the prosecution of Theramenes when lie set himself against the continuance
of the reign of terror. He was slain at the battle of Munychia in the same year,
fighting against Thrasybulus and the exiles (Xen. Hell. ii. 3.2, 15--56, 4.1--19,
Mem. i. 2.12--38; Diod. xiv. 4; Plat. Apol.; Cic. Tusc. Quaest. i. 40).
Cicero tells us (De Orat. ii. 22), that some speeches of Critias were
still extant in his time, and speaks of them as marked by the vigour of matter
which distinguished those of Pericles and by a greater copiousness of style A
work of his on politics is also frequently referred to by several writers (Athen.
xi., f; Ael. V. H. x. 13, 17; Clem. Alex. Strom. vi. 2; comp. Plat. Tim.); some
fragments of his elegies are still extant, and he is supposed by some to have
been the author of the Peirithous and the Sisyphus (a satyric drama), which are
commonly reckoned among the lost plays of Euripides; a tragedy named "Atalanta"
is likewise ascribed to him (Athen. 1). As we might suppose a priori from his
character, he was but a dabbler and a dilettante in philosophy, a circumstance
which Plato, with his delicate satire, by no means loses sight of (see Protag.),
insomuch that it was said of him (Schol. ad Plat. Tim.), that he was idiotes men
en philosophois, philosophos de en idiotais, "a lord among wits, and a wit among
lords." The remains of his poems have been edited separately by N. Bach, Leipzig,
1827.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Leader of the “Thirty Tyrants” that ruled Athens 404-403
BC. The rule was one of terror, and Critias has gone to history as one of the
ultimate villains.
Critias was born into an aristocratic family, and was educated by
the likes of Socrates and the Sophists. He was both the uncle and guardian of
Plato's uncle Charmides, and Plato described them both as young, glamorous men
in his dialogues.
After the incident with the mutilated Herms in 415 BC, Critias was
suspected of having taken part in the vandalism. He was arrested for the crime,
but subsequently released. In 411 BC, Critias asked the Assembly to call back
Alcibiades, but eventually he was exiled to Thessaly
after the Assembly had turned against Alcibiades again.
At the end of the Peloponnesian war in 404 BC Critias was called back
when the Spartans demanded it in the peace negotiations after they had defeated
Athens. On his return he was elected to the dictatorial, Sparta
friendly government that consisted of 30 tyrants. The rule can be compared to
extremist fascism where anyone suspected to resist or had great personal wealth
was executed. In Eleusis
a mass execution of 300 men was ordered.
In 403 the 30 tyrants were toppled, and ironically, Critias did not
die then, but in a common street fight in Pireus.
He was well hated by then, and was one of the reasons Socrates was persecuted,
since the philosopher had been his teacher.
Apart from being a villain, though, Critias was intelligent and cultural
and wrote prose, tragedies and lyric poetry.
This text is cited Sept 2003 from the In2Greece URL below.
Critias, (Kritias). Son of Dropides, a contemporary and relation of Solon's. He lived to the age of more than 90 years. His descendant Critias, the son of Callaeschrus, is introduced in the " Timaeus" of Plato (pp. 20--25), as repeating from the old man's account the fable of the once mighty Atlantis, professing to have been derived by Solon from the priests of Egypt. (Comp. Plat. Charm.)
Charmides. An Athenian, son of Glaucon, was cousin to Critias and uncle by the
mother's side to Plato, who introduces him in the dialogue which bears his name
as a very young man at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war. In the same
dialogue he is represented as a very amiable youth and of surpassing beauty, and
he appears again in the " Protagoras" at the house of Callias, son of Hipponicus.
We learn from Xenophon, that lie was a great favourite with Socrates, and was
possessed of more than ordinary ability, though his excessive diffidence deprived
his country of the services which he might have rendered her as a statesman. In
B. C. 404 he was one of the Ten who were appointed, over and above the thirty
tyrants, to the special government of the Peiraeeus, and he was slain fighting
against Thrasybulus at the battle of Munychia in the same year (Xen. Mem. iii.
6, 7, Hell. ii. 4.19 ) .
Cleomedes (Kleomedes), an Athenian, son of Lycomedes, was one of the commanders of the expedition against Melos in B. C. 416. He is mentioned also by Xenophon as one of the 30 tyrants appointed in B. C. 404. (Thuc. v. 84, &c.; Xen. Hell. ii. 3.2)
Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty Tyrants. (Xen. Hell. ii. 3.2). There is an oration of Lysias against him (Or. 12), which was delivered soon after the expulsion of the Thirty and the return of Lysias from exile. (Clinton, F. H. sub ann. B. C. 403.)
Dracontides (Drakontides), one of the thirty tyrants established at Athens in B. C. 404 (Xen. Hell. ii. 3.2) .He is in all probability the same whom Lysias mentions (c. Erat.), as having framed at that time the constitution, according to which the Athenians were to be governed under their new rulers; and he is perhaps also the disreputable person alluded to by Aristophanes as having been frequently condemned in the Athenian courts of justice. (Vesp. 157; Schol. ad loc., comp. 438.)
Eucleides. One of the Thirty Tyrants at Athens. (Xen. Hell. ii. 3.2)
Hieron. One of the thirty tyrants established at Athens, B. C. 404. (Xen. Hell. ii. 3.2)
Hippolochus (Hippolochos). One of the thirty tyrants at Athens. (Xen. Hell. ii. 3.2)
Melobius (Melobios), was one of the thirty tyrants established at Athens in B. C. 404, and was among those who were sent to the house of Lysias and Polemarchus to apprehend them and seize their property. (Xen. Hell. ii. 3.2; Lys. c. Erat. p. 121.)
Mnesilochus (Mnesilochos), one of the thirty tyrants at Athens. (Xen. Hellen. ii. 3. §2.)
Peison, one of the thirty tyrants established at Athens in B. C. 404. He was one
of the authors of the proposal that, as several of the resident foreigners were
discontented with the new government, and thus afforded a specious pretext for
plundering them, each of the Thirty should select for himself one of the wealthy
aliens, and, having put him to death, should appropriate his property. The proposal
was adopted in spite of the opposition of Theramenes, and Peison went with Melobius
and Mnesitheides to apprehend Lysias and his brother Polemarchus. Lysias, being
left alone with Peison, bribed him with the offer of a talent to allow him to
escape; but Peison, after the most solemn oaths, seized all the money he could
lay his hands upon, refusing to leave Lysias even as much as would serve for the
expenses of his journey, and then delivered him up to Melobius and Mnesitheides
(Xen. Hell. ii. 3.2, 21; Lysias, c. Eratosth.).
Pheidon. One of the thirty tyrants established at Athens in B. C. 404 (Xen. Hell. ii. 3.2). He was strongly opposed to Critias and his party in the government, and, therefore, after the battle of Munychia he was appointed one of the new Council of Ten, in the hope that he would bring about a reconciliation with the exiles in the Peiraeeus. But he showed no willingness at all for such a course, and we find him shortly after going to Sparta to ask for aid against the popular party. (Xen. Hell. ii. 4. 23, 28; Lys. c. Erat.)
Son of Pisistratus, slain by Harmodius and Aristogiton, his banishment of Onomacritus.
Sons of Pisistratus who succeeded their father as rulers of Athens.
Hipparchus was murdered by Harmodius and Aristogeiton but Hippias
stayed as a ruler, punishing the killers with death. The Athenians later chased
him away with Spartan help, and he sought refuge in Persia.
He was later to be killed by the Greeks at the battle of Marathon.
This text is cited Sept 2003 from the In2Greece URL below.
Son of Pisistratus, his advice to his father, expelled from Athens, a refugee in Persia, with Datis' army in Attica, tortures Leaena.
572 - 485
Clisthenes, (Kleisthenes). An Athenian, the son of Megacles and Agarista. He was the head of the Alcmaeonid family, and was opposed by Isagoras and the nobles; but by the support of the people reformed the constitution of the State upon a democratic basis. His changes were (1) the establishment of ten instead of four tribes, and the division into demes; (2) the introduction of ostracism; (3) the revival of election by lot; (4) the weakening of the power of the Heliastic court (see Dicastes). In spite of the interference of the Spartans under Cleomenes, these changes were finally established (B.C. 508). Of the later years of the life of Clisthenes, nothing definite is known.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Cleisthenes. An Athenian, son of Megacles and Agarista, and grandson of the tyrant of Sicyon, appears as the head of the Alcmaeonid clan on the banishment of the Peisistratidae, and was indeed suspected of having tampered with the Delphic oracle, and urged it to require from Sparta the expulsion of Hippias. Finding, however, that he could not cope with his political rival Isagoras except through the aid of the commons, he set himself to increase the power of the latter, and to remove most of the safeguards against democracy which Solon had established or preserved. There is therefore less trutn than rhetoric in the assertion of Isocrates (Areiopag.), that Cleisthenes merely restored the constitution of Solon. The principal change which he introduced, and out of which most of his other alterations grew, was the abolition of the four ancient tribes, and the establishment of ten new ones in their stead. These last were purely local, and the object as well as the effect of the arrangement was, to give permanence to democratic ascendency by the destruction of the old aristocratic associations of clanship (Comp. Arist. Polit. vi. 4, ed. Bekk.; Thrige, Res Cyren.48). The increase in the number of the boule and of the naukrariai was a consequence of the above measure. The phratriai were indeed allowed to remain as before, but, as they were no longer connected with the tribes (the demoi constituting the new subdivision), they ceased to be of any political importance. According to Aelian (V. H. xiii. 24) Cleisthenes was also the first who instituted ostracism, by which he is said, on the same authority, to have been the first sufferer; and this is partly borne out by Diodorus (xi. 55), who says, that ostracism was introduced after the banishment of the Peisistratidae (but see Plut Nic. 11; Harpocrat. s. v. Hipparchos). We learn, moreover, from Aristotle (Polit. iii. 2) that he admitted into the tribes a number of persons who were not of Athenian blood; but this appears to have been only intended to serve his purposes at the time, not to be a precedent for the future. By some again he is supposed to have remodelled the Ephetae, adding a fifth court to the four old ones, and altering the number of the judges from 80 to 51, i. e. five from each tribe and a president. The changes of Cleisthenes had the intended effect of gaining political superiority for himself and his party, and Isagoras was reduced to apply for the aid of the Spartans under Cleomenes I. Heralds accordingly were sent from Lacedaemon to Athens, who demanded and obtained the banishment of Cleisthenes and the rest of the Alcmaeonidae, as the accursed family (enageis), on whom rested the pollution of Cylon's murder. Cleisthenes having withdrawn, Cleomenes proceeded to expel 700 families pointed out by Isagoras, and endeavoured to abolish the Council of 500, and to place the government in the hands of 300 oligarchs. But the Council resisted the attempt, and the people supported them, and besieged Cleomenes and Isagoras in the Acropolis, of which they had taken possession. On the third day the besieged capitulated, and the Lacedaemonians and Isagoras were allowed to depart from Attica. The rest were put to death, and Cleisthenes and the 700 banished families were recalled (Herod. v. 63, 66, 69--73, vi. 131)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
The Democratic Reforms of Cleisthenes
His popular support gave Cleisthenes the authority to begin to install the democratic system for which Athens has become famous, and the importance of his reforms led later Athenians to think of him as a principal founder of their democracy. First, he made the pre-existing villages of the countryside and the neighborhoods of the city of Athens (both called demes, demoi) the constituent units of Athenian political organization. Organized in their demes, the male citizens participated directly in the running of their government: they kept track in deme registers of which males were citizens and therefore eligible at eighteen to attend the assembly to vote on laws and public policies. The demes in turn were grouped for other administrative functions into ten so-called tribes (phylai ), replacing an earlier division into four tribes. Cleisthenic democracy used its ten tribes for purposes such as choosing fifty representatives by lot from each tribe to serve for one year on the council (boule ) of five hundred, which replaced Solon's council of four hundred. The number of representatives from each deme was proportional to its population. Athenian men were also called up for service in the citizen militia by tribal affiliation. Most importantly, the ten men who served each year as generals (strategoi ), the officials with the highest civil and military authority, were elected one from each tribe. Cleisthenes' reorganization was complex, but its general aim seems to have been to undermine existing political alliances among aristocrats in the interests of greater democracy.
This text is from: Thomas Martin's An Overview of Classical Greek History from Homer to Alexander, Yale University Press. Cited June 2005 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
The Struggle between Isagoras and Cleisthenes
In the ensuing vacuum of power at Athens after the expulsion of the tyrant Hippias, the leading member of the aristocratic Alcmaeonid family, a man named Cleisthenes, sought support among the masses by promising dramatic democratic reforms. The promise of such reforms seems to have been a response to the success of Cleisthenes' bitterest rival, Isagoras, an aristocrat from a different family, in becoming archon in 508 B.C. Cleisthenes had apparently despaired of winning political success other than by appealing to the non-aristocratic masses at Athens. When Isagoras tried to block Cleisthenes' reforms by calling in the Spartans again, the Athenian people united to force Isagoras and his Laconian allies out. The ensuing conflict between Athens and Sparta ended quickly but sowed the seeds of mutual distrust between the two city-states.
This text is from: Thomas Martin's An Overview of Classical Greek History from Homer to Alexander, Yale University Press. Cited June 2005 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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Phocion, (Phokion). An Athenian general and statesman, son of
Phocus. He was a man of hum ble origin, and appears to have been born in B.C.
402. He studied under Plato and Xenocrates. He distinguished himself for the first
time under his friend Chabrias, in 376, at the battle of Naxos; but he was not
employed prominently in any capacity for many years afterward. In 354 (according
to others in 350) he was sent into Euboea in the command of a small force in consequence
of an application from Plutarchus, tyrant of Eretria; and he was subsequently
employed on several occasions in the war between the Athenians and Philip of Macedon.
He frequently opposed the measures of Demosthenes, and recommended peace with
Philip; but he must not be regarded as one of the mercenary supporters of the
Macedonian monarch. His virtue is above suspicion, and his public conduct was
always influenced by upright motives. When Alexander was marching upon Thebes
in 335, Phocion rebuked Demosthenes for his invectives against the king; and after
the destruction of Thebes he advised the Athenians to comply with Alexander's
demand for the surrender of Demosthenes and other chief orators of the antiMacedonian
party. This proposal was indignantly rejected by the people, and an embassy was
sent to Alexander, which succeeded in deprecating his resentment. According to
Plutarch, there were two embassies, the first of which Alexander refused to receive,
but to the second he gave a gracious audience and granted its prayer, chiefly
from regard to Phocion, who was at the head of it. Alexander ever continued to
treat Phocion with the utmost consideration, and to cultivate his friendship.
He also pressed upon him valuable presents; but Phocion persisted in refusing
his presents, begging the king to leave him no less honest than he found him,
and only so far availed himself of the royal favour as to request the liberty
of certain prisoners at Sardis, which was immediately granted to him. After Alexander's
death Phocion opposed vehemently, and with all the caustic bitterness which characterized
him, the proposal for war with Antipater. Thus, to Hyperides, who asked him tauntingly
when he would advise the Athenians to go to war, he answered, "When I see
the young willing to keep their ranks, the rich to contribute of their wealth,
and the orators to abstain from pilfering the public money." When the Piraeus
was seized by Alexander, the son of Polysperchon, in 318, Phocion was suspected
of having advised Alexander to take this step; whereupon, being accused of treason
by Agnonides, he fled, with several of his friends, to Alexander, who sent them
with letters of recommendation to his father Polysperchon. The latter, willing
to sacrifice them as a peace-offering to the Athenians, sent them back to Athens
for the people to deal with them as they would. Here Phocion was sentenced to
death. To the last he maintained his calm and dignified and somewhat contemptuous
bearing. When some wretched man spat upon him as he passed to the prison, "Will
no one," said he, "check this fellow's indecency?" To one who asked
him whether he had any message to leave for his son Phocus, he answered, "Only
that he bear no grudge against the Athenians.And when the hemlock which had been
prepared was found insufficient for all the condemned, and the jailer would not
furnish more until he was paid for it, "Give the man his money," said
Phocion to one of his friends, "since at Athens one cannot even die for nothing."
He perished in the year 317, at the age of eighty-five.
The Athenians are said to have repented of their conduct. A brazen
statue was raised to the memory of Phocion, and Agnonides was condemned to death.
