Menestratos

Menestratos was an Attic citizen at the time of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) and an informer at the time of the Thirty Tyrants . He came from the Demos Amphitrope, which belonged to the Phyle Antiochis and was northeast of Thrikos. Menestratus was - as the rhetor Lysias reports in his speech against Agoratos - a fellow member of Hagnodorus , who in turn was a brother-in-law of Critias , who was 404–403 BC. Belonged to the oligarchic government of the so-called "thirty tyrants".

When Menestratos in connection with the actions of the oligarchic government against the democratic opposition in 404 BC. Was arrested and was in danger of death, Hagnodoros apparently asked his brother-in-law Kritias to spare him. Critias therefore made sure that at a popular meeting in the theater of Munychia , a suburb of Athens at the time, a corresponding popular resolution was passed and Menestratos - probably on the condition that he would reveal everything he knew - was released. After his release, the frightened Menestratos proved to be cooperative and put numerous names on record, whereupon the citizens he denounced were executed.

After the overthrow of the oligarchic government (403 BC) Menestratos was charged with his denunciations, convicted and beaten to death by the executioner with a club.

The speaker Lysias was himself one of the victims of the tyranny from which he had to flee into exile . His brother Polemarchus was robbed of his property by the thirty tyrants and executed for his property alone. Since then, Lysias has been a staunch and determined democrat and he mentions the fate of Menestratos in the court speech mentioned as a chilling example of lack of character, which he contrasts with the example of two upright citizens who refused to collaborate with the tyrants and who instead were martyrs of the Athenian democracy had to pay with their lives: Hippias of Thasos and Xenophon of Ikaria .

Lost under the reign of terror of the Thirty Tyrants from August 404 to March 403 BC. Around 1500 people lost their lives - often due to unjustified denunciations. 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.
• Lysias, Speech Against Eratosthenes 17.
• Xenophon , Hellenika II 3.23-56.

literature

• Karl-Wilhelm Welwei : Classical Athens . Darmstadt 1999.