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Theramenes (; ; died 404/403 BC) was an Classical Athens military leader and statesman, prominent in the final decade of the Peloponnesian War. He was active during the two periods of Oligarchy government at Athens, the 400 and later the Thirty Tyrants, as well as in the trial of the generals who had commanded at Arginusae in 406 BC. A moderate oligarchy, he often found himself caught between the democrats on the one hand and the extremist oligarchs on the other. Successful in replacing a narrow oligarchy with a broader one in 411 BC, he failed to achieve the same end in 404 BC, and was executed by the extremists whose policies he had opposed.
Alcibiades, however, did not succeed in persuading the satrap to ally with the Athenians, and, to hide this fact, demanded (claiming to be speaking for Tissaphernes) greater and greater concessions of them until they finally refused to comply. Disenchanted with Alcibiades but still determined to overthrow the democracy, Peisander and his companions returned to Samos,Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War where the conspirators worked to secure their control over the army and encouraged a group of native Samian oligarchs to begin planning the overthrow of their own city's democracy.Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War In Athens, meanwhile, a party of young oligarchic revolutionaries succeeded in gaining de facto control of the government through assassination and intimidation.Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
After making arrangements to their satisfaction at Samos the leaders of the conspiracy set sail for Athens. Among them was Theramenes; Thucydides refers to him as "one of the leaders of the party that put down the democracy—an able speaker and a man with ideas."Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War Calling the assembly together, the conspirators proposed a series of measures by which the democracy was formally replaced with a government of 400 chosen men, who were to select and convene a larger body of 5,000 as time went on.Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War Shortly afterwards, the conspirators went, under arms, to the council chamber, where they ordered the democratic council to disperse after collecting their pay; the council did as ordered, and from this point forward the mechanism of government was fully under the control of the oligarchic conspirators; they quickly changed the laws to reflect the new form of government they had imposed.Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War . In 411 BC, Theramenes argued for a government in which all men of hoplite status or higher would be enfranchised.]]
Shortly after taking power, the extremist leaders of the revolution had begun constructing fortifications on Eëtioneia, a dominant point in the entrance to the harbor of Piraeus, ostensibly to protect the harbor against an attack from the fleet at Samos. With internal dissent increasing, they joined these new fortifications to existing walls to form a redoubt defensible against attacks from land or sea, which contained a large warehouse into which the extremists moved most of the city's grain supply.Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War Theramenes protested strongly against the building of this fortification, arguing that its purpose was not to keep the democrats out, but to be handed over to the Spartans; Thucydides testifies that his charges were not without substance, as the extremists were actually contemplating such an action.Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War Initially cautious (as enemies of the regime had been executed before), Theramenes and his party were emboldened and galvanized into action by several events. First, a Peloponnese fleet, ostensibly dispatched to assist anti-Athenian forces on Euboea, was moving slowly up the coast of the Peloponnese; Theramenes charged that this fleet was planning to seize the fortifications on Eetioneia, in collaboration with the extremists.Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War Second, an Athenian militiaman, apparently acting on orders from conspirators higher in the ranks of the government, assassinated Phrynichus, the leader of the extremist faction. He escaped, but his accomplice, an Argive, was captured; the prisoner, under torture, refused to state the name of his employer. With the extremists unable to take effective action in this case, and with the Peloponnesian fleet overrunning Aegina (a logical stopping point on the approach to Piraeus), Theramenes and his party decided to act.
Aristocrates, who was commanding a regiment of hoplites in Piraeus, arrested the extremist general Alexicles; enraged, the extremist leaders of the 400 demanded action, and made a number of threats against Theramenes and his party. To their surprise, Theramenes volunteered to lead a force to rescue Alexicles; the leaders of the extremists acquiesced, and Theramenes set out to Piraeus, sharing his command with one other moderate and one extremist, Aristarchus. When Theramenes and his force arrived at Piraeus, Aristarchus, in a rage, exhorted the men to attack the hoplites who had seized Alexicles. Theramenes feigned rage as well, but when asked by the hoplites whether he thought that the fortification on Eetioneia was a good idea, he responded that if they wanted to pull it down, he thought that would be good. Calling out that everyone who wanted the 5,000 to govern instead of the 400, the hoplites set to work.For this entire series of incidents, see Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, . Donald Kagan has suggested that this call was probably instigated by Theramenes' party, who wanted the 5,000 to govern; the hoplites tearing down the fortification might well have preferred a return to the democracy.Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 395 Several days later, the Peloponnesian fleet approached Piraeus, but, finding the fortifications destroyed and the port well defended, they sailed on to Euboea.Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War Several days later, the 400 were formally deposed and replaced by a government of the 5,000; the most extreme of the oligarchs fled the city.Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
According to DiodorusDiodorus Siculus, Library 13.66 and Plutarch,Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades, 31.4 Theramenes participated under the command of Alcibiades to the siege of Byzantium (408 BC), winning the battle against the Peloponnesian army that was appointed to defend that city: Alcibiades was in command of the right wing, while Theramenes was in charge of the left one.