Phocion was twice married, and his second wife appears to have been as simple
and frugal in her habits as himself; but he was less fortunate in his son Phocus,
who, in spite of his father's lessons and example, was a thorough profligate.
As for Phocion himself, commendation of him must be almost wholly confined to
his private qualities. His fellow-citizens may have been degenerate, but he made
no effort to elevate them. His life is written by Plutarch.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Phocion (Phokion), the Athenian general and statesman, son of Phocus, was a man
of humble origin, and appears to have been born in B. C. 402. According to Plutarch
he studied under Plato and Xenocrates, and if we may believe the statement in
Suidas (s. v. Philiskos Aiginetes), Diogenes also numbered him among his disciples.
He distinguished himself for the first time under his friend Chabrias, in B. C.
376, at the battle of Naxos, in which he commanded the left wing of the Athenian
fleet, and contributed in a great measure to the victory. After the battle Chabrias
sent him to the islands to demand their contributions (suntaxeis), and offered
him a squadron of twenty ships for the service; but Phocion refused them, with
the remark that they were too few to act against an enemy, and too many to deal
with friends; and sailing to the several allies with only one galley, he obtained
a large supply by his frank and conciliatory bearing. Plutarch tells us that his
skill and gallantry at the battle of Naxos caused his countrymen thenceforth to
regard him as one likely to do them good service as a general. Yet for many years,
during which Chabrias, Iphicrates, and Timotheus chiefly filled the public eye,
we do not find Phocion mentioned as occupied prominently in any capacity. But
we cannot suppose that he held himself aloof all this time from active business,
though we know that he was never anxious to be employed by the state, and may
well believe that he had imbibed from Plato principles and visions of social polity,
which must in a measure have indisposed him for public life, though they did not
actually keep him from it. In B. C. 351 he undertook, together with Evagoras,
the command of the forces which had been collected by Idrieus, prince of Caria,
for the purpose of reducing Cyprus into submission to Artaxerxes III. (Ochus),
and they succeeded in conquering the whole island, with the exception of Salamis,
where Pnytagoras held out against them until he found means of reconciling himself
to the Persian king. To the next year (B. C. 350) Phocion's expedition to Euboea
and the battle of Tamynae are referred by Clinton, whom we have followed above
in Vol. I. p. 568, a; but his grounds for this date are not at all satisfactory,
and the events in question should probably be referred to B. C. 354. The vote
for the expedition was passed against the advice of Demosthenes, and in consequence
of an application from Plutarchus, tyrant of Eretria, for assistance against Callias.
The Athenians, however, appear to have over-rated the strength of their party
in the island, and neglected therefore to provide a sufficient force. The little
army of Phocion was still further thinned by desertions, which he made no effort
to check, remarking that those who fled were not good soldiers enough to be of
use to the enemy, and that for his part he thought himself well rid of them, since
their consciousness of their own misconduct would stop their mouths at home, and
silence their slanders against him. In the course of the campaign he was drawn
into a position at Tamynae, where defeat would have been fatal, and his danger
was moreover increased by the rashness or treachery of his ally Plutarchus: but
he gained the day by his skill and coolness after an obstinate engagement, and,
dealing thenceforth with Plutarchus as an enemy, drove him from Eretria, and occupied
a fortress named Zaretra, conveniently situated between the eastern and western
seas, in the narrowest part of the island. All the Greek prisoners who fell into
his hands here, he released, lest the Athenians should wreak their vengeance on
them; and on his departure, his loss was much felt by the allies of Athens, whose
cause declined grievously under his successor, Molossus.
It was perhaps in B. C. 343 that, a conspiracy having been formed
by Ptoeodorus and some of the other chief citizens in Megara to betray the town
to Philip (Plut. Phoc. 15; comp. Dem. de Cor., de Fals. Leq.), the Megarians applied
to Athens for aid, and Phocion was sent thither in command of a force with which
he fortified the port Nisaea, and joined it by two long walls to the city. The
expedition, if it is to be referred to this occasion, was successful, and the
design of the conspirators was baffled. In B. C. 341 Phocion commanded the troops
which were despatched to Euboea, on the motion of Demosthenes, to act against
the party of Philip, and succeeded in expelling Cleitarchus and Philistides from
Eretria and Oreus respectively, and establishing the Athenian ascendancy in the
island. In B. C. 340, when the Athenians, indignant at the refusal of the Byzantians
to receive Chares, who had been sent to their aid against Philip, were disposed
to interfere no further in the war, Phocion reminded them that their anger should
be directed, not against their allies for their distrust, but against their own
generals, whose conduct had excited it. The people recognised the justice of this,
and passed a vote for a fresh force, to the command of which Phocion himself was
elected. On his arrival at Byzantium, he did not attempt to enter the city, but
encamped outside the walls. Cleon, however, a Byzantian, who had been his friend
and fellowpupil in the Academy, pledged himself to his countrymen for his integrity,
and the Athenians were admitted into the town. Here they gained the good opinion
of all by their orderly and irreproachable conduct, and exhibited the greatest
courage and zeal against the besiegers. The result was that Philip was compelled
to abandon his attempts on Perinthus and Byzantium, and to evacuate the Chersonesus,
while Phocion took Several of his ships, recovered some of the cities which were
garrisoned with Macedonian troops, and made descents on many parts of the coast,
over-running and ravaging the enemy's territory. In the course of these operations,
however, he received some severe wounds, and was obliged to sail awav. According
to Plutarch, Phocion, after this success of the Athenian arms, strongly recommended
peace with Philip. His opinion we know was over-ruled, and the counsels of Demosthenes
prevailed; and the last desperate struggle, which ended in 338 so fatally for
Greece at Chaeroneia, was probably regarded by Phocion with little of sympathy,
and less of hope. When, however, Philip had summoned all the Greek states to a
general congress at Corinth, and Demades proposed that Athens should send deputies
thither, Phocion advised his countrymen to pause until it should be ascertained
what Philip would demand of the confederates. His counsel was again rejected,
but the Athenians afterwards repented that they had not followed it, when they
found contributions of ships and cavalry imposed on them by the congress. On the
murder of Philip in 336 becoming known at Athens, Demosthenes proposed a public
sacrifice of thanksgiving for the tidings, and the establishment of religious
honours to the memory of the assassin Pausanias; but Phocion resisted the proposal
on the two-fold ground, that such signs of joy betokened a mean spirit, and that,
after all, the army which had conquered at Chaeroneia was diminished only by one
man. The second reason he could hardly expect to pass current, so transparent
is its fallacy; but it seems that, on the whole, his representations succeeded
in checking the unseemly exultation of the people. When, in B. C. 335, Alexander
was marching towards Thebes, Phocion rebuked Demosthenes for his invectives against
the king, and complained that he was recklessly endangering Athens, and after
the destruction of Thebes, he advised the Athenians to comply with Alexander's
demand for the surrender of Demosthenes and other chief orators of the anti-Macedonian
party, urging at the same time on these objects of the conqueror's anger the propriety
of devoting themselves for the public good, like those ancient heroines, the daughters
of Leos and the Hyacinthides. This proposal, however, the latter portion of which
sounds like sarcastic irony, was clamorously and indignantly rejected by the people,
and an embassy was sent to Alexander, which succeeded in deprecating his resentment.
According to Plutarch, there were two embassies, the first of which Alexander
refused to receive, but to the second he gave a gracious audience, and granted
its prayer, chiehy from regard to Phocion, who was at the head of it (See Plut.
Phoc. 17, Dem. 23; Arr. Anab. i. 10; Diod. xvii. 15). From the same author we
learn that Alexander ever continued to treat Phocion with the utmost consideration,
and to cultivate his friendship, influenced no doubt, in great measure, by respect
for his character, but not without an eye at the same time to his political sentiments,
which were favourable to Macedonian ascendancy. Thus he addressed letters to him
with a mode of salutation (chairein), which he adopted to no one else except Antipater.
He also pressed upon him valuable presents, and desired Craterus, whom he sent
home with the veterans in B. C. 324, to give him his choice of four Asiatic cities.
Phocion, however, persisted in refusing all such offers, begging the king to leave
him no less honest than he found him, and only so far availed himself of the royal
favour as to request the liberty of certain prisoners at Sardis, which was immediately
granted to him. In B. C. 325, when Harpalus fled to Athens for refuge, he endeavoured,
but of course in vain, to buy the good offices of Phocion, who moreover refused
to support or countenance his own son-in-law, Charicles, when the latter was afterwards
brought to trial for having taken bribes from the fugitive. When, however, Antipater
and Philoxenus required of the Athenmans the surrender of Harpalus, Phocion joined
Demosthenes in advising them to resist the demand; but their efforts were unsuccessful,
and the rebel was thrown into prison till Alexander's pleasure should be known.
After the death of Harpalus, according to Plutarch, a daughter of his by his mistress
Pythionice was taken care of and brought up by Charicles and Phocion.
When the tidings of Alexander's death reached Athens. in B. C. 323,
Phocion fruitlessly attempted to moderate the impatient joy of the people; and
the proposal which soon followed for war with Antipater, he opposed vehemently,
and with all the caustic bitterness which characterised him. Thus, to Hypereides,
who asked him tauntingly when he would advise the Athenians to go to war, he answered,
"When I see the young willing to keep their ranks, the rich to contribute of their
wealth, and the orators to abstain from pilfering the public money ;" and he rebuked
the confidence of the newly-elected general, Leosthenes, with the remark, "Young
man, your words are like cypress trees ; stately and high they are, but they bear
no fruit." In the same spirit he received the news of the first successes of the
confederate Greeks, exclaiming sarcastically, "When shall we have done conquering?"
It is no wonder then that, on the death of Leosthenes before Lamia, the Athenians
shrunk front appointing Phocion to conduct the war, and elected Antiphilus in
preference. Shortly after this he restrained his countrymen, with difficulty and
at the peril of his life, from a rash expedition they were anxious to make against
the Boeotian towns, which sided with Macedonia; and in the same year (323) he
defeated Micion, a Macedonian nian officer, who had made a descent on the coast
of Attica, and who was slain in the battle. In B. C. 322 the victory gained over
the Greeks at Cranon in Thessaly, by the Macedonian forces, placed Athens at the
mercy of Antipater; and Phocion, as the most influential man of the anti-national
party, was sent, with Demades and others, to the colnqueror, then encamped in
the Cadmeia, to obtain the best terms they could. Among these there was one, viz.
the admission of a Macedonian garrison into Munychia, which Phocion strove, but
to no purpose, to induce Antipater to dispense with. The garrison, however, was
commanded by Menyllus, a good and moderate man, and a friend of Phocion's; and
the latter, by his influence with the new rulers of his country, contrived to
soften in several respects her hard lot of servitude. Thus he prevailed on Antipater
to recall many who had gone into exile, and to grant the Athenians a longer time
for the payment of the expenses of the war, to which the terms of the capitulation
bound them. At the same time he preserved, as he had always done, his own personal
integrity unshaken. He refused all the presents offered him by Menyilus, with
the remark that Menyllus was not a greater man than Alexander, whose gifts he
had before declined; and he told Antipater, when he required of him some unbefitting
action, that he could not have in him at once a friend and a flatterer.
On the death of Antipater in B. C. 319, Cassander, anxious to anticipate
his rival Polysperchon in making himself master of Athens, sent Nicanor to supersede
Menyllus in Munychia, as if by Antipater's authority, and when the real state
of the case became known, Phocion did not escape the suspicion of having been
privy to the deceit. He certainly gave a colour to the charge by his intimacy
with Nicanor, with whom however, as before with Menyllus, he used his influence
in behalf of his fellow-citizens. But the discontent which his conduct had excited
in them was still further increased by his obstinate refusal to distrust Nicanor
or to take any steps against him, when the latter, instead of withdrawing the
garrison in obedience to the decree of Polysperchon, continued to delude the Athenians
with evasions and pretences, till he at length succeeded in occupying the Peiraeeus
as well as Munchyia, and then declared openly that he meant to hold them both
for Cassander. Shortly after this, Alexander, the son of Polysperchon. arrived
at Athens, with the supposed intention of delivering it from Nicanor, and re-establishing
democracy. Many Athenian exiles came with him, as well as a number of strangers
and disfranchised citizens, and by the votes of these in the assembly Phocion
was deposed from his office. He then, according to Diodorus, persuaded Alexander
that he could not maintain his hold on the city without seizing Munychia and the
Peiraeens for himself, a design, however, which Alexander had doubtless already
formed before any communication with Phocion. But the Athenians at any rate regarded
the latter as the author of it; and their suspicions being further roused by the
private conferences of Alexander with Nicanor, Phocion was accused of treason
by Agnonides and fled, with several of his friends, to Alexander, who sent them
with letters of recommendation to Polysperchon, then encamped at Pharygae, a village
of Phocis. Hither there came also at the same time an Athenian embassy, with Agnonides
at the head of it, to accuse Phocion and his adherents. Polysperchon, having donbtless
less made up his mind to sacrifice them as a peaceoffering to the Athenians, whom
he meant still to, curb with a garrison, listened with favour to the charges,
but would not hear the reply of the accused, and Phocion and his friends were
sent back in waggons to Athens for the people to deal with them as they would.
Here again, in an assembly mainly composed of a mixed mob of disfranchised citizens,
and foreigners, and slaves, Phocion strove in vain to obtain a hearing. By some
it was even proposed that he should be tortured; but this was not tolerated even
by Agnonides. The sentence of death, however, was carrie by acclamation, and appears
to have been executed forthwith. To the last, Phocion maintained his calm, and
dignified and somewhat contemptuous bearing. When some wretched man spat upon
him as he passed to the prison, "Will no one," said he," check this fellow's indecency?"
To one who asked hint whether he had any message to leave for his son Phocus,
he answered, "Only that he bear no grudge against the Athenians." And when the
[p. 342] hemlock which had been prepared was found insufficient for all the condemned,
and the jailer would not furnish more until he was paid for it, "Give the man
his money," said Phocion to one of his friends, "since at Athens one cannot even
die for nothing." He perished in B. C. 317. at the age of 85. In accordance with
the law against traitors, his body was cast out on the conlinles of Attica and
Megara (see Diet. of Ant. s. v. Prolosia), and his friends were obliged to hire
a nman, who was in the habit of undertaking such services, to burn it. His bones
were reverently gathered up and buried by a woman of Megara; and afterwards, when
the people repented of their conduct, were brought back to Athens, and interred
at the public expense. A brazen statue was then raised to his memory, Agnonides
was condemned to death, and two more of his accusers, Epicurus and Demophilus,
having fled from the city, were overtaken and slain by Phocus.
Phocion was twice married, and his second wife appears to have been
as simple and frugal in her habits as himself; but he was less fortunate in his
son Phocus, who, in spite of his father's lessons stand example, was a thorough
profligate. As for Phocion himself, our commendation of him must be almost wholly
confined to his private qualities. He is said to have been the last eminent Athenian
who united the two characters of general and statesman; but he does not appear
to advantage in the latter capacity. Contrasting, it may be, the Platonic ideal
of a commonwealth with the actual corruption of his counltrymen, he neither retired,
like his master, into his own thoughts, nor did he throw himself, with the noble
energy of Demosthenes, into a practical struggle with the evil before him. His
fellow-citizens may have been degenerate, but he made no effort to elevate them.
He could do nothing better than despair and rail. We may therefore well believe
that his patriotism was not very profound; we may be quite sure that it was not
very wise. As a matter of fact, he mainly contributed to destroy the independence
of Athens; and he serves to prove to us that private worth and purity, though
essential conditions indeed of public virtue, are no infallible guarantee for
it. (Plut. Phocion, Demosthenes, Reg. et Imp. Apoph. ; C. Nep. Phocion ; Diod.
xvi. 42, 46, 74, xvii. 15, xviii. 64, &c.; Ael. V. H. i. 25, ii. 16, 43, iii.
17, 47, iv. 16, vii. 9, xi. 9, xii. 43, 49, xiii. 41, xiv. 10; Val. Max. iii.
