Charicles

Charikles , son of Apollodorus, was an Athenian politician and general at the time of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC - 404 BC). It was born around the year 455 BC. Born and is (probably) 403 BC. Died in Eleusis.

Charikles was one of the commissioners of inquiry, who in 415 BC Were appointed by the city to clear up the hermit crime, in which numerous statues throughout the city were mutilated. With his decisions, Charikles contributed to reinforcing the atmosphere of the witch hunt that had spread in the city by interpreting the crime as an attack on democracy and thus the Athenian system of government as a whole, together with Peisandros .

413 BC He was sent around the Peloponnesian peninsula with a fleet together with the admiral Demosthenes and succeeded in fortifying a small island on the coast of Laconia and building it into a bridgehead in the Spartan enemy territory.

In the period after the failure of the Athenian expedition to Sicily, he seems to have become increasingly involved with the oligarchic party in Athens. As Isocrates reports, he was even banished from the city because of this party activity, presumably because of his role in connection with the oligarchic rule of the four hundred in 411 BC. Chr.

No later than 404 BC However, he returned from exile and was elected a member of the thirty-member oligarchical government college, the " Thirty Tyrants ". The philosopher Aristotle counts Charicles among the leading figures among the thirty and writes that “among the thirty in Athens, Charicles and his followers had the upper hand because he knew how to flatter his colleagues”. The speechwriter Lysias speaks of "Charicles and Critias and their club". This suggests that Charicles was the second most important man among the thirty tyrants after Critias.

In his "Memories of Socrates" the historian Xenophon describes how Critias and Charikles jointly endeavored to silence the Athenian philosopher Socrates , who criticized them publicly, by trying to give him precise instructions for his activities and forbidding him to publicly teach "the art of conversation".

After the end of tyranny , early 403 BC. BC Charicles, like other supporters of the oligarchy, probably withdrew to the fortified city of Eleusis in accordance with the agreements with the new democratic government . It is possible that he was murdered by the Democrats during the later advance of Democratic troops into the city and during the negotiations that then took place with most of his tyrant colleagues.

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• Andokides, On the Mysteries , p. 6th
• Aristotle, Politics , V 6, 23 ff.
• Isocrates, speech “From the horse and carriage” , p. 355, d.
• Lysias, speech “Against Eratosthenes” , p. 125.
• Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War , VI.27-29, 53, 60f .; VII.20, 26.
• Xenophon, Hellenika , II.3.2, II.4.24, II.4.43.
• Xenophon, Memories of Socrates ( Memorabilia ), II.2.31 ff.

literature

• Herbert Heftner : The oligarchic overthrow of the year 411 BC And the rule of the four hundred in Athens. Source studies and historical research. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2001, ISBN 3-631-37970-6 .
• 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, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08866-0 .
• Karl-Wilhelm Welwei : Classical Athens. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1999.
• Johannes Kirchner : Charikles 1 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III, 2, Stuttgart 1899, Col. 2140.