Onomakles

Onomakles was a politician and general in classical Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). His exact life dates are not known.

The historian Thucydides first mentions Onomakles in 412 BC. When he, as an admiral, exercised the supreme command of a united Athenian- Argive expedition to Ionia together with his colleagues Phrynichos and Skironides . After the victorious battle of Miletus , in which the Milesians were supported by Spartans and Persian mercenaries of the satrap Tissaphernes , the Athenians prepared the siege of Miletus . When a united Spartan-Sicilian fleet approached, however, they withdrew to Samos at the urging of the Phrynichos . Shortly thereafter, in the same year, after the Athenian troops had been reinforced on Samos, Onomakles was sent to Chios with part of the armed forces and the device together with his colleagues Strombichides and Euktemon .

Politically, Onomakles was on the side of the oligarchic party in Athens, in which he played an important role. In 411 BC He took part in the oligarchic regime of the four hundred . In this context he was a member of an Athens embassy, ​​which (albeit in vain) traveled to Sparta to sound out possibilities for a peace agreement there.

After the removal of the Council of Four Hundred and the constitution of the 5000, the envoys Archeptolemos , Onomakles and Antiphon were accused of treason at the instigation of their party friend Theramenes and accused of trying to bring about peace with the Spartans under all circumstances to the detriment of Athens. An application was made in the Council to arrest her and bring her to justice. While Onomakles immediately fled Athens and went into exile, Archeptolemus and Antiphon, like other oligarchs, voluntarily stayed in the city because they believed they would be acquitted in the trial. In the pseudo-Plutarchic scripture about the life of the ten speakers (Vitae decem oratorum), he is written in the year 411 or 410 BC. Council resolution and the death sentence for high treason passed down against the logographer and rhetoric teacher Antiphon.

The poet Alkaios of Mytilene mentions a person with the name "Onomakles" in one of his poems and compares this with someone who, on the run from humans, has withdrawn far into the wilderness and now has to live there under primitive conditions longs to return to his fellow human beings in order to be able to participate again in the political life of his city and the council meetings.

"… Poorly I
live like a peasant
and long to hear how the assembly
and the council are convened…
My father and my father's father were
so lucky, and they grew
old along with these
citizens who do bad things to each other .
I (but) was banished from their midst
and fled to the extreme end of the world, like Onomakles
I lived here alone in the bushes of wolves. "

The penultimate line of the text probably refers to Onomakles' exile after the year 411 BC. He suggests that Onomakles at that time, in a well-known and almost proverbial way, "ran away" from the threatened death penalty.

After Athens' defeat by Sparta, Onomakles was elected one of the thirty tyrants who died in Athens on August 404 BC. Until March 403 BC. Under the suzerainty of Sparta and later also under the protection of Spartan occupation troops, an oligarchic reign of terror was established, which killed an estimated 1,500 people.

After the end of tyranny, early 403 BC. BC Onomakles probably withdrew like other supporters of the oligarchy - according to the agreements with the new democratic government - to the fortified neighboring city of Eleusis . It is possible that he was murdered by the Democrats during the later advance of Democratic troops into the city and during the negotiations that then took place with most of his tyrant colleagues.

swell

• Pseudo-Plutarch: life of the ten speakers ( Vitae decem oratorum , chap. 1 "Antiphon")
• Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War . (Book VIII. 25, 27, 30, 33, 34, 38, 40, 55, 61).
• Xenophon: Hellenika . (Book II. 3. § 2).

literature

• Alkaios: Alkaios fragment 130b 1-10 . In: Loretana de Libero : The archaic tyranny. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-515-06920-8 , p. 323 (also: Göttingen, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1995).
• Herbert Heftner : The oligarchic overthrow of the year 411 BC And the rule of the four hundred in Athens. Source studies and historical research. Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2001, ISBN 3-631-37970-6 .
• 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 .