8. Ext. 2, v. 3. Ext. 3; Ath. iv. p. 168, x.).
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Draco (Drakon). A very celebrated Athenian legislator, who flourished about B.C. 621. Suidas tells us that he brought forward his code of laws (thesmoi) in this year, and that he was then an old man. Aristotle says that Draco adapted his laws to the existing constitution, and that they contained nothing particular beyond the severity of their penalties. The slightest theft was punished capitally, as well as the most atrocious murder; and Demades remarked of his laws that they were written with blood, and not with ink. Draco, however, deserves credit as the first who introduced written laws at Athens; and it is probable that he improved the criminal courts by his transfer of cases of bloodshed from the archon to the ephetae, since before his time the archons had a right of settling all cases arbitrarily and without appeal--a right which they enjoyed in other cases until Solon's time.It appears that there were some offences which he did not punish with death; for instance, loss of civil rights was the punishment of attempting to alter one of his laws, Bekker). Draco was an archon, and, consequently, an Eupatrid; it is not, therefore, to be supposed that his object was to favour the lower orders, though his code seems to have tended to abridge the power of the nobles. The Athenians, it is said, could not endure the rigour of his laws, and the legislator himself was obliged to withdraw to the island of Aegina. Here he is said by Suidas to have been suffocated in the theatre beneath the number of cloaks and garments which the people of the island, according to the usual mode of expressing approbation among the Greeks, showered upon him. He was buried in the theatre.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Dracon (Drakon), the author of the first written code of laws at Athens, which
were called Desmoi, as distinguished from the nomoi of Solon (Andoc. de Myst.;
Ael. V. H. viii. 10; Perizon. ad loc.; Menag. ad Diog. Laert. i. 53). In this
code he affixed the penalty of death to almost all crimes -to petty thefts, for
instance, as well as to sacrilege and murder- which gave occasion to the remarks
of Herodicus and Demades, that his laws were not those of a man, but of a dragon
(drakon), and that they were written not in ink, but in blood. We are told that
he himself defended this extreme harshness by saying that small offences deserved
death, and that he knew no severer punishment for great ones (Aristot. Rhet. ii.
23.29; Plut. Sol. 17). Aristotle, if indeed the chapter be genuine (Pol. ii. ad
fin.) says, that Dracon did not change the constitution of Athens, and that the
only remarkable characteristic of his laws was their severity. Yet we know from
Aeschines (c. Timarch. 6, 7) that he provided in them for the education of the
citizens from their earliest years; and, according to Pollux (viii. 125) he made
the Ephetae a court of appeal from the archon basileus in cases of unintentional
homicide. On this latter point Richter (ad Fabric. l. c.), Schomann, and C. F.
Hermann (Pol. Ant. 103) are of opinion that Dracon established the Ephetae, taking
away the cognizance of homicide entirely from the Areiopagus; while Muller thinks
(Eumen. 65, 66), with more probability, that the two courts were united until
the legislation of Solon.
From this period (B. C. 594) most of the laws of Dracon fell into
disuse (GelL l. c.; Plut. Sol. l. c.); but Andocides tells us (l. c.), that some
of them were still in force at the end of the Peloponnesian war; and we know that
there remained unrepealed, not only the law which inflicted death for murder,
and which of course was not peculiar to Dracon's code, but that too which permitted
the injured husband to slay the adulterer, if taken in the act (Lys. de Caed.
Erat.; Paus. ix. 36; Xenarch. ap. Athen. xiii.). Demosthenes also says (c.Timocr.)
that, in his time, Dracon and Solon were justly held in honour for their good
laws; and Pausanias and Suidas mention an enactment of the former legislator adopted
by the Thasians, providing that any inanimate thing which had caused the loss
of human life should be cast out of the country (Paus. vi. 11; Suid. s. v. Nikon).
From Suidas we learn that Dracon died at Aegina, being smothered by the number
of hats and cloaks showered upon him as a popular mark of honour in the theatre
(Suid. s. vv. Drakon, periageiromenoi) His legislation is referred
by general testimony to the 39th Olympiad, in the fourth year of which (B. C.
621) Clinton is disposed to place it, so as to bring Eusebius into exact agreement
with the other authorities on the subject. Of the immediate occasion which led
to these laws we have no account. C. F. Hermann and Thirlwall are of opinion,
that the people demanded a written code to replace the mere customary law, of
which the Eupatridae were the sole expounders; and that the latter unable to resist
the demand, gladly sanctione the rigorous enactments of Dracon as adapted to check
the democratic movement which had given rise to them. This theory certainly gets
rid of what Thirlwall considers the difficulty of conceiving how the legislator
could so confound the gradations of moral guilt, and how also (as we may add)
he could fall into the error of making moral guilt the sole rule of punishment,
as his own defence of his laws above mentioned might lead us to suppose he did.
Yet the former of these errors is but the distortion of an important truth (Aristot.
Eth. Nic. vi. 13.6); while the latter has actually been held in modern times,
and was more natural in the age of Dracon, especially if, with Wachsmuth, we suppose
him to have regarded his laws in a religious aspect as instruments for appeasing
the anger of the gods. And neither of these errors, after all, is more strange
than his not foreseeing that the severity of his enactments would defeat its own
end, and would surely lead (as was the case till recently in England) to impunity.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
The Laws of Draco
Aristocratic political alliances often proved temporary in Athenian politics, as elsewhere, and rivalries among aristocrats jealous of each other's status continued under early Athenian democracy. In the aftermath of Cylon's attempted tyranny, an Athenian named Draco was appointed in 621 B.C., perhaps after pressure by the hoplites, to establish a code of laws promoting stability and equity. Unfortunately, Draco's laws somehow further destabilized the political situation; the Athenians later remembered them as having been as harsh as the meaning of his name (drakon, "dragon, serpent"), and our word Draconian, meaning excessively severe, reflects this view. A deterioration in the well-being of Athens's free peasants, which had been slowly building for a long time, also further undermined social peace. Later Athenians did not know what had caused this economic crisis, only that it pitted the rich against the middle-class and the poor.
This text is from: Thomas Martin's An Overview of Classical Greek History from Homer to Alexander, Yale University Press. Cited June 2005 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Lawgiver, statue of: Paus. 1.8.4
Adeimantus. The son of Leucolophides, an Athenian, was one of the commanders with Alcibiades in the expedition against Andros, B. C. 407 (Xen. Hell. i. 4.21). He was again appointed one of the Athenian generals after the battle of Arginusae, B. C. 406, and continued in office till the battle of Aegospotami, B. C. 405, where he was one of the commanders, and was taken prisoner. He was the only one of the Athenian prisoners who was not put to death, because he had opposed the decrec for cutting off the right hands of the Lacedaemonians who might be taken in the battle. He was accused by many of treachery in this battle, and was afterwards impeached by Conon (Xen. Hell. i. 7.1, ii. 1.30-32; Paus. iv. 17.2, x..5; Dem. de fals. leg.; Lys. c. Alc.). Aristophanes speaks of Adeimantus in the "Frogs" (1513), which was acted in the year of the battle, as one whose death was wished for; and he also calls him, apparently out of jest, the son of Leucolophus, that is, "White Crest". In the " Protagoras" of Plato, Adeimantus is also spoken of as present on that occasion.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Alexicles Alexikles), an Athenian general, who belonged to the oligarchial or Lacedaemonian party at Athens. After the revolution of B. C. 411, he and several of his friends quitted the city and went to their friends at Deceleia. But he was afterwards made prisoner in Peiraeeus, and sentenced to death for his participation in the guilt of Phrynichus. (Thucyd. viii. 92; Lycurg. in Leocr.)
Antiochus (Antiochos), an Ahenian, was left by Alcibiades at Notium in command
of the Athenian fleet, B. C. 407, with strict injunctions not to fight with Lysander.
Antiochus was the master of Alcibiades' own ship, and his personal friend; he
was a skilful seaman, but arrogant and heedless of consequences. His intimacy
with Alcibiades had first arisen upon an occasion mentioned by Plutarch (Alcib.
10), who tells us, that Alcibiades in one of his first appearances in the popular
assembly allowed a tame quail to escape from under his cloak, which occurrence
suspended the business of the assembly, till it was caught by Antiochus and given
to Alcibiades. Antiochus gave no heed to the injunctions of Alcibiades, and provoked
Lysander to an engagement, in which fifteen Athenian ships were lost, and Antiochus
himself was slain. This defeat was one of the main causes that led to the second
banishment of Alcibiades. (Xen. Hell. i. 5.11, &c.; Diod. xiii. 71; Phit. Alcib.
35.)
Antiphilus (Antiphilos), an Ahenian general, was appointed as the successor of Leosthenes in the Lamian war, B. C. 323, and gained a victory over Leonnatus. (Diod. xviii. 13-15; Plut. Phocion, 24.)
Apollodorus. An Ahenian, commanded the Persian auxiliaries which the Athenians had solicited from the king of Persia against Philip of Macedonia in B. C. 340. Apollodorus was engaged with these troops in protecting the town of Perinthus while Philip invaded its territory. (Paus. i. 29. 7; comp. Diod. xvi. 75; Arrian, Anab. ii. 14.)
Archestratus (Archestratos). One of the ten strategoi who were appointed to supersede Alcibiades in the command of the Athenian fleet after the battle of Notium, B. C. 407. Xenophon and Diodorus, who give us his name in this list, say no more of him; but we learn from Lysias that he died at Mytilene, and lie appears therefore to have been with Conon when Callicratidas chased the Athenian fleet thither from Ekatonnesoi (Xen. Hell. i. 5. § 16; Diod. xiii. 74, 77, 78; Lys. Apol.)
Aristogenes, was one of the tell commanders appointed to supersede Alcibiades
after the battle of Notium, B. C. 407 (Xen. Hell. i. 5.16; Diod. xiii. 74; Plut.
Alc. c. 36). He was one of the eight who conquered Callicratidas at Arginusae,
B. C. 406; and Protomachus and himself, by not returning to Athens after the battle,
escaped the fate of their six colleagues, though sentence of condemnation was
passed against them in their absence (Xen. Hell. i. 7.1, 34; Diod. xiii. 101).
Autocles (Autokles). Son of Tolmaeus, was one of the Athenian commanders in the
successful expedition against Cythera, B. C. 424 (Thuc. iv. 53); and, together
with his two colleagues, Nicias and Nicostratus, he ratified, on the part of Athens,
the truce which in B. C. 423 was concluded for one year with Sparta. (Thuc. iv.
119)
Callias. Son of Calliades, was appointed with four colleagues to the command of the second body of Athenian forces sent against Perdiccas and the revolted Chalcidians, B. C. 432, and was slain in the battle against Aristeus near Potidaea. (Thuc. i. 61-63; Diod. xii. 37.) This is probably the same Callias who is mentioned as a pupil of Zeno the Eleatic, from whose instructions, purchased for 100 minae, he is said to have derived much real advantage, sophos kai ellogimos gegonen.
Callistratus (Kallistratos). Son of Empedus, is mentioned by Pausanias as the commander of a body of Athenian cavalry in Sicily during the expedition of Nicias. When his countrymen were nearly cut to pieces at the river Assinarus, B. C. 413, Callistratus forced his way through the enemy and led his men safe to Catana. Thence returning to Syracuse, he attacked those who were plundering the Athenian camp, and fell, selling his life dearly. (Paus. vii. 16; comp. Thuc. vii. 84, 85.)
Cephisororus. An Athenian general and orator, who was sent with Callias, Autocles, and others (B. C. 371) to negotiate peace with Sparta (Xen. Hell. vi. 3.2). Again, in B. C. 369, when the Spartan ambassadors had come to Athens to settle the terms of the desired alliance between the states, and the Athenian council had proposed that the land-forces of the confederacy should be under the command of Sparta, and the navy under that of Athens, Cephisodotus persuaded the assembly to reject the proposal, on the ground that, while Athenian citizens would have to serve under Spartan generals, few but Helots (who principally manned the ships) would be subject to Athenian control. Another arrangement was then adopted, by which the command of the entire force was to be held by each state alternately for five days (Xen. Hell. vii. 1.12-14). It seems to have been about B. C. 359 that he was sent out with a squadron to the Hellespont, where the Athenians hoped that the Euboean adventurer, Charidemus, the friend of Cephisodotus, would, according to his promise made through the latter, co-operate with him in re-annexing the Chersonesus to their dominion. But Charidemus turned his arms against them, and marched in particular to the relief of Alopeconnesus, a town on the south-east of the Chersonese, of which Cephisodotus had been ordered to make himself master under the pretext of dislodging a band of pirates who had taken refuge there. Unable to cope with Charidemus, he entered into a compromise by which the place was indeed yielded to Athens, but on terms so disadvantageous that he was recalled from his command and brought to trial for his life. By a majority of only three votes he escaped sentence of death, but was condemned to a fine of five talents (Dem. c. Aristocr.; Suid. s. v. Kephisodotos). This was perhaps the Cephisodotus who, in B. C. 355, joined Aristophon the Azenian and others in defending the law of Leptines against Demosthenes, and who is mentioned in the speech of the latter as inferior to none in eloquence (Dem. c. Lept.). Aristotle speaks of him (Rhet. iii. 10) as an opponent of Charges when the latter had to undergo his euthune after the Olynthian war, B. C. 347.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Cephisodotus (Kephisodotos). One of the three additional generals who, in B. C.
405, were joined by the Athenians in command with Conon, Adeimantus, and Philocles.
He was taken prisoner at the battle of Aegospotami, and put to death (Xen. Hell.
ii. 1.16, 30).
Chares, an Athenian general, who for a long series of years contrived by profuse
corruption to maintain his influence with the people, in spite of his very disreputable
character. We first hear of him in B. C. 367, as being sent to the aid of the
Phliasians, who were hard pressed by the Arcadians and Argives, assisted by the
Theban commander at Sicyon. His operations were successful in relieving them,
and it was in this campaign under him that Aeschines, the orator, first distinguished
himself (Xen. Hell. vii. 2.18-23 ; Diod. xv. 75; Aesch. de Fals. Leg.). From this
scene of action he was recalled to take the command against Oropus, and the recovery
of their harbour by the Sicyonians from the Spartan garrison, immediately on his
departure, shews how important his presence had been for the support of the Lacedaemonian
cause in the north of the Peloponnesus (Xen. Hell. vii. 4. 1, comp. vii. 3. 2.).
In 361 he was appointed to succeed Leosthenes, after the defeat of
the latter by Alexander of Pherae, and, sailing to Corcyra, lie gave his aid,
strange to say, to an oligarchical conspiracy there, whereby the democracy was
overthrown with much bloodshed,--a step by which lie of course excited a hostile
disposition towards Athens on the part of the ejected, while he failed at the
same time to conciliate the oligarchs (Diod. xv. 95). The necessary consequence
was the loss of the island to the Athenians when the Social war broke out.
In 358 Chares was sent to Thrace as general with full power, and obliged
Charidemus to ratify the treaty which he had made with Athenodorus. In the ensuing
year he was appointed to the conduct of the Social war, in the second campaign
of which, after the death of Chabrias, Iphicrates and Timotheus were joined with
him in the command, B. C. 356. According to Diodorus, his colleagues having refused,
in consequence of a storm, to risk an engagement for which he was eager, he accused
them to the people, and they were recalled and subsequently brought to trial.
As C. Nepos tells it, Chares actually attacked the enemy in spite of the weather,
was worsted, and, in order to screen himself, charged his colleagues with not
supporting him. In the prosecution he was aided by Aristophon, the Azenian (Diod.
xvi. 7, 21; Nep. Tim. 3; Arist. Rhet. ii. 23.7, iii. 10.7; Isocr. peri Atnid.137;
Deinarch. c. Polycl. 17).
Being now left in the sole command, and being in want of money, which
he was afraid to apply for from home, he relieved his immediate necessities by
entering, compelled perhaps by his mercenaries, into the service of Artabazus,
the revolted satrap of Western Asia. The Athenians at first approved of this proceeding,
but afterwards ordered him to drop his connexion with Artabazus on the complaint
of Artaxerxes III. (Ochus); and it is probable that the threat of the latter to
support the confederates against Athens hastened at least the termination of the
war, in accordance with the wishes of Eubulus and Isocrates, and in opposition
to those of Chares and his party (Diod. xvi. 22; Dem. Philipp. i.; Isoc. de Pac.;
Arist. Rhet. iii. 17.10).
