The Peloponnesian War: The Establishment of The Thirty Tyrants at Athens

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject World History - Early and Ancient History, grade: 1, , course: Thucydides, language: English, abstract: As a consequence of their final, unequivocal defeat in the Ionian War, the Athenians in their surrender to the Spartan admiral Lysander had to acquiesce into a new constitution being imposed upon them in 404 B.C. This new government of the Thirty Tyrants would sustain its despotic and oftentimes arbitrary rule for less than a year, before revolution and the seemingly invincible democratic spirit of Athens eventually swept it away. Although the establishment of the Thirty is unusually well documented by historical sources-accounts from Lysias, Xenophon, Diodorus, Aristotle and Plutarch are available to us1-error and political bias serve to blur this fateful development. Despite Peter Krentz' assertion to the contrary, it is to be assumed that the Thirty were not established as an oligarchy at once, but rather in two surges, one limiting their task to the restoration of the ancestral constitution, the other granting them the powers to rule Athens as oligarchs.