Athenion (tyrant)

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Athenion was a Greek Peripatetic rhetorician who is said to have briefly been the tyrant of Athens . He lived in the 1st century BC. Chr.

Life

Athenion was the son of an Athenian Peripathetic of the same name and an Egyptian slave. After his father died and he came into his inheritance, he was able to become an Athenian citizen despite his unequal ancestry. He had also been trained as a peripatetic, traveled extensively with his young wife, and taught sophistry to students in Messene and Larisa . This made him a considerable fortune and returned home.

Meanwhile, Mithridates VI. in Asia he had significant successes against the Romans. Certain Athenian politicians wanted to establish contact with this king, which is why Athenion opened up as their envoy to the Pontic ruler. As a result, Athenion found with Mithridates VI. an excellent reception, rose to one of his phíloi ("friends"), allegedly sought to persuade the Athenians to join the king by letter and finally met in early 88 BC. BC again in Athens. Received enthusiastically by the people, he reported to the Athenians the day after his arrival of Mithridates' power and convinced the demos that the time of Roman hegemony was over. However, they shrank from declaring war on Rome. A few days later, he allegedly behaved as a tyrant and had opposition members, especially Roman friends in the city, bloody persecuted. He also wanted to seize the temple treasure on Delos , but his general Apellikon von Teos , who was sent there, suffered a defeat against the Roman general Orbius .

The further events are unknown, because here the fragment of Poseidonios handed down by Athenaeus , which is the only surviving source of information about Athenion, breaks off. Probably soon afterwards, probably as a result of the military defeat of the Apellicon, the brief dominance of Athenion ended, because not much later another man named Aristion , who in older research was partly equated with Athenion, with Mithridates' help became a tyrant Athens swung up.

The fact that Athenion actually established a tyranny over Athens is often doubted in recent research (Bugh 1992; Antela-Bernárdez 2015). Instead, it is often assumed that he was merely the leader of a group that had suffered from the years of domination of the friends of Rome in Athens and now hoped to gain control of the city in the shadow of the Mithridates War. There is much to suggest that several allegations made against Athenion by Poseidonios (or Athenaios, who narrates the corresponding passage) are based on a mixture with the later tyrant Aristion, who allied himself with Mithridates and fought against the Romans.

literature

  • Borja Antela-Bernárdez: Athenion of Athens Revisited . In: Klio 97, 2015, pp. 59–80.
  • Glenn Bugh: Athenion and Aristion of Athens . In: Phoenix 46, 1992, pp. 108-123.
  • Henning Börm : Murderous fellow citizens. Stasis and civil war in the Greek poleis of Hellenism . Stuttgart 2019, pp. 134–140.
  • Richard Goulet, Bernadette Puech: Athénion. In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Volume 1, Paris 1989, pp. 649-650.
  • Eckart Olshausen : Athenion 1. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 2, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01472-X , Sp. 202.
  • Ulrich Wilcken : Athenion 3 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, Col. 2038 f.

Remarks

  1. ^ Poseidonios , The Fragments of the Greek Historians (FGrH), No. 87, F 36 at Athenaios , Deipnosophistai 5, 211d ff.
  2. ↑ Ulrich Wilcken : Athenion 3. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswwissenschaft (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, Col. 2039.
personal data
SURNAME Athenion
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek rhetorician and ephemeral tyrant of Athens
DATE OF BIRTH 2nd century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 1st century BC Chr.