In B. C. 353 Chares was sent against Sestus, which, as well as Cardia,
seems to have refused submission notwithstanding the cession of the Chersonesus
to Athens in 357. He took the town, massacred the men, and sold the women and
children for slaves (Diod. xvi. 34).
In the Olynthian war, B. C. 349, he was appointed general of the mercenaries
sent from Athens to the aid of Olynthus; but he seems to have effected little
or nothing. The command was then entrusted to Charidemus, who in the ensuing year,
348, was again superseded by Chares. In this campaign he gained some slight success
on one occasion over Philip's mercenaries, and celebrated it by a feast given
to the Athenians with a portion of the money which had been sacrilegiously taken
from Delphi, and some of which had found its way into his hands (Diod. xvi. 52--55;
Philochor. ap. Dionys; Theopomp. and Heracleid. ap. Athen. xii.). On his euthune
he was impeached by Cephisodotus, who complained, that "he was endeavouring to
give his account after having got the people tight by the throat" (Arist. Rhet.
iii. 10. 7), an allusion perhaps merely to the great embarrassment of Athens at
the time.
In B. C. 346 we find him commanding again in Thrace; and, when Philip
was preparing to march against Cersobleptes, complaints arrived at Athens from
the Chersonesus that Chares had withdrawn from his station, and was nowhere to
be found; and the people were obliged to send a squadron in quest of him with
the extraordinary message, that " the Athenians were surprised that, while Philip
was marching against the Chersonese, they did not know where their general and
their forces were." That he had been engaged in some private expedition of plunder
is probable enough. In the same year, and before the departure of the second embassy
from Athens to Macedonia on the subject of the peace, a despatch arrived from
Chares stating the hopeless condition of the affairs of Cersobleptes (Dem. de
Fals. Leg; Aesch. de Fals. Leg.). After this we lose sight of Chares for several
years, during which he probably resided at Sigetiu, which, according to Theopompus
(ap. Athen. xii) was with him a favourite residence, as supplying more opportunity
for the indulgence of his profligate propensities than he could find at Athens.
But in a speech of Demosthenes delivered in B. C. 341 (de Chers.) he is spoken
of as possessing much influence at that time in the Atlenian councils ; and we
may consider him therefore to have been one of those who authorized and defended
the proceedings of Diopeithes against Philip in Thrace.
In B. C. 340 he was appointed to the command of the force which was
sent to aid Byzantium against Philip; but his character excited the suspicions
of the Byzantians, and they refused to receive him. Against the enemy he effected
nothing: his only exploits were against the allies of Athens, and these he plundered
unscrupulously. He was accordingly superseded by Phocion, whose success was brilliant
(Diod. xvi. 74; Phil. Ep. ad Ath. ap. Denm.; Plut. Phoc. 14).
In 338 he was sent to the aid of Amphissa against Philip, who defeated
him together with the Theban general, Proxenus. Of this defeat, which is mentioned
by Aeschines, Demosthenes in his reply says nothing, but speaks of two battles
in which the Athenians were victorious (Polyaen. iv. 2; Aesch. c. Ctes.; Dem.
de Cor.). In the same year Chares was one of the commanders of the Athenian forces
at the battle of Chaeroneia, for the disastrous result of which he escaped censure,
or at least prosecution, though Lysicles, one of his colleagues, was tried and
condemned to death (Diod. xvi. 85, 88).
He is mentioned by Arrian among the Athenian orators and generals
whom Alexander required to be surrendered to him in B. C. 335, though he was afterwards
prevailed on by Demades not to press the demand against any but Charidemus. Plutarch,
however, omits the name of Chares in the list which he gives us (Arr. Anab. i.
10 ; Plut. Dem. 23). When Alexander invaded Asia in P. c. 334, Chares was living
at Sigeum, and he is mentioned again by Arrian (Anab. i. 12) as one of those who
came to meet the king and pay their respects to him on his way to Ilium. Yet we
afterwards find him commanding for Dareius at Mytilene, which had been gained
in B. C. 333 by Pharnabazus and Autophradates, but which Chares was compelled
to surrender in the ensuing year (Arr. Anab. ii. 1, iii. 2). From this period
we hear no more of him, but it is probable that he ended his days at Sigeum.
As a general, Chares has been charged with rashness, especially in
the needless exposure of his own person (Plut. Pelop. 2); and he seems indeed
to have been possessed of no very superior talent, though perhaps he was, during
the greater portion of his career, the best commander that Athens was able to
find. In politics we see him connected throughout with Demosthenes (see Dem. de
Fals. Leg.), --a striking example of the strange associations which political
interests are often thought to necessitate. Morally he must have been an incubus
on any party to which he attached himself, notwithstanding the apparent assistance
he might sometimes render it through the orators whom he is said to have kept
constantly in pay. His profligacy, which was measureless, he unblushingly avowed
and gloried in, openly ridiculing -what might have abashed any other man- the
austere virtue of Phcion. His bad faith passed into a proverb; and his rapacity
was extraordinary, even amidst the miserable system then prevailing, when the
citizens of Athens would neither fight their own battles nor pay the men who fought
them, and her commanders had to support their mercenaries as best they could.
In fact, his character presents no one single point on which the mind can rest
with pleasure. He lived, as we know, during the period of his country's decline,
and may serve, indeed, as a specimen of a class of men whose influence in a nation
is no less a cause than a symptom of its fall (Plut. Phoc. 5; Theopomp. ap. Athen.
l. c.; Isocr. de Pace; Aesch. de Fals. Leg.; Eubul. ap. Arist. Rhet. i. 15. 15;
Suid. s. v. Charetos huposcheseis.)
Damalis, the wife of the Athenian general, Chares. She accompanied her husband, and while he was stationed with his fleet near Byzantium, she died. She is said to have been buried in a neighbouring place, of the name of Damalis, and to have been honoured with a monument of the shape of a cow. According to a mythical tradition, Io on her wandering landed at Damalis, and the Chalcedonians erected a bronze cow on the spot. (Symeon Mag. de Constant. Porphyr.; comp. Polyb. v. 43.)
Charminus (Charminos), an Athenian general, who is first mentioned by Thucydides
as coming to Samos in B. C. 412. Samos was at this time the head-quarters of the
Athenian fleet, and the force there amounted to upwards of 100 ships, of which
30 were detached to besiege Chios, while the rest (and with them Charminus) remained
to watch the Spartan fleet under the high-admiral Astyochus at Miletus. He was
detached a very short time afterwards with twenty vessels to the coast of Lycia,
to look out for the Spartan fleet conveying the deputies who were to examine the
complaints made against Astyochus. On this service he fell in with Astyochus,
who was himself on the look-out to convoy his countrymen. Charminus was defeated,
and lost six ships, but escaped with the rest to Halicarnassus. We afterwards
find him assisting the oligarchical party at Samos in the ineffectual attempt
at a revolution. (Thuc. viii. 30, 41, 42, 73; Aristoph. Thesmoph. 804.)
Cleon (Kleon). An Athenian, the son of a tanner, and said himself to have exercised that trade. Of extraordinary impudence and little courage, slow in the field, but forward and noisy in the assembly, corrupt, but boastful of integrity, and supported by a coarse but ready eloquence, he gained such consideration by flattering the lower orders that he became the head of a party. By an extraordinary train of circumstances he came off victorious in the affair of Sphacteria, the Athenian populace having chosen him one of their generals. Elated upon this with the idea that he possessed military talents, he caused himself to be appointed commander of an expedition into Thrace. He was slain in a battle at Amphipolis against Brasidas, the Spartan general, B.C. 422...
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Cleon (Kleon), the son of Cleaenetus, shortly after the death of Pericles, succeeding,
it is said (Aristoph. Equit. 130), Eucrates the flaxseller, and Lysicles the sheep-dealer,
became the most trusted and popular of the people's favourites, and for about
six years of the Peloponnesian war (B. C. 428--422) may be regarded as the head
of the party opposed to peace.
He belonged by birth to the middling classes, and was brought up to
the trade of a tanner; how long however he followed it may be doubtful; he seems
early to have betaken himself to a more lucrative profession in politics. He became
known at the very beginning of the war. The latter days of Pericles were annoyed
by his impertinence. Hermippus, in a fragment of a comedy probably represented
in the winter after the first invasion of Attica, speaks of the home-keeping general
as tortured by the sting of the fierce Cleon (dechtheis aithoni Kleoni, ap. Plut.
Per. 33). And according to Idomeneus (ibid. 35) Cleon's name was attached to the
accusation, to which in the miseries of the second year Pericles was obliged to
give way. Cleon at this time was, we must suppose, a violent opponent of the policy
which declined risking a battle; nay, it is possible he may also have indulged
freely in invectives against the war in general. In 427 the submission of the
Mytileneans brings him more prominently before us. He was now established fairly
as demagogue. The deliberations on the use to be made of the unconditional surrender
of these revolted allies ended in the adoption of his motion,--that the adult
males should be put to death, the women and children sold for slaves. The morrow,
however, brought a cooler mind; and in the assembly held for reconsideration it
was, after a long debate, rescinded. The speeches which on this second occasion
Thucydides ascribes to Cleon and his opponent give us doubtless no grounds for
any opinion on either as a speaker, but at the same time considerable acquaintance
with his own view of Cleon's position and character. We see plainly the effort
to keep up a reputation as the straightforward energetic counsellor; the attempt
by rude bullying to hide from the people his slavery to them; the unscrupulous
use of calumny to excite prejudice against all rival advisers. "The people were
only showing (what he himself had long seen) their incapacity for governing, by
giving way to a sentimental unbusinesslike compassion : as for the orators who
excited it, they were, likely enough, paid for their trouble." (Thuc. iii. 36--49.)
The following winter unmasked his boldest enemy. At the city Dionysia,
B. C. 426, in the presence of the numerous visitors from the subject states, Aristophanes
represented his " Babylonians." It attacked the plan of election by lot, and contained
no doubt the first sketch of his subsequent portrait of the Athenian democracy.
Cleon, it would appear, if not actually named, at any rate felt himself reflected
upon; and he rejoined by a legal suit against the author or his representative.
The Scholiasts speak of it as directed against his title to the franchise (xenias
graphe), but it certainly also assailed him for insulting the government in the
presence of its subjects (Aristoph. Acharn. 377, 502). About the same time, however,
before the next winter's Lenaea, Cleon himself, by means of a combination among
the nobler and wealthier (the Hippeis), was brought to trial and condemned to
disgorge five talents, which he had extracted on false pretences from some of
the islanders (Aristoph. Acharn. 6, comp. Schol., who refers to Theopompus).
In 425 Cleon reappears in general history, still as before the potent
favourite. The occasion is the embassy sent by Sparta with proposals for peace,
after the commencement of the blockade of her citizens in the island of Sphacteria.
There was considerable elevation at their success prevalent among the Athenians;
yet numbers were truly anxious for peace. Cleon, however, well aware that peace
would greatly curtail, if not annihilate, his power and his emoluments, contrived
to work on his countrymen's presumption, and insisted to the ambassadors on the
surrender, first of all, of the blockaded party with their arms, and then the
restoration in exchange for them of the losses of B. C. 445, Nisaea, Pegae, Troezen,
and Achaia. Such concessions it was beyond Sparta's power to make good; it was
even dangerous for her to be known to have so much as admitted a thought of them;
and when the ambassadors begged in any case to have commissioners appointed them
for private discussion, he availed himself of this to break off the negotiation
by loud outcries against what he professed to regard as evidence of double-dealing
and oligarchical caballing. (Thuc. iv. 21, 22.)
A short time however shewed the unsoundness of his policy. Winter
was approaching, the blockade daily growing more difficult, and escape daily easier;
and there seemed no prospect of securing the prize. Popular feeling now began
to run strongly against him, who had induced the rejection of those safe offers.
Cleon, with the true demagogue's tact of catching the feeling of the people, talked
of the false reports with which a democracy let people deceive it, and when appointed
himself to a board of commissioners for inquiry on the spot, shifted his ground
and began to urge the expediency rather of sending a force to decide it at once,
adding, that if he had been general, he would have done it before. Nicias, at
whom the scoff was directed, took advantage of a rising feeling in that direction
among the people, and replied by begging him to be under no restraint, but to
take any forces he pleased and make the attempt. What follows is highly characteristic.
Cleon, not having a thought that the timid Nicias was really venturing so unprecedented
a step, professed his acquiescence, but on finding the matter treated as serious,
began to be disconcerted and back out. But it was intolerable to spoil the joke
by letting him off, and the people insisted that he should abide by his word.
And he at last recovered his self-possession and coolly replied, that if they
wished it then, he would go, and would take merely the Lemnians and Imbrians then
in the city, and bring them back the Spartans dead or alive within twenty days.
And indeed, says Thucydides, wild as the proceeding appeared, soberer minds were
ready to pay the price of a considerable failure abroad for the ruin of the demagogue
at home.
Fortune, however, brought Cleon to Pylos at the moment when he could
appropriate for his needs the merit of an enterprise already devised, and no doubt
entirely executed, by Demosthenes. He appears, however, not to have been without
shrewdness either in the selection of his troops or his coadjutor, and it is at
least some small credit that he did not mar his good luck. In any case he brought
back his prisoners within his time, among them 120 Spartans of the highest blood
(Thuc. iv. 27--39). At this, the crowning point of his fortunes, Aristophanes
dealt him his severest blow. In the next winter's Lenaea, B. C. 424, appeared
" The Knights," in which Cleon figures as an actual dramatis persona, and, in
default of an artificer bold enough to make the mask, was represented by the poet
himself with his face smeared with winelees. The play is simply one satire on
his venality, rapacity, ignorance, violence, and cowardice; and was at least successful
so far as to receive the first prize. It treats of hin, however, chiefly as the
leader in the Ecclesia; the Wasps, in B. C. 422, similarly displays him as the
grand patron of the abuses of the courts of justice. He is said to have originated
the increase of the dicast's stipend from one to three obols, and in general he
professed to be the unhired advocate of the poor, and their protector and enricher
by his judicial attacks on the rich.
The same year (422) saw, however, the close of his career. Late in
the summer, he went out, after the expiration of the year's truce, to act against
Brasidas in Chalcidice. He seems to have persuaded both himself and the people
of his consummate ability as a general, and he took with him a magnificent army
of the lest troops. He effected with ease the capture of Torone, and then moved
towards Amphipolis, which Brasidas also hastened to protect. Utterly ignorant
of the art of war, he advanced with no fixed purpose, but rather to look about
him, up to the walls of the city; and on finding the enemy preparing to sally,
directed so unskilfully a precipitate retreat, that the soldiers of one wing presented
their unprotected right side to the attack. The issue of the combat is related
under Bracidas.
Cleon himself fell, in an early flight, by the hand of a Myrcinian targeteer (Thuc.
v. 2, 3, 6--10).
Cleon may be regarded as the representative of the worst faults of
the Athenian democracy, such as it came from the hands of Pericles. While Pericles
lived, his intellectual and moral power was a sufficient check, nor had the assembly
as yet become conscious of its own sovereignty. In later times the evil found
itself certain alleviations; the coarse and illiterate demagogues were succeeded
by the line of orators, and the throne of Pericles was at last worthily filled
by Demosthenes. How far we must call Cleon the creature and how far the cause
of the vices and evils of his time of course is hard to say; no doubt he was partly
both. He is said (Plut. Nicias, 8) to have first broken through the gravity and
seemliness of the Athenian assembly by a loud and violent tone and coarse gesticulation,
tearing open his dress, slapping his thigh, and running about while speaking.
It is to this probably, and not to any want of pure Athenian blood, that the title
Paphlagonian (Paphlagon, from paphlazo), given him in the Knights, refers. His
power and familiarity with the assembly are shewn in a story (Plut. Nicias, 7),
that on one occasion the people waited for him, perhaps to propose some motion,
for a long time, and that he at last appeared with a garland on, and begged that
they would put off the meeting till the morrow, " for," said he, " today I have
no time: I am entertaining some guests, and have just sacrificed,"--a request
which the assembly took as a good joke, and were good-humoured enough to accede
to.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
The success of Cleon at Pylos
In 425 B.C. the Athenian general Cleon won an unprecedented victory by capturing
some 120 Spartan Equals and about 170 allied troops in a battle at Pylos in the
western Peloponnese. No Spartan soldiers had ever before surrendered under any
circumstances. They had always taken as their martial creed the sentiment expressed
by the legendary advice of a Spartan mother as she handed her son his shield as
he went off to war: "Come home either with this or on it", meaning he
should return either as a victor carrying his shield or as a corpse carried upon
it. By this date , however, the population of Spartan Equals had been so reduced
that the loss of even such a small group was perceived as intolerable. The Spartan
leaders therefore offered the Athenians favorable peace terms in return for the
captives. Cleon's success at Pylos had vaulted him into a position of political
leadership, and he advocated a hard line toward Sparta. Thucydides, who apparently
had no love for Cleon, called him "the most violent of the citizens".