Soon after the news of this public tragedy reached Athens, a massive controversy erupted over the apportionment of blame for the botched rescue. The public was furious over the loss of so many sailors, and over the failure to recover the bodies of the dead for burial, and the generals suspected that Thrasybulus and Theramenes, who had already returned to Athens, might have been responsible for stirring up the assembly against them, and wrote letters to the people denouncing the two trierarchs as responsible for the failed rescue.The account followed here is that of Diodorus, 13.101. Xenophon, at 1.7, gives a different account which places much more of the blame for the trial and execution on Theramenes' shoulders. Modern scholars (see Fine The Ancient Greeks, 514–15, Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 461–66, and Hornblower, The Greek World, 151) have generally preferred Diodorus' account, for a number of reasons. See the section on historiography. Thrasybulus and Theramenes were called before the assembly to defend their behavior; in their defense, Theramenes produced a letter from the generals in which they blamed only the storm for the mishap;Xenophon, Hellenica the trierarchs were exonerated, and public anger now turned against the generals.Diodorus Siculus, Library 13.101.4 All eight were deposed from office, and summoned back to Athens to stand trial. Two fled, but six returned as commanded to face the charges against them.Xenophon, Hellenica
Diodorus notes that the generals committed a critical error by attempting to shift the blame onto Theramenes. "For," he states, "although they could have had the help of Theramenes and his associates in the trial, men who both were able orators and had many friends and, most important of all, had been participants in the events relative to the battle, they had them, on the contrary, as adversaries and bitter accusers."Diodorus Siculus, Library 13.101.3 When the trial came, Theramenes' numerous political allies were among the leaders of the faction seeking the generals' conviction.Diodorus Siculus, Library 13.101.7 A bitter series of debates and legal maneuvers ensued as the assembly fought over what to do with the generals. At first, it appeared that they might be treated leniently, but in the end, public displays of bereavement by the families of the deceased and aggressive prosecution by a politician named Callixenus swung the opinion of the assembly; the six generals were tried as a group and executed.Xenophon, Hellenica The Athenian public, as the grief and anger prompted by the disaster cooled, came to regret their action, and for thousands of years historians and commentators have pointed to the incident as perhaps the greatest miscarriage of justice the city's government ever perpetrated.Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 466
This government, which soon came to be known as the "Thirty Tyrants" for its excesses and atrocities, rapidly set about establishing its control over the city. The oligarchs, led by Critias, one of the "overseers" and a former exile, summoned a Spartan garrison to ensure their safety and then initiated a reign of terror, executing any men who they thought might possess sufficient initiative or a large enough following to effectively challenge them.Xenophon, Hellenica It was this campaign that first drove a wedge between Theramenes and the leaders of the Thirty; initially a supporter of Critias, Theramenes now argued that it was unnecessary to execute men who had shown no sign of wishing the oligarchy harm just because they had been popular under the democracy.Xenophon, Hellenica This protest, however, failed to slow the pace of the executions, so Theramenes next argued that, if the oligarchy was to govern by force, it must at least expand its base;Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 36 fearful that Theramenes might lead a popular movement against them, Critias and the leaders of the Thirty issued a list of 3,000 men who would be associates in the new government. When Theramenes again objected that this number was still too small, the leaders arranged for a military review to be staged after which the citizens were ordered to pile their arms; with the help of the Spartan garrison, the oligarchs then confiscated all arms except those belonging to the 3,000.Xenophon, Hellenica This, in turn, marked the beginning of even greater excesses; to pay the Spartan garrison's wages, Critias and the leaders ordered each of the Thirty to arrest and execute a metic, or resident alien, and confiscate his property. Theramenes, protesting that this action was worse than the worst excesses of the democracy, refused to follow the order.Xenophon, Hellenica
