Hippias of Thasos

Hippias of Thasos lived in Athens towards the end of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) . He came from Thasos , an island in the Aegean Sea, about eight kilometers from the Thracian-Macedonian coast, southwest of Abdera, with the capital of the same name. The island was rich in gold and silver mines in ancient times and also exported marble and wine. Athens occupied Thasos for a while and also settled Athenian citizens there. In the Peloponnesian War, however, the rule of the island changed several times. It is possible that Hippias came from a family of settlers who later had to return to Athens in the wake of the war.

Hippias was born in 404 BC. After the defeat of Athens by Sparta in the early days of the regime of the thirty tyrants, he was arrested for - as the famous rhetor Lysias reports - to make statements about an alleged democratic conspiracy against the oligarchy . He was not tortured in the process, suggesting that he may have been an Athenian citizen. But since he refused to testify and denounce Athens citizens (rightly or wrongly), despite his imprisonment, he was executed by the tyrants.

Lysias placed a small memorial to Hippias of Thasos in his speech Against Agoratos . Lysias, whose brother Polemarchus had been robbed of his property by the thirty tyrants and executed only for his property, had himself suffered from the tyranny and has been a staunch democrat ever since. He mentions Hippias of Thasos and his fellow fate Xenophon of Ikaria , who had to suffer torture before his death, therefore in the court speech mentioned as shining examples of steadfastness, the refusal to collaborate with tyranny and the self-sacrifice.

While Hippias of Thasus and Xenophon of Ikaria proved to be steadfast characters and martyrs of democracy, Lysias also cites the behavior of the Attic citizen Menestratos of Antiochis as a counterexample . This had also been arrested by the thirty tyrants and was supposed to denounce fellow citizens. However, he came out of this difficult situation due to a protection by his community comrade Hagnodoros of Amphitrope, who was a brother-in-law of the tyrant Critias , again. Shocked by the detention experience and the threat, he was then ready to collaborate with the tyrants and denounced numerous citizens who subsequently lost their lives.

Under the reign of terror of the thirty tyrants came from August 404 to March 403 BC. Around 1,500 people died. The victims of the tyranny included, besides many unknowns and the persons mentioned (Polemarchus, Hippias of Thasos and Xenophon of Ikaria), the prominent democratic politicians Cleophon , Strombichides , the athlete Autolycus and the taxiarch Dionysodorus . Even Theramenes , the moderately oligarchic politician , who was suspected of treason by Critias, was executed after a brief show trial.

swell

• Lysias, Speech Against Agoratos 54.
• Xenophon, Hellenika II, 3.23-56.

literature

• Karl-Wilhelm Welwei : Classical Athens. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1999.