At Cleon's urging the Athenian assembly refused to make peace with Sparta.
This text is from: Thomas Martin's An Overview of Classical Greek History from Homer to Alexander, Yale University Press. Cited June 2005 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Cleaenetus, (Kleainetos). Father of Cleon, the Athenian demagogue. (Thuc. iii. 36, iv. 21.) It is doubtful whether he is the same person as the Cleaenetus who is mentioned by Aristophanes (Eq. 572), and of whom the Scholiast on the passage speaks as the author of a decree for withholding the sitesis en Prutaneioi from the generals of the state.
Demosthenes, son of Alcisthenes, Athenian general, is one of the prominent characters
of the Peloponnesian war. He was appointed in the sixth year, B. C. 426, to the
command with Procles of a squadron of thirty ships sent on the annual cruise around
Peloponnesus. Their first important efforts were directed against Leucas; and
with the aid of a large force of Acarnanians, Zacynthians, Cephallenians, and
Corcyraeans, it seemed highly probable that this important ally of Sparta might
be reduced. And the Acarnanians were urgent for a blockade. Demosthenes, however,
had conceived, from the information of the Messenians, hopes of a loftier kind
; and, at the risk of offending the Acarnanians, who presently declined to co-operate,
sailed with these views to Naupactus. The Corcyraeans had also left hin, but he
still persevered in his project, which was the reduction of the Aetolians,--an
operation which, once effected, would open the way to the Phocians, a people ever
well disposed to Athens, and so into Boeotia. It was not too much to hope that
northern Greece might thus be wholly detached from the Spartan alliance, and the
war be made strictly Peloponnesian. The success of the first move in this plan
depended much on the aid of certain allies among the Ozolian Locrians, who were
used to the peculiar warfare of the enemy. These, however, were remiss, and Demosthenes,
fearing that the rumour of his purpose would rouse the whole Aetolian nation,
advanced without them. His fear had been already realized, and as soon as the
resources of his archery were exhausted, he was obliged to retreat, and this retreat
the loss of his guide rendered even more disastrous than might have been expected
for a force of heavy-armed men amidst the perpetual assaults of numerous light
armed enemies. " There was every kind of flight and destruction," says Thucydides,
" and of 300 Athenians there fell 120, a loss rendered heavy beyond proportion,
through the peculiar excellence of this particular detachment" (Thuc. iii. 91,
94, 98; Diod. xii. 60).
This, however, seemed to be hardly the worst consequence. The Aetolians
sent ambassadors to Sparta, to ask for aid to reduce Naupactus; and received under
the command of Eurylochus 3000 men-at-arms. The Ozolian Locrians were overawed
into decided alliance. But Naupactus Demosthenes was enabled to save by reinforcements
obtained on urgent entreaty from the offended Acarnanians ; and Eurylochus led
off his forces for the present to Calydon, Pleuron, and Proschium. Yet this was
but the preliminary of a more important movement. The Ambraciots, on a secret
understanding with him, advanced with a large force into the country of their
ancient enemy, the Amphilochian Argos; they posted themselves not far from the
town, at Olpae. Eurylochus now broke up, and, by a judicious route, passing between
the town itself and Crenae, where the Acarnanians had assembled to intercept him,
effected a junction with these allies. Presently, on the other hand, Demosthenes
arrived with twenty ships, and under his conduct the final engagement took place
at Olpae, and was decided, by an ambuscade which he planted, in favour of the
Athenians and Acarnanians. An almost greater advantage was gained by the compact
entered into with Menedaeus, the surviving Spartan officer, for the underhand
withdrawal of the Peloponnesians. And, finally, haying [p. 980] heard that the
whole remaining force of Ambracia was advancing in support, he succeeded further
in waylaying and almost exterminating it in the battle of Idomene. The Athenians
received a third part of the spoils, and the amount may be estimated from the
fact, that the share of Demosthenes, the only portion that reached Athens in safety,
was no less than 300 panoplies (Thuc. iii. 102, 105--114; Diod. xii. 60).
Demosthenes might now safely venture home: and in the next year he
was allowed, at his own request, though not in office, to accompany Eurymedon
and Sophocles, the commanders of a squadron destined for Sicily, and empowered
to use their services for any object he chose on the Peloponnesian coast. They,
however, would not hear of any delay, and it was only by the chance of stress
of weather, which detained the fleet at Pylos, his choice for his new design,
that he was enabled to effect his purpose. The men themselves while waiting, took
the fancy to build him his fort; and in it he was left with five ships. Here he
was assailed by the Lacedaemonians, whom the news had recalled out of Attica,
and from Corcyra, and here with great spirit and success he defeated their attempt
to carry the place on the sea side. The arrival of forty Athenian ships, for which
he had sent, and their success in making their way into the harbour, reversed
his position. The Lacedaemonians, who in their siege of the place had occupied
the neighbouring island, were now cut off and blockaded, and Sparta now humbled
herself to ask for peace. The arrogance of the people blighted this promise ;
and as the winter approached it became a question whether the whole advantage
was not likely to be lost by the escape of the party. Demosthenes, however, was
devising an expedient, when joined or rather, in fact, superseded by Cleon, who
nevertheless was shrewd enough not to interfere, possibly had even had intimation
of it throughout. His Aetolian disaster had taught him the value of light and
the weakness of heavy arms. Landing at two points with a force of which one-third
only were full-armed, by a judicious distribution of his troops, and chiefly by
the aid of his archers and targeteers. he effected the achievement, then almost
incredible, of forcing the Spartans to lay down their arms (Thuc. iv. 2--40; Diod.
xii. 61-63).
The glory of this success was with the vulgar given to Cleon, yet
Demosthenes must have surely had some proportion of it. He was probably henceforth
in general esteem, as in the Knights of Aristophanes, coupled at the head of the
list of the city's generals with the high-born and influential Nicias. We find
him in the following year (B. C. 424) commanding with Hippocrates in the operation
in the Megarid; possessing himself by a stratagem of the Long Walls uniting Megara
to Nisaea, and receiving shortly the submission of Nisaea itself, though baffled
by the advance of Brasidas in the main design on Megara. Soon after, he concerted
with the same colleague a grand attempt on Boeotia. On a fixed day Hippocrates
was to lead the whole Athenian force into the south-eastern frontier, and occupy
Delium, while Demosthenes was to land at Siphae, and by the aid of the democratic
party, possess himself of it and of Chaeroneia. Demosthenes with this view took
forty ships to Naupactus, and, having raised forces in Acarnania, sailed for Siphae.
But either he or Hippocrates had mistaken the day; his arrival was too early,
and the Boeotians, who had moreover received information of the plot, were enabled
to bring their whole force against Demosthenes, and yet be in time to meet his
colleague at Delium. The whole design was thus overthrown, and Demosthenes was
further disgraced by a repulse in a descent on the territory of Sicyon (Thuc.
iv. 66--74, 76, 77, 89, 101; Diod. xii. 66--69).
He does not reappear in history, except among the signatures to the
treaties of the tenth year, B. C. 422 (Thuc. v. 19, 24), till the nineteenth,
B. C. 413. On the arrival of the despatch from Nicias giving an account of the
relief of Syracuse by Gylippus, he was appointed with Eurymedon to the command
of the reinforcements, and, while the latter went at once to Sicily, he remained
at home making the needful preparations. Early in the spring he set sail with
sixty-five ships; and after some delays, how far avoidable we cannot say, at Aegina
and Corcyra, on the coasts of Peloponnesus and of Italy, reached Syracuse a little
too late to prevent the first naval victory of the besieged (Thuc. vii. 16, 17,
20, 26, 31, 33, 35, 42).
The details of this concluding portion of the Syracusan expedition
cannot be given in a life of Demosthenes. His advice, on his arrival, was to make
at once the utmost use of their own present strength and their enemies' consternation,
and then at once, if they failed, to return. No immediate conclusion of the siege
could be expected without the recovery of the high ground commanding the city,
Epipolae. After some unsuccessful attempts by day, Demosthenes devised and put
into effect a plan for an attack, with the whole forces, by night. It was at first
signally successful, but the tide was turned by the resistance of a body of Boeotians,
and the victory changed to a disastrous defeat. Demosthenes now counselled an
immediate departure, either to Athens, or, if Nicias, whose professions of greater
acquaintance with the internal state of the besieged greatly influenced his brother
generals, really had grounds for hope, at any rate from their present unhealthy
position to the safe and wholesome situation of Thapsus. Demosthenes reasoned
in vain: then ensued the fatal delay, the return of Gylippus with fresh reinforcements,
the late consent of Nicias to depart, and the infatuated recal of it on the eclipse
of the moon, the first defeat and the second of the all-important ships. In the
latter engagement Demosthenes had the chief command, and retained even in the
hour of disaster sufficient coolness to see that the only course remaining was
at once to make a fresh attempt to break through the blockading ships and force
their way to sea. And he had now the voice of Nicias with him : the army itself
in desperation refused. In the subsequent retreat by the land, Demosthenes for
some time is described simply as cooperating with Nicias, though with the separate
command of the second and rearward division. This, on the sixth day, through its
greater exposure to the enemy, was unable to keep up with the other; and Demosthenes,
as in his position was natural, looked more to defence against the enemy, while
Nicias thought only of speedy retreat. The consequence was that, having fallen
about five miles and a half behind, he was surrounded and driven into a plot of
ground planted [p. 981] with olives, fenced nearly round with a wall, where he
was exposed to the missiles of the enemy. Here he surrendered, towards evening,
on condition of the lives of his soldiers being spared.
His own was not. In confinement at Syracuse Nicias and he were once
more united, and were together relieved by a speedy death. Such was the unworthy
decree of the Syracusan assembly, against the voice, say Diodorus and Plutarch,
of Hermocrates, and contrary, says Thucydides, to the wish of Gylippus, who coveted
the glory of conveying the two great Athenian commanders to Sparta (Thuc. vii.
42--87; Diod. xiii. 10--33; Plut. Nicias, 20-28). Timaeus, adds Plutarch, related
that Hermocrates contrived to apprize them of the decree, and that they fell by
their own hands. Demosthenes may be characterized as an unfortunate general. Had
his fortune but equalled his ability, he had achieved perhaps a name greater than
any of the generals of his time. In the largeness and boldness of his designs,
the quickness and justice of his insight, he rises high above all his contemporaries.
In Aetolia the crudeness of his first essay was cruelly punished; in Acarnania
and at Pylos, though his projects were even favoured by chance, yet the proper
result of the one in the reduction of Ambracia was prevented by the jealousy of
his allies; and in the other his own individual glory was stolen by the shameless
Cleon. In the designs against Megara and Boeotia failure again attended him. In
his conduct of the second Syracusan expedition there is hardly one step which
we can blame: with the exception of the night attack on Epipolae, it is in fact
a painful exhibition of a defeat step by step effected over reason and wisdom
by folly and infatuation. It is possible that with the other elements of a great
general he did not combine in a high degree that essential requisite of moral
firmness and command: he may too have been less accurate in attending to the details
of execution than he was farsighted and fertile in devising the outline. Yet this
must be doubtful: what we learn from history is, that to Demosthenes his country
owed her superiority at the peace of Nicias, and to any rather than to him her
defeat at Syracuse. Of his position at home among the various parties of the state
we know little or nothing: he appears to have been of high rank: in Aristophanes
he is described as leading the charge of the Hippeis upon Cleon (Equites, 242),
and his place in the play throughout seems to imply it.
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Diomedon, an Athenian commander during the Peloponnesian war, came out early in
the campaign of B. C. 412, the first after the Syracusan disaster, with a supply
of 16 ships for the defence of Ionia. Chios and Miletus were already in revolt,
and the Chians presently proceeded to attempt its extension to Lesbos. Diomedon,
who had captured on his first arrival four Chian ships, was soon after joined
by Leon with ten from Athens, and the two commnanders with a squadron of 25 ships
now sailed for Lesbos. They recovered Mytilene at once, defeating the Chian detachment
in the harbour; and by this blow were enabled to drive out the enemy and secure
the whole island, a service of the highest importance. They also regained Clazomenae,
and from Lesbos and the neighboring coast carried on a successful warfare against
Chios (Thuc. viii. 19-24). In this service it seems likely they were permanently
engaged until the occasion, in the following winter, when we find them, on the
recommendation of Peisander, who with his oligarchical friends was then working
for the recall of Alcibiades, placed in the chief command of the fleet at Samos,
superseding Phrynichus and Scironides. After acting against Rhodes, now in revolt,
they remained, apparently, during the period of inaction at the commencement of
the season of B. C. 411, subordinate to Peisander, then at Samos. Hitherto he
had trusted them : their appointment had been perhaps the result of their successful
operations in Lesbos and Chios, and of a neutrality in party-matters : perhaps
they had joined in his plan for the sake of the recall of Alcibiades, and now
that this project was given up, they drew back, and saw moreover, as practical
men, that the overthrow of democracy would be the signal foruniversal revolt to
Sparta : Thucydides says that they were influenced by the honours they received
from the democracy. For whatever reason, they now, on Peisander's departure, entered
into communication with Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus, and, acting under their direction,
crushed the oligarchical conspiracy among the Samians, and on hearing that the
government of the Four Hundred was established in Athens, raised the standard
of independent democracy in the army, and recalled Alcibiades. (viii. 54, 55,
73.)
Henceforth for some time they are not named, though they pretty certainly
were among the commanders of the centre in the battle of Cynossema, and during
the whole period of the command of Alcibiades were probably in active service.
When after the battle of Notium, B. C. 407, he was disgraced, they were among
the ten generals appointed in his room. Diomedon in this command was employed
at a distance from the main fleet; and when Callicratidas chased Conon into Mytilene,
on the information, perhaps, of the galley which made its escape to the Hellespont,
he sailed for Lesbos, and lost 10 out of 12 ships in attempting to join his besieged
colleague. In the subsequent glorious victory of Arginusae, he was among the commanders.
So was healso among those unhappy six who returned to Athens and fell victims
to the mysterious intrigues of the oligarchical party and the wild credulity of
the people. It was in his behalf and that of Pericles, that his friend Euryptolemus
made the attempt, so nearly successful, to put off the trial. According to the
account given in his speech, Diomedon, after the engagement, when the commanders
met, had given the advice to form in single file and pick up the castaways ; and
after Theramenes and Thrasybulus had been prevented by the storm from effecting
their commission to the same purpose, he with Pericles had dissuaded his colleagues
from naming those officers and this commission in their despatch, for fear of
their incurring the displeasure which thus in the end fell on the generals themselves
(Xenoph. Hell. i. 5.16, 6.22, 29, 7.1, 16, 17, 29). Diodorus, who hitherto had
not mentioned his name, here relates that Diomedon, a man of great military skill,
and distinguished for justice and other virtues, when sentence had been passed
and lie and the rest were now to be led to execution, came forward and bade the
people be mindful to perform, as he and his colleagues could not, the vows which
before the engagement they had made to the gods (Diod. xiii. 102).
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Demodocus. One of the Athenian generals, who commanded a fleet in the Hellespont, and in the spring of B. C. 424, recovered the town of Antanrus. (Thuc. iv. 75.) Another person of this name is mentioned by Polybius. (v. 95.)
Demophon. One of the two generals sent from Athens by a decree of the people, according to Diodorus, to aid the Thebans who were in arms for the recovery of the Cadmeia. (Diod. xv. 26; Wesseling, ad loc.) This account is in some measure confirmed by Deinarchus (c. Dem. p. 95), who mentions a decree introduced by Cephalus to the above effect. Xenophon, however, says that the two Athenian generals on the frontier acted on their own responsibility in aiding the democratic Thebans, and that the Athenians soon after, through fear of Sparta, put one of them to death, while the other, who fled before his trial, was banished. (Xen. Hell. v. 4. 9, 10, 19 Plut. Pelop. 14.)
