Hippocrates (Sparta)

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Hippocrates (* around 450 BC; † 409 or 408 BC) was a Spartan general in the Peloponnesian War .

In the winter of the year 412/11 BC As the commander of a Spartan contingent, Hippocrates drove twelve ships, ten of them from Thurioi under the command of the Rhodians Dorieus , from the Peloponnese to Knidos in Caria , in order to interrupt the supply of Athens by grain ships from Egypt from this base . However, the Athenians reacted and sent warships from Samos , with which they took away the Spartan triremes. When the Athenians then proceeded against the unfortified Knidos, Hippocrates was able to repel the attack only with difficulty by erecting barricades overnight.

Presumably Hippocrates then went to Miletus in Ionia together with Dorieus to support the Spartan Nauarchs Astyochus and Mindaros as epistoleus in the consolidation of the Peloponnesian fleet. Nothing is known about its exact use during this period. In 410 BC However, he took part in the battle of Kyzikos , where after the death of Mindaros he took over command and sent a desperate report of the defeat to Sparta:

“Boats lost. Mindaros dead. Men are hungry. Don't know what to do. "

In the winter of 409/08 BC As a Spartan Harmost , Hippocrates headed the defense of the city of Chalcedon on the Bosporus . When the Athenian general Theramenes besieged the city, the defenders waited, but when Hippocrates learned that a Persian aid contingent under the command of Pharnabazos was within reach, he decided to drop out. At the following battle of Chalcedon between the walls of the city and the palisades of the besiegers, Hippocrates fell fighting the hoplites of Thrasyllos and the cavalry of Alcibiades .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For example Karl-Wilhelm Welwei : Hippokrates [7]. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 5, Metzler, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-476-01475-4 , Sp. 599. For the controversial chronology of this time cf. about Bruno Bleckmann : Athens' path to defeat. The last years of the Peloponnesian War . Teubner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3519076489 , especially pp. 267-314.
  2. ^ Thucydides , Peloponnesian War , VIII 35.
  3. ↑ Xenophon , Hellenika , I 1,23.
  4. ↑ Xenophon, Hellenika , I 3.5–7; Diodor , Bibliothek , XIII 66.2; Plutarch , Alkibiades , 30.
personal data
SURNAME Hippocrates
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spartan fleet leader
DATE OF BIRTH around 450 BC Chr.
PLACE OF BIRTH Sparta
DATE OF DEATH 409 BC BC or 408 BC Chr.
Place of death Chalcedon