The Greeks - 404: The Tyranny of the Thirty

Uprising in the streets of Athens, from The Greeks documentary

In 404 the victorious Spartan general, Lysander, replaced the popular assembly of Athens with an oligarchy of thirty men, called simply 'The Thirty'. It proved to be an ill-judged decision. A bloodbath followed in which 1,500 people were executed, and 5000 either fled the city or were exiled.

A year later, the Spartan king, Pausanias, intervened and democracy was restored once more.

In the meantime, one of the Peloponnesian War's most important figures, Alcibiades, was murdered in exile, though few Athenians shed tears for the man who had almost destroyed them. His opponent, Lysander, attempted to transform the former colonies of Athens into part of a greater Spartan empire. His efforts came to nothing, but seduced by his newly found sense of power and authority he fell foul of the two Spartan kings. Sent home and demoted, he lost his life in the 'Corinthian War' some five years later, when many of Sparta's former allies turned upon for its 'tyrannical' domination of Greece.

Athens' democracy was unexpectedly reinvigorated by its great defeat and though it would never again be as politically powerful, it remained Greece's most important city and a center of learning for many years to come.