Critias and his compatriots, in the light of these events, decided that Theramenes had become an intolerable threat to their rule; accordingly, speaking before the assembly of the 3,000, Critias denounced Theramenes as a born traitor, always ready to shift his political allegiances with the expediencies of the moment.Xenophon, Hellenica Famously, he branded him with the nickname "cothurnus", the name of a boot worn on the stage that could fit either foot; Theramenes, he proclaimed, was ready to serve either the democratic or oligarchic cause, seeking only to further his own personal interest. In an impassioned response, Theramenes denied that his politics had ever been inconsistent.For this speech, see Xenophon, Hellenica, . He had always, he insisted, favored a moderate policy, neither extreme democracy nor extreme oligarchy, and held true to the ideal of a government composed of men of hoplite status or higher, who would be able to effectively serve the state. This speech had a substantial effect on the audience, and Critias saw that, if the case were brought to a vote, Theramenes would be acquitted.For the events from the end of the trial onwards, see Xenophon, Hellenica, . Accordingly, after conferring with the Thirty, Critias ordered men with daggers to line the stage in front of the audience and then struck Theramenes' name from the roster of the 3,000, denying him his right to a trial.Aristotle ( Constitution of the Athenians, ) gives a slightly different account of Theramenes' sentence to death. He asserts that "Theramenes was executed after Thrasybulus occupied Fyli and argues that the Thirty introduced two laws into the Council of 3,000, with orders to pass them; one was to give the Thirty absolute powers to execute any citizens not members of the roll of Three Thousand, and the other prohibited admission to citizenship under the present constitution for all who had actually taken part in the demolition of the fort on Eteiona, or in any act of opposition to the Four Hundred who had instituted the former oligarchy; in both of these proceedings Theramenes had in fact participated, so that the result was that when the laws had been ratified he became outside the constitution and the Thirty had authority to put him to death." In the past half century, however, scholars have recognized Xenophon's account as preferable. Theramenes, springing to a nearby altar for sanctuary, admonished the assemblage not to permit his murder, but to no avail; the Eleven, keepers of the prison, entered, dragged him away, and forced him to drink a cup of hemlock. Theramenes, imitating a popular drinking game in which the drinker toasted a loved one as he finished his cup, downed the poison and then flung the dregs to the floor, exclaiming "Here's to the health of my beloved Critias!"Xenophon, Hellenica,
Theramenes' reputation has undergone a dramatic shift since the 19th century, when Xenophon's and Lysias' unfavorable accounts were widely accepted, and Theramenes was execrated as a turncoat and blamed for instigating the execution of the generals after Arginusae.Harding, The Theramenes Myth, 101–2Andrewes, The Arginousai Trial, 112 The discovery of Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians in 1890 reversed this trend for the broad assessment of Theramenes' character,Harding, The Theramenes Myth, 101 and Diodorus' account of the Arginusae trial has been preferred by scholars since Antony Andrewes undermined Xenophon's account in the 1970s; Diodorus' more melodramatic passages, such as his elaborate presentation of Theramenes' last moments, are still discounted,Andrewes, The Arginousai Trial, 120 but he is now preferred on a number of issues, and on the Arginusae trial in particular.Hornblower, The Greek World, 151 Aristophanes, in The Frogs, pokes fun at Theramenes' ability to extricate himself from tight spots, but delivers none of the scathing rebukes one would expect for a politician whose role in the shocking events after Arginusae had been regarded as particularly blameworthy, and modern scholars have seen in this a more accurate depiction of how Theramenes was perceived in his time; Lysias, meanwhile, who mercilessly attacks Theramenes on many counts, has nothing negative to say about the aftermath of Arginusae.Andrewes, The Arginousai Trial, 121–22
Recent works have generally accepted the image of Theramenes as a moderate, committed to the ideal of a hoplite-based broad oligarchy. Donald Kagan has said of him that "...his entire career reveals him to be a patriot and a true moderate, sincerely committed to a constitution granting power to the hoplite class, whether in the form of a limited democracy or a broadly based oligarchy",Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 379 while John Fine has noted that "like many a person following a middle course, he was hated by both political extremes."Fine, The Ancient Greeks, 521 The constitution of the 5,000 is recognized as his political masterpiece;Fine, The Ancient Greeks, 506 his attempt to bring about a similar shift towards moderatism in 404 led directly to his death. That death, meanwhile, has become famous for its drama, and the story of Theramenes' final moments has been repeated over and over throughout classical historiography. "Because he met his death defying a tyrant," John Fine notes, "it is easy to idealize Theramenes." In the millennia since his death, Theramenes has been both idealized and reviled; his brief seven-year career in the spotlight, touching as it did on all the major points of controversy in the last years of the Peloponnesian War, has been subject to myriad different interpretations. From the polemical contemporary works which describe his career have emerged the outlines of a complex figure, charting a dangerous course through the chaos of the late 5th-century Athenian political scene; although historians from ancient times to the present have offered far more specific portraits, of one form or another, it may be that nothing more than that outline will ever be known with certainty.
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