Peisandros (politician)

Peisandros was an ancient Athenian politician in the 5th century BC. During the Peloponnesian War . He was first the leader of the radical democrats and then participated in an oligarchic conspiracy.

Life

According to the Athenaion Politeia, Peisandros is said to have come from a respected family, but this cannot be considered certain. In any case, he belonged to the commission, which in 415 BC Chr. Was charged with the investigation of the Hermen and Mysteries crime and, among others , charged the general Alkibiades , who was then recalled from the expedition to Sicily that he operated . Alkibiades went into exile, first to Sparta, then to the Persian satrap Tissaphernes .

At this point, in the year 414/13 BC. BC, Peisandros was Archon of Athens. Then he moved up to the Areopagus . Initially a “radical democrat”, after the defeat in Sicily he turned to the oligarchic-minded forces.

412 BC He served as a strategos in the Athenian fleet on Samos and was the driving force behind the oligarchic overthrow of the following year. As a liaison between the capital and the fleet, he traveled back and forth between Athens and Samos several times in order to spin the threads of the oligarchical conspiracy. In the winter of 412/11 BC He also traveled to the Lydian satrap Tissaphernes to sound out the possibilities of a return of Alcibiades, who had defected to the Spartans after the prosecution .

In December 412 BC BC Peisandros arrived in Athens. In association with oligarchically-minded hetairies , he pleaded with the people for a constitutional change and a departure from the previously practiced democracy . He revealed that Alkibiades was ready to return and secure the aid of Persia for Athens - if radical democracy should be eliminated. With a haunting speech in which he asked about the (nonexistent) alternatives, Peisandros was finally able to prevail. The popular assembly was held in the spring of 411 BC. And the conspirators moved into the town hall. The Council of Four Hundred , originally supposed to draft a new constitution, now exercised full governance.

Nevertheless, the so-called dictatorship of the four hundred failed, mainly because the majority of the naval crews in Samos remained democratically minded, to which Alcibiades now also joined. In Athens, Theramenes , one of the oligarchical conspirators, came to an understanding with the democratically minded forces under the leadership of the strategist Aristocrates . After the loss of the island of Evia and a sea victory by Alcibiades in the Battle of Abydos , the end of 411 BC The Council of Four Hundred was disempowered; the new assembly of the five thousand handed over in the summer of 410 BC Again the rights to the popular assembly.

While the most important co-conspirators such as Phrynichus , Antiphon and Aristarchus were murdered or executed, Peisandros had already fled from Athens to the Spartans in Dekeleia when the Four Hundred failed . His further fate is unknown, possibly he went to Persia.

Peisandros was often the target of ridicule in comedy (as with Aristophanes ), which depicted him as voracious, fat, cowardly and corrupt. In the Central Byzantine lexicon Suda , his cowardice has become proverbial. His political opportunism was certainly remarkable, moving him seamlessly from one end of the political spectrum to the opposite side. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that he was one of the few political leaders in Athens to show vigor in the crisis following the sinking of the Sicily expedition.

literature

• Woodhead group: Peisander . In: The American Journal of Philology . Vol. 75, no. 2 (1954), pp. 131-146.

Remarks

1. ↑ Ath. pole. 32.2.
2. ↑ Christian Mann: The demagogues and the people: On political communication in Athens in the 5th century BC. Chr. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2007, p. 276.
3. ↑ Thucydides 8.53ff.
4. ↑ See Ath. pole. 29ff.
5. ↑ Thucydides 8.98.
6. ↑ Suda , pi 1467 .