Hippocrates (strategist)

Hippocrates (Greek Ἱπποκράτης), the son of Ariphron, was in the initial phase of the Peloponnesian War 424/423 BC. BC together with General Demosthenes one of the strategists (military commanders) of the city of Athens . He died in 424 BC During a military operation in Boeotia . Hippocrates may have been a nephew of the famous Athenian statesman Pericles .

The attack on Megara

In the year 424/423 BC In Megara , fear of a return of the exiled aristocrats and a subsequent oligarchic overthrow , the democratic party in Megara turned to Athens for help, ready to play the city into the hands of the Athenian army. The Athenian generals Demosthenes and Hippocrates immediately seized this opportunity and appeared with a selected corps of soldiers in Megara, where, with the support of their party friends in the city, they succeeded in taking possession of the long walls that Megara with its port Nisaia connected. Since their plan was betrayed, they were unable to enter the city itself. As a substitute, they attacked Nisaia and forced the Spartan one thereCrew to surrender. When the Spartan Brasidas appeared a little later with a sizeable army, this stabilized the position of the Lacedaemon party within Megara. However, Brasidas did not succeed in driving the Athenians out of the port of Nisaia. The battle for Megara ended in a stalemate that lasted until the reconquest of Nisaias in 409 BC. Stopped.

The cast of Delion

Soon afterwards, Demosthenes and Hippocrates, in coordination with democratic partisans, attacked Boeotia on three points simultaneously in some of the Boeotian cities according to a prepared plan. While Demosthenes attacked the port city of Siphai on the Corinthian Gulf, Hippocrates - as long as the Boeotian forces were bound by Demosthenes - should conquer and fortify Delion, a place near the Attic border. For this action, Hippocrates proclaimed a general mobilization in Athens, which the strangers living in Athens also had to obey. Due to a mistake in the coordination between the two generals, this plan failed and Demosthenes had already been expelled from Siphai before Hippocrates invaded Boeotia. However, he succeeded in taking Delion, fortifying it and installing a crew there.

Death at the Battle of Delion

On the march back to Athens, however, Hippocrates was surprised by the Boeotian army and placed between Delion and Oropos. At the Battle of Delion , which broke out , the Athenians suffered a complete defeat, in which 1,000 Athenians were killed, including their general Hippocrates. The survivors included the former general Laches , who had taken part in the battle as a simple hoplite, as well as the philosopher Socrates and his pupil Alkibiades , who later became the general.

Remarks

1. ↑ Cf. Thucydides : History of the Peloponnesian War . 4, 66-74; Diodor : Libraries . 12, 66-67.
2. ↑ See Thucydides 4, 76, 77, 89, 101; Diodorus 12, 69, 70: Pausanias : Description of Greece , 3, 6, 1; 9, 6, 3.
3. ↑ Cf. Plato: Laches , p. 187.

literature

• Joseph Roisman: The General Demosthenes and his Use of Military Surprise . Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1993 (Historia Einzelschriften, Vol. 78).