Autolykos (athlete)

Autolykos ( Greek Αὐτόλυκος Autólykos ; * around 435 BC; † probably 403 BC), son of Lykon, was a famous Greek athlete in ancient Athens at the time of Socrates . As a boy in 422 BC he achieved BC at the Great Panathenaic victory in the competition for young people. As Xenophon reports in his "Banquet", the rich Athenian nobleman Callias III belonged. then to the boy's hot admirers. Plutarch calls Autolykos a "fencer".

After the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian war and during the occupation of Athens by Sparta came Autolycus, who is now a well-known athlete and winner of the pankration had become the combined fist and wrestling with the wheel of Sparta in Athens governor ( Harmost ) Kallibios in a Exchange of words. When the Harmost threatened the athlete with the stick, Autolykos grabbed him by the legs and threw him to the ground. The Spartan general Lysander nevertheless initially acquitted the irrepressible strong man and - as Plutarch reports - even criticized his governor for his behavior, as it showed that he did not know how to rule free people. A short time later, however, the Thirty tyrants supported by Sparta, during their reign of terror in the city - for the sake of the offended Callibios - had Autolykos killed, probably in 403 BC Chr.

The Athenian sculptor Leochares , who belongs to the middle Attic school, created a statue of Autolycus, which was erected at the Prytaneion (town hall) in Athens after the end of the oligarchic tyranny .

swell

• Plutarch: Biographies. Volume III, chap. "Lysandros", section 15. Verlag Georg Müller, Munich and Leipzig 1913, p. 223.
• Xenophon: The banquet . Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 1957.

literature

• Georg Peter Landmann: To understand the work. In: Xenophon: The Banquet. Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 1957, p. 71f.
• György Németh: Kritias and the Thirty Tyrants. Studies on the politics and prosography of the ruling elite in Athens 404/403 BC Chr. (= Heidelberg ancient historical contributions and epigraphic studies. Vol. 43). Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08866-0 .
• Karl-Wilhelm Welwei : Classical Athens. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1999.