Diphilus (Diphilos), commanded the thirtythree Athenian ships which, at the time of the passage of the second armament to Sicily, were posted at Naupactus to prevent, if possible, the transport of reinforcements to the Syracusans. He was attacked near Erineus by a squadron, chiefly Corinthian, of slightly inferior numbers ; and though the victory, in a technical sense, was, if anywhere, on his side, yet he sank but three of the enemy's ships, and had six of his own disabled ; and that Phormio's countrymen should, in the scene of his achievements, effect no more, was, as was felt by both parties, a severe moral defeat. (Thuc. vii. 34.)
Erasinides, was one of the ten commanders appointed to supersede Alcibiades after the battle of Notium, B. C. 407 (Xen. Hell. i. 5.16; Diod. xiii. 74; Plut. Ale. 36). According to the common reading in Xenophon (Hell. i. 6.16), he and Leon were with Conon when he was chased by Callicratidas to Mytilene. But we find Erasinides mentioned afterwards as one of the eight who commanded at Arginusae (Xen. Hell. i. 6.29; Aristoph. Ran. 1194); either therefore, as Morus and Schneider suggest, Archestratus must be substituted for both the above names in the passage of Xenophon, or we must suppose that Erasinides commanded the trireme which escaped to Athens with the news of Conon's blockade (Xen. Hell. i. 6.19-22; Lys. Apol. dorod.). Erasinides was among the six generals who returned to Athens after the victory at Arginusae and were put to death, B. C. 406. Archedemus, in fact, took the first step against them by imposing a fine (epibole) on Erasinides, and then calling him to account before a court of justice for retaining some public money which he had received in the Hellespont. On this charge Erasinides was thrown into prison, and the success of the prosecution in the particular case paved the way to the more serious attack on the whole body of the generals. (Xen. Hell. i. 7.1-34; Diod. xiii. 101)
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Eunomus (Eunomos), an Athenian, was sent out in command of thirteen ships, in B. C. 388, to act against the Lacedaemonian Gorgopas, vice-admiral of Hierax. and the Aeginetan privateers. Gorgopas, on his return from Ephesus, whither he had escorted Atalcidas on his mission to the Persian court, fell in with the squadron of Eunomus, which chased him to Aegina. Eunomus then sailed away after dark, and was pursued by Gorgopas, who captured four of his triremes, in an engagement off Zoster, Attica, while the rest escaped to the Peiraeeus (Xen. Hell. v. i. 5--9). This was perhaps, the same Eunomus whom Lysias mentions (pro bon. Arist.) as one of those sent by Conon to Sicily, to persuade Dionysius to form an alliance with Athens against Sparta. The mission was so far successful, that Dionysius withheld the ships which he was preparing to despatch to the aid of the Lacedaeonians.
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Eurymedon (Eurumedon), a son of Thucles, an Athenian general in the Peloponnesian
war, held in its fifth year, B. C. 428, the command of sixty ships, which the
Athenians, on hearing of the intestine troubles of Corcyra, and the movement of
the Peloponnesian fleet under Alcidas and Brasidas to take advantage of them,
hastily despatched to maintain their interest there. This, it was found, had already
been secured by Nicostratus with a small squadron from Naupactus. Eurymedon, however,
took the chief command; and the seven days of his stay at Corcyra were marked
by the wildest cruelties inflicted by the commons on their political opponents.
These were no doubt encouraged by the presence of so large an Athenian force:
how far they were personally sanctioned, or how far they could have been checked
by Eurymedon, can hardly be determined. (Thuc. iii. 80, 81, 85)
In the following summer he was united with Hipponicus in command of
the whole Athenian force by land and, co-operating with a fleet under Nicias,
ravaged the district of Tanagra, and obtained sufficient success over some Thebans
and Tanagraeans to justify a trophy. (Thuc. iii. 91)
At the end of this campaign, he was appointed one of the commanders
of the large reinforcements destined for Sicily, and early in B. C. 425 set sail
with forty ships, accompanied by his colleague Sophocles, and by Demosthenes also,
in a private capacity, though allowed to use the ships for any purpose he pleased
on the coast of Peloponnesus. They were ordered to touch at Corcyra on their way,
and information of the arrival there of a Peloponnesian squadron made the commanders
so anxious to hasten thither, that it was against their will, and only by the
accident of stormy weather, that Demosthenes contrived to execute his project
of fortifying Pylos. This however, once completed, had the effect of recalling
the enemy from Corcyra: their sixty ships passed unnoticed by Eurymedon and Sophocles,
then in Zacynthus, and made their way to Pylos, whither on intelligence from Demosthenes,
the Athenian squadron presently pursued them. Here they appear to have remained
till the capture of the Spartans in the island; and after this, proceeded to Corcyra
to execute their original commission of reducing the oligarchical exiles, by whose
warfare from the hill Istone the city was suffering severely. In this they succeeded:
the exiles were driven from their fortifications, and surrendered on condition
of being judged at Athens, and remaining, till removal thither, in Athenian custody;
while, on the other hand, by any attempt to escape they should be considered to
forfeit all terms. Into such an attempt they were treacherously inveigled by their
countrymen, and handed over in consequence by the Athenian generals to a certain
and cruel death at the hands of their betrayers. This shameful proceeding was
encouraged, so Thucydides expressly states, by the evident reluctance of Eurymedon
and Sophocles to allow other hands than their own to present their prizes at Athens,
while they should be away in Sicily. To Sicily they now proceeded; but their movements
were presently put an end to by the general pacification effected under the influence
of Hermocrates, to which the Athenian commanders themselves, with their allies,
were induced to accede. For this, on their return to Athens, the people, ascribing
the defeat of their ambitious schemes to corruption in their officers, condemned
two of them to banishment, visiting Eurymedon, who perhaps had shown more reluctance
than his colleagues, with the milder punishment of a fine. (Thuc. iii. 115, iv.
2--8, 13, 46--48, 65)
Eurymedon is not known to have held any other command till his appointment
at the end of B. C. 414, in conjunction with Demosthenes, to the command of the
second Syracusan armament. He himself was sent at once, after the receipt of Nicias's
letter, about mid-winter, with a supply of money and the news of the intended
reinforcements: in the spring he returned to meet Demosthenes at Zacynthus. Their
subsequent joint proceedings belong rather to the story of his more able colleague.
In the night attack on Epipolae he took a share, and united with Demosthenes in
the subsequent representations to Nicias of the necessity for instant departure.
His career was ended in the first of the two sea fights. His command was on the
right wing, and while endeavouring by the extension of his line to outflank the
enemy, he was, by the defeat of the Athenian centre, cut off and surrounded in
the recess of the harbour, his ships captured, and himself slain. Diodorus, writing
perhaps from Ephorus, relates, that Agatharchus was the Syracusan general opposed
to him, and represents the defeat as having begun with Eurymedon's division, and
thence extended to the centre. (Thuc. vii. 16, 31, 33, 42, 43, 49, 52; Diod. xiii.
8, 11, 13; Plut. Nicias, 20, 24)
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Euthydemus (Euthudemos), an Athenian commander in the Peloponnesian war, was, at the close of its eighteenth year, B. C. 414, raised from a particular to a general command in the army besieging Syracuse. The object was to meet the urgent entreaty of Nicias for immediate relief from the burden of the sole superintendence, without making him wait for the arrival of the second armament. This position he appears to have occupied to the end, though probably subordinate as well to Demosthenes and Eurymedon as to Nicias. Whether he as well as his colleague Menander took part in the night attack on Epipolae appears doubtful. He is expressly named by Thucydides only once again, as united, in the last desperate engagement in the harbour, with Demosthenes and Menander in command of the ships. Diodorus names him in the previous sea-fight, as opposed on the left wing to the Syracusan Sicanus. Plutarch, who mentions his appointment with Menander, ascribes the occurrence of the second sea-fight, in which the Athenians received their first defeat, to the eagerness of the two new commanders to display their abilities. But this looks very like a late conjecture, such as Ephorus was fond of making, and is further inconsistent with the language of Thucydides, who represents the Syracusans as acting on the offensive, and shews in Nicias's letter that they had it in their power to force an engagement. Of his ultimate fate we are ignorant: his name (it is probably his) occurs as far back as the eighteenth year of the war, B. C. 422, among the signatures to the Lacedaemonan treaties. (Thuc. v. 19, 24, vii. 16, 69; Diod. xiii. 13; Plut. Nicias, c. 20.)
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Hegelochus (Hepselochos). Commander of the Athenian forces, which successfully
protected the fields of the Mantineians from the Theban and Thessalian cavalry,
when Epaminondas threatened the city in B. C. 362. The name of the Athenian commander
is not mentioned by Xenophon, but is supplied by Diodorus. (Xen. Hell.vii. 5.
15--17; Diod. xv. 84; Plut. de Glor. Ath. 2)
Hippocrates. An Athenian, son of Ariphron, was general, together with Demosthenes, in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war (B. C. 424), when the democratic party at Megara, becoming apprehensive of the recal of the exiles, and of a revolution in consequence, made overtures to the Athenians to betray the city into their hands. Demosthenes and Hippocrates immediately marched, with a select body of troops, to take advantage of this opportunity, and, with the assistance of their partisans, made themselves masters of the long walls which connected Megara with its port of Nisaea, but were unable to effect an entrance into the city itself. Thus foiled in part of their enterprise, they turned their arms against Nisaea, in which there was a Peloponnesian garrison, but this was speedily compelled, by want of provisions, to capitulate, and the Athenians became masters of this important port. Brasidas soon after arrived with a considerable army, and by his influence secured the predominance of the Lacedaemonian party at Megara; but he was unable to effect anything against Nisaea, and after haviug in vain offered battle to the Athenian generals, he withdrew again to Corinth. (Thuc. iv. 66-74; Diod. xii. 66, 67.) Soon after this, a scheme was arranged by Demosthenes and Hippocrates, in concert with a party in some of the Boeotian cities, for the invasion of Boeotia on three different points at once. In pursuance of this plan Demosthenes attacked by sea the port of Siphae on the Corinthian gulf, while Hippocrates was to seize and fortify Delium, a spot sacred to Apollo near the frontiers of Attica. Some mistake unfortunately took place in their arrangements, and Demosthenes had been already repulsed from before Siphae when his colleague entered Boeotia Hippocrates, however, occupied Delium without opposition, and having fortified it and established a garrison there, was returning with his main army to Athens, when the Boeotian forces arrived. A pitched battle ensued, at a spot between Delium and Oropus, just within the confines of Attica, in which the Athenians were completely defeated. Hippocrates himself fell in the battle, together with near a thousand of his troops; and the loss on the Athenian side would have been far greater had not the slaughter been interrupted by the coming on of the night. The Boeotians at first refused to give up the bodies of Hippocrates and the others who had fallen in the battle until the Athenians should evacuate Delium; but having reduced that post, after a siege of seventeen days, they at length restored the dead bodies to their countrymen. (Thuc. iv. 76, 77, 89--101; Diod. xii. 69, 70: Paus. iii. 6.1, ix. 6.3.)
Hippocles (Hippokles), son of Menippus took post off Leucas, with 27 Athenian galleys, in the year following the Sicilian defeat, B. C. 412, to watch for the return of the squadron of Gylippus. He had but partial success. The sixteen Peloponnesian ships escaped with one exception, though all in a shattered state, to Corinth. (Thuc. viii. 13.)
Son of Timotheus, destroys Spartan battalion, his statue in Parthenon, attacks Epaminondas and Thebans, prevents Athenians from sallying out to fight Epaminondas.
Iphicrates. A famous Athenian general, son of a shoemaker. He introduced into the Athenian army the peltastae or targeteers, a body of troops possessing, to a certain extent, the advantages of heavy and light armed forces. This he effected by substituting a small target for the heavy shield, adopting a longer sword and spear, and replacing the old coat of mail by a linen corselet. At the head of his targeteers he defeated and nearly destroyed a Spartan mora, in B.C. 392, an exploit which became very celebrated throughout Greece. He also defeated Anaxibius at the Hellespont (388), aided the Persians in subduing Egypt (377), reduced Cephallonia (373), and commanded in the Social War. He married the daughter of Cotys, king of Thrace, and died shortly before 348.
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Iphicrates (Iphikrates), the famous Athenian general, was the son of a shoemaker,
whose name seems to have been Timotheus. He first brought himself into notice
by gallantly boarding a ship of the enemy (perhaps at the battle of Cnidus, B.
C. 394) and bringing off the captain to his own trireme. It was from this exploit,
if we may believe Justin, that the Athenians gave him the command of the forces
which they sent to the aid of the Boeotians after the battle of Coroneia, when
he was only 25 years old (Arist. Rhet. i. 7.32, 9.31, ii. 23.8; Plut. Apoph.;
Oros. iii. 1). In B. C. 393 we find him general of a force of mercenaries in the
Athenian service at Corinth; and in this capacity he took part in the battle of
Lechaeum, wherein the Lacedaemonian commander, Praxitas, having been admitted
within the long walls of Corinth, defeated the Corinthian, Boeotian, Argive, and
Athenian troops (Dem. Phil. i.; Schol. ad Arist. Plut. 173; Diod. xiv. 86. 91;
Polyaen. i. 9; Plat. Menex.; Xen. Hell. iv. 4. 6-12; Andoc. de Pace; Harpocr.
and Suid. s. v. Xenikon). The system now adopted by the belligerent parties of
mutual annoyance, by inroads on each other's territories, seems to have directed
the attention of Iphicrates to an important improvement in military tactics --
the formation of a body of targeteers (peltastai) possessing, to a certain extent,
the advantages of heavy and light-armed forces. This he effected by substituting
a small target for the heavy shield, adopting a longer s word and spear, and replacing
the old coat of mail by a linen corslet, while he also made his soldiers wear
light shoes called afterwards, from his name, Iphikratides. Having thus increased
the efficiency of "the hands of the army," to use his own metaphor (Plut. Pelop.
2), he invaded with these troops the territory of Phlius, and slew so many of
the Phliaisians, that they were obliged to call in the aid of a Lacedaemonian
garrison, which ever before they had carefully avoided; and he ravaged, too, the
lands of Arcadia with impunity, as the Arcadian heavy-armed forces were afraid
to face the targeteers (Xen. Hell. iv. 4. 14-17; Diod. xiv 91, xv. 44; Polyaen.
iii. 9; Corn. Nep. Iph. 1 ; Suid. s. v. Iphikratides; Strab. viii.). In the spring
of 392 Iphicrates with his peltasts formed part of the garrison of the fortress
Peiraeum, in the Corinthian territory, whence he was summoned to the defence of
Corinth, against which Agesilaus had made a feint of marching. But the real object
of the Spartan king was Peiraeum, and, when it was weakened by the withdrawal
of Iphicrates, he advanced and took it. Meanwhile Iphicrates reached Corinth;
and here it was that, sallying forth with his targeteers, he defeated and nearly
destroyed the Lacedaemonian Mora, which was on its way back to Lechaeum, after
having escorted for some distance homewards the Amyclaeans of the army of Agesilaus,
returning to Laconia for the celebration of the Hyacinthian festival. This exploit
of Iphicrates became very celebrated throughout Greece, and had more importance
assigned to it than we should be inclined at first to imagine possible, as is
clear from the grief it caused in the camp of Agesilaus, from the caution with
which he marched home through the Peloponnesus, and from the suspension of the
Theban negotiations for terms with Sparta. Thirlwall supposes that it may have
also prevented the peace between Lacedaemon and Athens, which Andocides with others
had been commissioned to conclude. Iphicrates, encouraged by his success, recovered
Sidus and Crommyon, which Praxitas had taken, as well as Oenoe, where Agesilaus
had placed a garrison. Soon after he retired, or was dismissed, from the command,
in consequence, it seems, of the jealousy of the Argives; for he had shown a desire
to reduce the Corinthian territory under the power of Athens, and had put to death
some Corinthians of the Argive party. He was succeeded by Chabrias (Xen. Hell.
iv. 5, 8. 34; Diod. xiv. 91, 92; Plut. Ages. 22; Dem. Phil. i.; c. Aristoc.; Paus.
iii. 10; Nep. Iph. 2; Andoc. de Pace). In B. C. 389 he was sent to the Hellespont
to counteract the operations of Anaxibius, who was defeated by him and slain in
the following year. In spite of his victory, however, Iphicrates was not able
to prevail against Antalcidas (Xen. hell. iv. 8. 34; Polyaen. iii. 9).
