Theramenes

Family: Athenians · Role: captain · First appears: Book 1, section 6, part 2/2

In Book 1, Theramenes and Thrasybulus were ordered to take forty-seven ships to aid the disabled fleet and rescue the shipwrecked crews. At Athens, Theramenes’s party arranged for people dressed as bereaved relatives to appear at the assembly and persuaded Callixenus to accuse the generals. He and Thrasybulus were later identified among the men who undertook to accuse them; Theramenes defended his conduct by saying the storm had made the rescue impossible.

In Book 2, Theramenes was sent to Lysander to investigate the Spartan demands about Athens’s walls, remaining with him for more than three months, and was then chosen as an ambassador to Lacedaemon with full powers. The following year, he was among the Thirty appointed to draft a constitution. At first he and Critias were friends, but as the Thirty’s unjust executions mounted, Theramenes objected and urged them to broaden participation in government, warning that otherwise the oligarchy would fall.

The Thirty plotted against him, and Critias accused him of conspiracy and treachery. Theramenes defended himself, but was condemned; as he was dragged from the altar and through the Agora, Satyrus and the attendants seized him. When the fatal draught was brought, Theramenes was made to drink hemlock.