Eratosthenes

Who is Eratosthenes?

Eratosthenes of Athens was one of the Thirty Tyrants elected to rule the city of Athens after the Peloponnesian War.

Having lost the war to the Spartans, the citizens of Athens elected thirty men as oligarchs. The Thirty instituted oppressive and highly exclusionary laws and instituted a political purge against Athenians who had been Spartan informers and collaborators during the long war. Eventually open hostilities between the Thirty and disenfranchised or disaffected Athenian citizens led to a coup d'etat in 403 B.C. that deposed them.

He is the subject of a legal oration by the orator Lysias, entitled Against Eratosthenes, according to some critics. However, the age of the Tyrant does not fit with the context of Lysias' speech: he must have been aged at least 18 in 411BC to have served as a trierarch, and at least 30 by the time of the Thirty Tyrants period in 403/2BC. But Lysias' speech suggests that the Eratosthenes referred to is younger than 30 in 403/2 - he is described as 'neaniskos', a word which Lysias elsewhere uses to refer to younger men.