Charicles

Charicles, son of Apollodorus was an Athenian politician and military leader at the time of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC - 404 BC). He was born around the year 455 BC and is (probably) 403 BC perished in Eleusis.

Charicles was one of the study commissioners who were appointed in 415 BC by the city to elucidate the Hermenfrevel in which numerous statues throughout the city had been mutilated. Charicles wore with his decisions help the atmosphere of the witch hunt, which had spread in the city, to strengthen further, pointing together with Peisander the crime as an attack on democracy and thus the Athenian system of government as a whole.

413 BC, he was sent, together with the Admiral Demosthenes with a fleet to the Peloponnesian peninsula around and he managed to secure a small island on the coast of Laconia and turn it into a bridgehead in the Spartan enemy territory.

In the aftermath of the failure of the Athenian expedition to Sicily, he seems to have become increasingly active on the part of the oligarchic party in Athens. He was reported as Isocrates even banished from the city because of this party activity, presumably v. because of its role in connection with the oligarchic rule of the Four Hundred in 411 BC

Not later than 404 BC, however, he returned from exile and became a member of the thirty -headed oligarchic government college, the " Thirty Tyrants " is selected. The philosopher Aristotle expects Charicles while the leading figures among the thirty, and writes that "among the Thirty at Athens Charicles and his followers had the upper hand because he knew how to flatter his colleagues ." The speech writer Lysias speaks of " Charicles and Critias and their club ." This suggests that Charicles has been to Critias the second most important man among the Thirty Tyrants.

In his "Memoirs of Socrates " describes the historian Xenophon, as Critias and Charicles made ​​rather common, to make the Athenian philosopher Socrates, who publicly criticized silenced by trying to make it precise rules for its activities and prevented him to publicly teach " the art of conversation ."

After the end of tyranny, beginning 403 BC Charicles likely as other supporters of the oligarchy withdrew the agreement with the new democratic government according to the fortified city of Eleusis. Maybe he was murdered in the later advance of democratic forces against the city and at the then held negotiations with most of his fellow tyrants of the Democrats.

Swell

• Andokides: " On the Mysteries ". ( p. 6).
• Aristotle: "Politics". ( 6 V, 23 ff. ).
• Isocrates: Speech « From the team of horses ." ( p. 355, d).
• Lysias: speech "Against Eratosthenes ". ( p. 125).
• Thucydides ' History of the Peloponnesian War ". (Book VI, 27-29, 53, 60f, .. VII 20, 26 )
• Xenophon, " Hellenica ." (Book II, § 3, 2, 4, § § 24, 43).
• Xenophon: "Memories of Socrates ". ( " Memorabilia ", II 2 § § 31 et seq.)