405-404 BCE: Spartan Conquerors let CRITIAS & his 3O ATHENIAN TYRANTS rule, the city, kill SOCRATES & terrorize Athenians 8 months but THASYBULUS & Athenian refugees kill CRITIAS, overthrow the 30 & RESTART ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY
by Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)
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After Sparta beat Athens sunk Athens’ fleet in the 405 battle of Aegospotami & ended Peloponnesian War, Sparta’s King Lysander led the Spartan Peloponnesian League Navy to Athens to raze it. Athenians decided to surrender, give their fleet (except 12 ships) & veto power over Athenian governance, let the city’s refugees return, & level the wall Pericles had built to stop the Spartans.
As Sparta ordered, Athens Tribal Council deadlocked (like the U.S. Congress) over whether to govern the city as a democracy or oligarchy. Sparta intervened & appointed 30 oligarchs to write a new constitution for Athens. They ruled through THE BOULE, a council composed of 500 men, 10 of whom ruled the port city of Piraeus for them & a police force of 300 men. The Oligarchs got Spartan King Lysander to back them with a Spartan garrison in the city & Spartan bodyguards.
Only the 3,000 people could live within Athens’ walls. Each of the 30 Tyrants could choose one foreign resident property owner, take his property & have him killed. Foreigners & Athenians fled as fugitives to Boeotia, Corinth, Argos, Chalcis, Megara, & Oropus.
Athenian exile THRASYBULUS & 70 men seized the hill PHYLE north of Athens, where 100 Athenians, 300 foreigners, & 300 mercenaries joined them. Although Sparta sent an armed garrison to Athens to help the 30 & their force of 3000 men, Thrasybulus & the rebels beat the Tyrants & killed Critias. Sparta withdrew its soldiers & instead negotiated a peace treaty. Athenian refugees & prisoners could return their own possessions. The treaty let surviving Tyrants move to exile in Eleusis but Athens had them come to a settlement conference, killed them, & freed Athens from Oligarchy for 40 years.
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The 30 Tyrants | The Reign of Tyranny
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