On the peace of 387 Iphicrates did not return to Athens; but we do
not know whether he acted on a command of the state or on his own judgment in
aiding Seuthes, king of the Odrysae, to recover his kingdom, from which he had
been expelled, possibly by Cotys (Senec. Exc. Cont. vi. 5). Be that as it will,
we find him not long after in alliance with the latter prince, who gave him his
daughter in marriage, and perhaps enabled him to build the town of Drus in Thrace
(Dem. c. Arist.; Anaxand. ap. Athen. iv. p. 131; Nep. Iph. 2, 3; Isaeus, de Haer.
Menecl. 7; Polyaen. iii. 9; Suid. and Harpocr. s. v. Drus). When the Athenians,
in B. C. 377, recalled Chabrias from the service of Acoris, king of Egypt, on
the remonstrance of Pharnabazus, they also sent Iphicrates with 20,000 Greek mercenaries
to aid the satrap in reducing Egypt to obedience. Several years, however, wasted
by the Persians in preparation, elapsed before the allied troops set forth from
Ace (Acre). They met with some success at first, till a dispute arose between
Iphicrates and Pharnabazus, the former of whom was anxious to attack Memphis,
while the over-cautious satrap would not consent, and (much time having been lost)
when the season of the Nile's inundation came on, he drew off his army. Iphicrates,
remembering the fate of Conon, and fearing for his personal safety, fled to Athens,
and was denounced to the Athenians by Pharnabazus as having caused the failure
of the expedition. The people promised to punish him as he deserved; but the next
year (B. C. 373) they appointed him to command against Mnasippus in Corcyra, in
conjunction with Callistratus and Chabrias, with the former of whom he also joined
in prosecuting Timotheus, the superseded general. In getting ready the fleet necessary
for this service, Iphicrates exhibited great and probably not over-scrupulous
activity; and the Athenians allowed him (perhaps through the influence of Callistratus)
to make use of all the ships round the coast, even the Paralus and Salaminia,
on a promise from him that he would send back a great number in return for them.
The state of affairs in the West left him no time to lose, and his crews were
in a very imperfect state of training; but he remedied this by making the whole
voyage an exercise of naval tactics. On his way he landed in Cephallenia (where
he received fill assurance of the death of Mnasippus), and having brought over
the island to the Athenians, he sailed on to Corcyra. Defeating here the force
which Dionysius I. of Syracuse had sent to the aid of the Lacedaemonians, he carried
on the war with vigour till the peace of 371 put an end to operations and recalled
him to Athens (Xen. Hell. vi. 2, 3; Diod. xv. 29, 41-43, 47, xvi. 57; Nep. Iph.
2; Dem. c. Tim.). In B. C. 369, when the Peloponnesus was invaded by Epaminondas,
Iphicrates was appointed to the command of the forces voted by Athens for the
aid of Sparta; but he did not effect, perhaps he did not wish to effect, any thing
against the Thebans, who made their way back in safety through an unguarded pass
of the Isthmus. About B. C. 367, he was sent against Amphipolis, apparently, however,
to observe rather than to act, so small was the force committed to him. At this
period it was that he listened to the entreaties of Eurydice, the widow of Amyntas
II. (who had adopted Iphicrates as his son), and drove out from Macedonia the
pretender Pausanias. But, notwithstanding this favour, Ptolemy of Alorus, the
regent of Macedon, and the reputed paramour of Eurydice, supported Amphipolis
against Iphicrates, who, with the aid of the adventurer Charidemus, continued
the war for three years, at the end of which time the Amphipolitans agreed to
surrender, and gave hostages for the fulfilment of their promise; immediately
after which Iphicrates was superseded by Timotheus (Aesch. de Fals. Ieg.; Nep.
Iph. 3; Dem. c. Arist.; Suid. s. v. Karanos).
The connection of Iphicrates with Cotys may perhaps have led to the
decree which deprived him of the command in those parts; and, if any alarm was
felt by the Athenians on this score, the result proved that it was not unfounded,
for we find him soon after aiding his father-in-law in his war with Athens for
the possession of the Tbracian Chersonesus. This seems, indeed, to have been the
ground of the graphe xenias which Timothens pledged himself in the strongest way
to bring against him, though he afterwards abandoned it, [p. 618] and even gave
his daughter in marriage to Menestheus, the son of Iphicrates by the daughter
of Cotys. Rehdantz (vi. § 7) supposes the word xenias to be used with reference
to the threatened prosecution in a wide sense and with pretty nearly the meaning
of prodosias; but it may have been adopted to imply that Iphicrates had made himself
in fact an alien, and had no longer any claim to the privileges of Athenian citizenship.
Iphicrates, however, would not go so far as to assist Cotys in taking the towns
which were actually in the possession of the Athenians; and feeling that his refusal
made his residence in his father-in-law's dominions no longer safe, while, from
his previous conduct, a return to Athens would be equally dangerous, he withdrew
to Antissa first, and thence to the city (Drus) which he had himself built (Dem.
c. Tim., c. Arist.; Nep. Iph. 3). After the death of Chabrias, Iphicrates, Timotheus,
and Menestheus were joined with Chares as commanders in the Social War, and were
prosecuted by their unscrupulous colleague, either because they had refused to
risk an engagement (for which he was anxious) in a storm, or because he wished
to screen himself from the consequences of his own rashness in actually engaging.
The prosecution was conducted by Aristophon, the Azenian. Iphicrates and his son
were brought to trial first, and appear to have endeavored to shift the danger
from Timotheus by taking all the responsibility on themselves. According to the
author of the lives of the Ten Orators (Lys. ad fin.), the speech in which Iphicrates
defended himself was written for him by Lysias but the soldierlike boldness of
the oration, as described by Dionysius (de Lys. p. 480), and exemplified in the
extract given by Aristotle (Rhet. ii. 23,7), seems to show that the accused was
probably himself the author of it. He does not seem, however, to have trusted
entirely either to his eloquence or to the justice of his cause, for we hear that
he introduced into the court a body of partisans armed with daggers, and that
he himself took care that the judges should see his sword during the trial. He
and Menestheus were acquitted: Timotheus was arraigned afterwards, probably in
the following year (B. C. 354), and condemned to a heavy fine. From the period
of his trial Iphicrates seems to have lived quietly at Athens. The exact date
of his death is not known, but Demosthenes speaks of him as no longer alive at
that time (B. C. 348). (Diod. xvi. 21; Nep. Iph. 3, Tim. 3; Deinarch. c. Philoel.;
Polyaen. iii. 9; Arist. Rhet. iii. 10, 7 ; Quint. v. 10, 12; Senec. Exc. Cat.
vi. 5; Isocr. peri Antid. 137; Rehdantz, vii. 7)
Iphicrates has been commended for his combined prudence and energy
as a general. The worst words, he said, that a commander could utter were, " I
should not have expected it," -ouk an prosdokesa (Plut. Apoph. Iph. 2; Dem. Prooem.;
Polyaen. iii. 9). Like Chabrias and Chares, he was fond of residing abroad (Theopomp.
ap. Athen. xii.), and we have seen that he did not allow considerations of patriotism
to stand in the way of his advancement by a foreign service and alliance. Yet
we do not find the Athenians depriving him of the almost unprecedented honours
with which they had loaded him, and of which one Harmodius (a descendant, it seems,
of the murderer of Hipparchus) had endeavoured to strip him by a prosecution.
We do not know at what period this case was tried; but it was probably in B. C.
371, after the return of Iphicrates from the Ionian Sea (Dem. c. Arist.; Plut
Apoph. Iph. 5; Arist. Rhet. ii. 23. 6, 8; Pseudo-Plut. Vit. X. Orat. Lys. ad fin.;
). If the Athenians had a strong sense of his value, he appears on his part to
have presumed upon it not a little. He had also, however, in all probability,
a strong party in Athens (for his friendly connection with Lysias see above),
and the circumstances of the times would always throw considerable power into
the hands of a leader of mercenary troops.
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Cornelius Nepos: Life of Iphicrates
Iphicrates (Iphikrates), a son of the above, was one of the ambassadors sent from Greece to Dareius Codomannus. With his colleagues he fell into the hands of Parmenion, at Damascus, after the battle of Issus (B. C. 333). Alexander treated him honourably, from a wish to conciliate the Athenians as well as from respect to his father's memory: and on his death (which was a natural one) he sent his bones to his relatives at Athens. (Arr. Anab. ii. 15; Curt. iii. 10.)
Laespodias (Laispodias), was one of three Athenian commanders, who, with a force
of 30 ships, joined the Argives in ravaging the Lacedaemonian coast, B. C. 414;
and thus, at the moment when Gylippus was sailing for Syracuse, gave the Spartan
government justification for open hostilities. He is named again, B. C. 411, as
one of three ambassadors who were sent by the Four Hundred to treat with Sparta,
but were, when their ship, the Paralus, was off Argos, seized and given in custody
to the Argives by the sailors, who proceeded to join the fleet at Samos (Thuc.
vi. 105, viii. 86). He had something the matter with the shin or calf of his leg,
and arranged his dress to conceal it.
Ti, o kakodaimon Laispodias, ei ten phusin ; says Poseidon, when scolding the
uncouth Triballus for letting his garment hang about his legs (Aristoph. Av 1568).
And the Scholiast gives a variety of references (see also Plut. Symp. vii. 8),
which show that his misfortune made him a standing joke with the comedians.
Lamachus (Lamachos), son of Xenophanes, in the 8th year of the Peloponnesian
war, B. C. 424, with a detachment of 10 ships from the tribute-collecting squadron,
sailed into the Euxine; and coming to harbour at the mouth of the Calex, near
Heracleia, had his ships destroyed by a sudden flood. He succeeded in making his
way by land to Chalcedon (Thuc. iv. 75). His name recurs in the signatures to
the treaties of B. C. 421. And in the 17th year B. C. 415 he appears as colleague
of Alcibiades and Nicias, in the great Sicilian expedition. In the consultation
held at Egesta on their first arrival, in which Nicias proposed a return to Athens
and Alcibiades negotiation, Lamachus, while preferring of these two plans the
latter, urged, as his own judgment, an immediate attack on Syracuse, and the occupation
of Megara, as the base for future attempts, advice which in him may have been
prompted less by counsel than courage, but which undoubtedly was the wisest, and
would almost certainly have been attended with complete success. In the following
year, soon after the investment was commenced, he fell in a sally of the besieged,
in advancing against which he had entangled himself amongst some dykes, and got
parted from his troops. The loss of his activity and vigour must have been severely
felt: his death was one of those many contingencies, each one of which may be
thought to have singly turned the scale in the Syracusan contest (Thuc. vi. 8,
49, 101).
Lamachus appears amongst the dramatis personae of Aristophanes (Ach.
565, &c. 960, 1070, &c.) as the brave and somewhat blustering soldier, delighting
in the war, and thankful, moreover, for its pay. Plutarch, in like manner, describes
him as brave and honest, and a hero in the field; but so poor, and so ill-provided,
that on every fresh appointment he used to beg for money from the government to
buy clothing and shoes; and this dependent position he thinks made him backward
to take a part of his own, and deferential to his colleagues -Nicias, perhaps,
in especial (Plut. Nic. 16, cf. ib. 12, 13, and Alcib. 18, 20, 21), Plato also
speaks of his valour (Lach.).
I f we may trust a passage of Plutarch (Pericles, 20), Lamachus, in
an expedition made by Pericles into the Euxine, was left there in charge of 13
ships, to assist the people of Sinope against their tyrant, Timesilaus; after
the expulsion of whom the town received 600 Athenian colonists. The precise date
of this occurrence can hardly be established : in Plutarch's narrative, it is
previous to the Thirty Years' Peace of B. C. 445. He must therefore have been
an old man at the time of his last command.
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Leocrates (Leokrates), son of Stroebus, commanded in the great sea-fight off Aegina (B. C. 457), in which the Athenians gave a final defeat to their ancient rivals. Seventy ships were taken, and Leocrates landed and laid siege to the town ; while the Corinthian forces, which, by invading Attica, hoped to relieve it, were defeated by Myronides. (Thuc. i. 105.) Plutarch relates that these two commanders were both of them colleagues of Aristeides in the campaign of Plataea (Plut. Arist. 20).
Leocritus. An Athenian, son of Protarchus, distinguished himself greatly in the storming of the Museum at Athens, under Olympiodorus, when the Athenians threw off the yoke of Demetrius Poliorcetes and drove out his garrison, B. C. 287. Leocritus was the first to break into the place, and was slain in the struggle. His memory was held in high honour by the Athenians, and his shield was suspended in the temple of Zeus eleutherios, with his name and his exploit inscribed upon it. (Paus. i. 25, 26; Plut. Demetr. 46.)
Leon. An Athenian, was sent out with ten ships, in B. C. 412, to act with the squadron under Diomedon, and we find the two commanders associated, both in naval operations and in political movements, down to the declaration of the Athenian army at Samos against the revolutionary government of the Four Hundred, B. C. 411. According to the common reading in Xenophon, Leon was one of the ten generals appointed to supersede Alcibiades in B. C. 407, and, as well as Erasinides, was with Conon when Callicratidas chased him into Mytilene (Xen. Hell. i. 5.16, 6.16). Xenophon, however, in two other passages (Hell. i. 6.30,7.2), omits Leon's name and mentions Lysias instead; and Diodorus has Lysanias ( an error probably of the copyists, for Lysias) in his list of the generals, saying nothing of Leon, and afterwards speaks of Lysias as one of those who returned to Athens after the battle of Arginusae (Diod. xiii. 74, 101). Schneider, accordingly, would reject the name of Leon, from Xenophon substituting for it that of Lysias, in Hell. i. 5.16, and that of Archestratus, in Hell. i. 6.16 (see Palm. and Wess. ad Diod. xiii. 74). But these alterations are unnecessary, if we adopt bishop Thirlwall's conjecture (Greece, vol. iv. p. 110, note 2), that Leon was originally elected among the ten, but that he fell into the hands of Callicratidas, in one of the gallies which Conon sent out from Mytilene, and that Lysias was appointed to fill his place (comp. Xen. Hell. i. 6.19--21).
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Leosthenes. An Athenian, commander of the combined Greek army in the Lamian war.
We know not by what means he had obtained the high reputation which we find him
enjoying when he first makes his appearance in history: it has been generally
inferred, from a passage in Strabo (ix. p. 433), that he had first served under
Alexander in Asia; but there seems much reason to believe that this is a mistake,
and that Leonnatus is the person there meant.
It is certain that when we first meet with any distinct mention of
Leosthenes, he appears as an officer of acknowledged ability and established reputation
in war, but a vehement opponent of the Macedonian interest. Shortly before the
death of Alexander he had collected together and brought over to Taenarus a large
body of the Greek mercenaries that had been disbanded by the different satraps
in Asia, according to Alexander's orders (Paus. i. 1.3, 25.5 viii. 52.5; Diod.
xvii. 111). As soon as the news of the king's death reached Athens, Leosthenes
was despatched to Taenarus to engage the services of these troops, 8000 in number:
from thence he hastened to Aetolia, and induced that people to join in the war
against Macedonia. Their example was followed by the Locrians, Phocians, Dorians,
and many of the Thessalians, as well as by several of the states of the Peloponnese;
and Leosthenes, who was by common consent appointed commander-in-chief, assembled
these combined forces in the neighbourhood of Thermopylae. The Boeotians, who,
through fear of the restoration of Thebes, adhered to the Macedonian interest,
collected a force to prevent the Athenian contingent from joining the allied army;
but Leosthenes hastened with a part of his forces to assist the Athenians, and
totally defeated the Boeotian army. Antipater now advanced from the north, but
with a force very inferior to that of the confederates: he was defeated in the
first action near Thermopylae, and compelled to throw himself into the small town
of Lamia. Leosthenes, desirous to finish the war at a blow, pressed the siege
with the utmost vigour; but his assaults were repulsed, and he was compelled to
resort to the slower method of a blockade. While he was engaged in forming the
lines of circumvallation, the besieged made a vigorous sally, in which Leosthenes
himself received a blow on the head from a stone, of which he died three days
after (Diod. xviii. 8-13; Pans. i. 25.5; Plut. Phoc. 23; Justin. xiii. 5). His
death was felt as a great discouragement to the cause of the allied Greeks; and
Pausanias is probably right in regarding it as the main cause of their ultimate
failure. Phocion's remark, on the other hand, is well known, that "he was very
well fitted for a short course, but not equal to a long one" (Plut. Phoc. 23,
de Rep. gerend. 6). It is certain that Leosthenes gave proofs of no common energy
and ability during the short period of his command; and his loss was mourned by
the Athenians as a public calamity. He was honoured with a public burial in the
Cerameicus, and his funeral oration was pronounced by Hyperides (Paus. i. 29,13;
Diod. xviii. 13). His death took place before the close of the year 323 B. C.:
though still quite a young man, it appears that he left children, whose statues
were set up by the side of his own in the Peiraeeus (Paus. i. 1.3).
