Chremon (politician)

Chremon ( Greek  Χρέμων ) was a politician in classical Athens towards the end of the Peloponnesian War (431 - 404 BC). He was elected one of the thirty tyrants who defeated Sparta in Athens and later occupied by Spartan troops in August 404 BC. Until March 403 BC. Established an oligarchical reign of terror, which an estimated 1500 people fell victim to.

Chremon must have belonged to the pro-Sparta oligarchic party before the end of the war. Apparently he had acquired a considerable following there through his political activities, so that in 404 B.C. Was elected to a member of the oligarchical government. He appears to have been a specialist in eliminating political opponents through their involvement in legal processes, a kind of sycophantism at a high political level. It is possible that the idea of ​​working with the corrupt government scribe Nicomachus came from Chremon. The famous speaker Lysias tells us about Nicomachus, whose task actually consisted in administering legal texts, and shows that he was willing to falsify laws in exchange for money, so that certain political processes became possible.

According to Lysias Chremon, together with his party colleague Satyros von Kephisia, who as the leader of the so-called " eleven men " later exercised the function of a kind of police president of Athens, the democratic politician Kleophon was executed in this way , who because of his vulgar and demagogic behavior, however, not only had friends within the democratic party. At the end of the Peloponnesian War, Cleophon had stubbornly opposed peace with Sparta and thereby incurred the hostility of the oligarchic party.

As Lysias reports, Chremon and Satyros had great influence in the Athenian people's assembly. With the help of the falsifications of the law produced by the state secretary Nicomachus they had bought, they achieved that this assembly was also allowed to make decisions in court matters. So they succeeded, besides Cleophon, also many respected citizens, Lysias mentions in particular Strombichides and Calliades, who stood in the way of the oligarchic system, to have them condemned and executed.

Nothing is known about other individual activities of Chremon during the reign of the thirty or about his further fate. It is possible that after the overthrow of tyranny in 403 B.C. Like the majority of his colleagues withdrew to the fortified Eleusis . When it finally came to a military conflict between the renewed democratic Athens and the tyrant fortress Eleusis (probably still in 403 BC), the former tyrants, including perhaps Chremon, were lured into a trap by the democrats and murdered.

swell

• Lysias: " Against Nicomachus ". (Sect. 9-14).
• Xenophon: " Hellenika ". (Book II 3.2)

literature

• 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 .