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Leosthenes. An Athenian, who commanded a fleet and armament in the Cyclades in B. C. 361. Having allowed himself to be surprised by Alexander, tyrant of Pherae, and defeated, with a loss of 5 triremes and 600 men, he was condemned to death by the Athenians, as a punishment for his ill success. (Diod. xv. 95.)
Lysias (Lusias). An Athenian, who, according to Diodorus (xiii. 74), was one of the ten
generals appointed to succeed Alcibiades in the command of the fleet, B. C. 406.
His name indeed does not occur in the list of them as given by Xenophon (Hell.
i. 5.16), but that author agrees with Diodorus in mentioning him shortly after
as one of those who actually held the command at the battle of Arginusae, on which
occasion his trireme was sunk, and he himself made his escape with difficulty.
It was only to encounter a worse fate, for on his return to Athens with five of
his colleagues, they were all six immediately brought to trial, condemned, and
executed, on the charge of having neglected to carry off the bodies of the citizens
who had fallen in the action. (Xen. Hell. i. 6.30, 7; Diod. xiii. 99, 101; Philochorus,
ap. Schol. ad Aristoph. Ran. 1196.)
Lysicles.One of the commanders of the Athenian army at the battle of Chaeroneia, B. C. 338, was subsequently condemned to death, upon the accusation of the orator Lycurgus. (Diod. xvi. 85, 881.) The speech which Lycurgus delivered against Lysicles is referred to by Harpocration (s. vv. epi Delio and Lembadeia).
Menander (Menandros), an Athenian officer in the Syracusan expedition, was, together with Euthydemus, associated in the supreme command with Nicias, towards the end of the year B. C. 414. The operations of Menander and his colleague Euthydemus are narrated in the life of the latter, see Euthydemus (Thuc. vii. 16, 43, 69; Diod. xiii. 13; Plut. Nicias, c. 20.) It appears to have been this same Menander whom we find serving under Alcibiades in the campaign against Pharnabazus, in the winter of B. C. 409-408 (Xen. Hell. i. 2.16), and probably the same who was appointed, with Tydeus and Cephisodotus in B. C. 405, to share the command of the Athenian fleet with the generals who had been previously appointed--Conon, Philocles, and Adeimantus. He was therefore one of the commanders at the disastrous battle of Aegos-potami; and he and Tydeus are especially mentioned as rejecting with contempt the advice of Alcibiades before the battle. (Id. ii. 1.16, 26.)
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Menesetheus, son of Iphicrates, the famous Athenian general, by the daughter of
Cotys, king of Thrace. Hence he said that he owed more to his mother than to his
father; for that the latter, as far as in him lay, had made him a Thracian; the
former had made him an Athenian (Nep. Iph. 3). He was born probably about B. C.
377 (see Rehdantz, Vit. Iphic. Chabr. Timoth. ii.4); and, as he grew up, his great
height and size caused him to be thought older than he really was, so that he
was called on, while yet a boy, to undertake leitoupgiai, a demand which Iphicrates
resisted (Arist. Rhet. ii. 23.17). He married the daughter of Timotheus; and in
B. C. 356 was chosen commander in the Social war, his father and his father-in-law,
according to C. Nepos, being appointed to aid him with their counsel and experience.
They were all three impeached by their colleague, CHARES, for alleged misconduct
and treachery in the campaign; but Iphicrates and Menestheus were acquitted in
B. C. 355. (Nep. Tim. 3; Dion Hal. Dem.; Rehdantz, Vit. Iphic. &c., vi.7, vii.5,
7; comp. Diod. xvi. 21; Isocr. peri antid. 137) Menestheus was distinguished
for his military skill; and we find him again appointed commander of a squadron
of 100 galleys, sent out, in B. C. 335, to check the Macedonians, who had intercepted
some Athenian ships on their voyage down from the Euxine. We do not know the exact
period of his death, but it took place before B. C. 325 (Plut. Phoc. 7; Pseudo-Dem.,
Epist. iii.; Rehdantz, Vit. Iphic. &c., vii. 8)
Myrmidon (Murmidon), an Athenian, who commanded a force of 10,000 men, which formed part of the armament sent by Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, under his brother Menelaus, to effect the reduction of Cyprus, B. C. 315. He was afterwards despatched to the assistance of Asander in Caria, against the generals of Antigonus. (Diod. xix. 62.)
Myronides (Muronides), a skilful and successful Athenian general. In B.c. 457, the Corinthians invaded Megara with the view of relieving Aegina, by drawing away thence a portion of the Athenian troops, which were besieging the chief city of the island. The Athenians, however, who had at the same time another force in Egypt, acting with Inarus, did not recal a single man from any quarter for the protection of Megara: but the old and young men who had been left behind at home, marched out under Myronides, and met the Corinthians in the Megarian territory. After a battle, in which victory inclined, though not decisively, to the Athenians, the Corinthian troops withdrew, and Myronides erected a trophy. But the Corinthians, being reproached at home for leaving the field, returned; and were setting up a rival trophy, when the Athenians made a sally from Megara, and, in the battle which ensued, completely defeated them. The fugitives, in their retreat, entered an enclosure fenced in by a large ditch, where they were surrounded by the Athenians, who occupied with a part of their force the only egress, and slew with their darts every man within. In the following year, B. C. 456, and sixty-two days after the battle of Tanagra, Myronides led an Athenian army into Boeotia, and defeated the Boeotians at Oenophyta, a victory which made his countrymen masters of Phocis, and of all the Boeotian towns, with the single exception of Thebes; while even there it seems to have led to the temporary establishment of democracy. After his victory, Myronides marched against the Opuntian Locrians, from whom he exacted a hundred hostages ; and then, according to Diodorus, he penetrated into Thessaly, to take vengeance for the desertion of the Thessalian troops to the Lacedaemonians at the battle of Tanagra; but he failed in his attempt on the town of Pharsalus, and was obliged to return to Athens. It is possible that the subject of the present article may have been the father of Archinus, the Athenian statesman, who took a chief part in the overthrow of the thirty tyrants, B. C. 403; for Demosthenes mentions a son of Archinus, called Myronides, who may have been named after his grandfather, according to a custom by no means uncommon. (Thuc. i. 105, 106, 108, iv. 95; Aristoph. Lys. 801, Eccl. 303; Aristot. Polit. v. 3; Lys. Etitaph.; Diod. xi. 79-83; Plat. Mlenex.; Dem. c. Timocrat.; Herm. Pol. Ant.169; Thuc. i. iii.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Nicostratus (Nikostratos), an Athenian general. We first hear of him in B. C. 427. The struggle between the oligarchical and democratical parties in Corcyra had commenced, when Nicostratus arrived from Naupactus with twelve ships and a body of 500 Messenians. Through his mediation a compact was entered into between the contending parties, and a defensive and offensive alliance with the Athenians was formed. As Nicostratus was about to depart the leaders of the commonalty persuaded him to leave five of his vessels, promising to man five for him instead. On board these they attempted to place their enemies, but the latter fled for refuge to the temple of the Dioscuri. Nicostratus strove to allay their fears, but to no purpose. About 400 of the party took refuge in the temple of Here, and were thence carried over to the island of Ptychia. A few days afterwards, before the Athenians had departed, tile Peloponnesian fleet under Alcidas and Brasidas arrived. The democratical party were thrown into consternation. Tile Athenian squadron set out in good order to meet the enemy, and skilfully sustained the attack of thirty-three vessels of the Peloponnesian fleet; and Nicostratus was beginning to repeat the manoeuvres of Phormio, which had been attended with such success off Naupactus, when the remaining part of the fleet, having routed the Corcyraeans, advanced against the Athenians, who were compelled to retire (Thuc. iii. 75). In B. C. 424, Nicostratus was one of the colleagues of Nicias in the expedition in which Cythera was taken (Thuc. iv. 53). He was one of the Athenians who took the oaths to the year's truce concluded between Sparta and Athens (Thuc. iv. 119); and later in the same year was the colleague of Nicias in the expedition to Chalcidice (Thuc. iv. 129, 130). In B. C. 418, Nicostratus and Laches led a body of 1000 heavy-armed soldiers and 300 cavalry to Argos, accompanied by Alcibiades as ambassador. The Atheniani troops, accompanied by the allies of Argos, proceeded to attack Orchomenos, which made no resistance. From Orchomenos, having been joined by the Argives, the combined forces proceeded against Tegea. Agis marched to protect the place, and in tie battle which ensued near Mantineia. Nicostratus and his colleague were both slain (Thuc. v. 61-74).
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Diotrephes, was sent, B. C. 411 (Thuc. viii. 64), by the oligarchical revolutionists in the Athenian army at Samos, to take charge of the subject states in the neighbourhood of Thrace, and took the first step in pursuance of their policy towards the allies by establishing oligarchy at Thasos. Nicostratus, the general who fell at Mantineia, was son of a Diotrephes (Thuc. iv. 119) : this therefore perhaps was a Diotrephes, son of Nicostratus. If so, it is an additional reason for thinking him distinct from Diitrephes, the destroyer of Mycalessus.
Olympiodorus (Olumpiodoros). An Athenian, the son of Lampon. He commanded a body of 300 picked Athenian troops at the battle of Plataeae. When the Megarians were being hard pressed by the Persian cavalry before the general engagement, this body of Athenians undertook to relieve them, a service from which all the other Greeks shrank. (Herod. ix. 21; Plut. Aristid. a.).
Expels Macedonian garrison from Athens, defeats Macedonians at Eleusis, stirs up Aetolians, helps Elateans against Cassander, statue of O. on Acropolis at Athens, statue at Delphi, painting at Eleusis, honoured in Prytaneum.
Olympiodorus. An Athenian general and statesman of considerable ability. When Cassander made his attempt upon Athens in B. C. 298, Olympiodorus sailed to Aetolia, and induced the Aetolians to send assistance to Athens; and Cassander was compelled to withdraw his forces. Shortly afterwards, when Elatea, which had been conquered by Cassander, revolted from him, it was mainly through Olympiodorus that it was enabled to hold olt against his troops. Subsequently, in B. C. 2883, when Demetrius was stripped of his kingdom by Lysimachus and Pyrrhus, a small number of the Athenians, with Olympiodorus at their head, resolved to rid the city of the Macedonian garrison which Demetrius had posted in Athens in the foxtress of the Museum after his conquest of the city, and which still remained faithful to him. The Athenians readily joined Olympiodorus and his confederates, and the Museum was carried by storm. Peiraeus and Munychia were also recovered, and Olympiodorus, at the head of a small body of troops which he raised at Eleusis, put to flight a body of troops in the service of Demetrius, who were ravaging the plain. Demetrius invested Athens, but was compelled by the approach of Pyrrhus to raise the siege, and shortly afterwards crossed over into Asia Minor. It was probably this Olympiodorus who was archon eponymus in B. C. 294. There was a statue of him on the Acropolis. (Paus. i. 25.2, i. 29.13, x. 18.7, x. 34.3.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Paches. An Athenian general, the son of a man named Epicurus (or, according to Diod. xii. 55, Epiclerus). In the autumn of B. C. 428 Paches was sent out at the head of 1000 hoplites to reinforce the troops which, on the revolt of Mytilene, had been sent out under Cleippides, and had entrenched themselves in two forts near the city, while the fleet blockaded the harbour. On the arrival of Paches a wall was carried round the city on the land side, with forts at the strongest points. In the summer of B. C. 427 the Spartans sent a fleet under the command of Alcidas for the relief of Mytilene; but Alcidas delayed so much on his voyage that the Mytilenaeans, and even Salaethus, whom the Spartans had sent before their fleet, gave up all hopes of its arrival. By the advice of Salaethus the commsonalty of the Mytilenaeans were entrusted with the arms of the regular infantry; but they forthwith rose against the aristocratical party, and the latter, fearin, a capitulation on the part of the commonalty, surrendered the city to Paches, leaving the decision of their fate entirely to the Athenians. At this juncture Alcidas arrived at Embaton; but. instead of attacking the Athenians, sailed southwards along the coast of Ionia. Paches, hearing from many quarters of the approach of the Peloponnesian fleet, set out in pursuit of it; but, not coming up with it, returned at leisure along the coast of Ionia. In his course he touched at Notium. Here his assistance was called in by the democratical party, who were being hard pressed by their political opponents, who were sutpperted by the ruling party among the Colophonians, and by a bods of mercenaries, commanded by an Arcadian named Hippias, borrowed from the satrap Pissnthnes. Paches invited Hippias to a parley; but when he came he immediately arrested him, and forthwith attacked the garrison, which was overpowered and cut to pieces. Hiippias, with whom Paches had made a solemn engagement, that, if the parley did not lead to an agreement, he should be reconducted in safety into the town, was taken by Paches within the walls, and then barbarously put to death by being shot with arrows; Paches urging that he had fulfilled the stipulation. Notium was given up to the party which had called in the aid of the Athenians. Paches now returned to Lesbos, and proceeded to reduce those parts of the island which still held out. He sent home most of his forces, and with them Salaethus and a large number of Mytilenaeans who on the surrender of the city had taken refuge at the altars, and were removed thence by Paches to Tenedos. On the arrival of the first decree of the Athenians, ordering the execution of all the adult citizens of Mytilene, and the enslavement of the women and children, Paches was about to put it into execution, when the second decree arrived, sparing the lives of the inhabitants, but ordering the destruction of their walls and the surrender of the fleet. Paches, after complying with these instructions, returned to Athens. On his arrival there he was brought to trial on some charge, and, perceiving his condemnation to be certain, drew his sword and stabbed himself to the heart in the presence of his judges (Plut. Nicias, c. 6, Arislid. c. 26). On what grounds he was impeached it is very difficult to ascertain. There is a story preserved in an epigram of Agathias (Jacobs, Anal. vol. iv. p. 34), according to which Paches, after the surrender of Mytilene, became enamoured of two women of the city, Hellanis and Lamaxis, and murdered their husbands that he might accomplish his designs. The victims of his cruelty, however, escaped to Athens, and made known his criminal proceedings; and their prosecution of him ended in his death. There seems no sufficient reason for rejecting this story. If the offence be thought hardly sufficient to have occasioned the condemnation to death of a general who had just returned after a most successful series of military operations, there are various suppositions which might remove the difficulty. It is possible that Cleon was incensed against him for not putting the first decree into execution more promptly, or there might have been some ground for exciting odium against him on account of his not having set out in chase of Alcidas sooner than he did; for it appears that he did not act upon the first information which he received. Or various other pretexts might be imagined, which would furnish a handle to the demagogues of the day. It seems likely that the singular death of Paches gave occasion for the introduction of that provision in the decree of Cannonus, according to which in certain cases the defendant was to plead his cause in fetters (Thuc. iii. 18, 28, 33, 34-36, 49 ; Poppo, ad iii. 50; Diod. l. c. ; Strab. xiii.).
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Phanomachus (Phanomachos), an Athenian, the son of Callimachus. He was one of the generals to whom the inhabitants of Potidaea surrendered, B. C. 429. He was shortly afterwards the colleague of Xenophon the son of Euripides, in an expedition against the Chalcidians. (Thuc. ii. 70, 79; Diod. xii. 47.)
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